Governments, NGOs and Anti-Corruption

The New Integrity Warriors

Luís de Sousa, Barry Hindess, Peter Larmour

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134035458
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The purpose of this book is to understand the rise, future and implications of two important new kinds of "integrity warriors" - official anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) and anti-corruption NGOs – and to locate them in a wider context and history of anti-corruption activity.

Key issues of corruption and anti-corruption are discussed in an integrated and innovative way; through a number of country studies including Taiwan and South Korea, South East Europe, Fiji, Russia and the Baltic States. Some of the questions, used to examine the development of new anti-corruption actors, include:

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• In what context were these born?

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• How do they operate in pursuing their mission and mandate?

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• How successful have they been in relation to expected results?

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• To what extent are governmental and non governmental actors aware of each other and how far do they cooperate towards the common goal of fighting corruption?

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• What explains the shift in emphasis after the end of the cold war, from national to international action?

Governments, NGOs and Anti-Corruption will be of interest to students and scholars of corruption, public policy, political science, developmental studies and law.

Luís de Sousa is an Associate Researcher at CIES-ISCTE, Portugal and Calouste Gulbenkian Fellow at the European University Institute, Italy.

Barry Hindess is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University, Australia.

Peter Larmour is a Reader in Public Policy and Governance at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, Australian National University, Australia.

1 Introduction

Luis de Sousa, Peter Larmour and Barry Hindess

Few people will admit to favouring corruption.¹ In Europe, most people, when asked if they would bribe, vigorously condemn such conduct,² even if, in practice, many play along with it. In other policy areas, such as environmental protection or the war in Iraq, there are groups who are for or against. The case of corruption, in contrast, only attracts opponents.³

Western Europe has witnessed several waves of corruption scandals since the rebirth of democracies at the end of World War II: from the US aid scams during the reconstruction phase in the 1950s, through the corruption associated with the expansion of suburbs and the development of coastal resorts in the 1960s, to the bribery of Western European governmental officials by US airplane and arms companies in the 1970s. However none were lasting or led to major anti-corruption reforms or the creation of specialized anti-corruption bodies. The explosion of corruption scandals and anti-corruption reforms in post-Cold War Europe is unprecedented both in terms of scope and nature. The Western European press, magistrates, opposition party leaders, disaffected party members, populist movements, and nongovernment organizations all stood up ‘against the arrogance and corruption of the elites’ (Della Porta and Mény 1997).

In Eastern Europe, and Russia itself, the collapse of communism was accompanied by another explosion of international concern with corruption. Party rule and central planning had provided one set of opportunities for corruption. Party political competition and wholesale privatization provided opportunities for new kinds of corruption. There was a corresponding rupture or reversal in the ethical climate – favouring individual enterprise that had earlier been condemned – that left many people breathless, cynical, or feeling left behind. It was suddenly less clear what counted as ‘corruption’ and how much of it was going on.

The end of the Cold War affected perceptions of corruption in the developing world. Western countries became less reluctant to interfere in the domestic politics of countries that depended on them. Leaders of those countries could no longer threaten to seek Eastern bloc support. The World Bank coined the term ‘governance’ in relation to authoritarian rule in Africa and, during the 1990s, aid donors increasingly insisted on ‘good governance’ as a condition for foreign aid, loans, and preferential market access. There was also a liberalization of politics in South Korea and Taiwan, which had been on the anti-communist side of Cold War partitions. With democratic forms of politics came new concerns with corruption. Countries like Vietnam, where the Party still ruled, looked for new supporters among Western countries and international organizations.

Interest in corruption gained an international dimension through the signing of various international conventions and the emergence of a series of transnational actors. At the forefront was Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1993 by a group of disaffected international civil servants concerned about corruption in international business and foreign aid. TI initially met resistance, but its ideas have since been embraced by international organizations and aid donors, particularly the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It has also franchised the growth of national anti-corruption NGOs. Another set of domestic actors, of a governmental nature, grew in numbers and expanded from developing to developed countries: the anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) typified by Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). By the end of the 1990s, anti-corruption was on the agenda not only of national governments, but also of world and regional governance institutions. The European Union expects countries aspiring to membership to establish anti-corruption measures. A small industry of training and technical assistance has grown up to ensure compliance.⁴

Since they are seen as committed to eradicating an obvious evil, anti-corruption agencies and campaigns generally get favourable coverage. Here we take a more sceptical stance. While not (of course) favouring corruption, we are interested in the ways anti-corruption campaigns can be abused (or corrupted) to serve the interests of powerful groups, or have unintended consequences of other kinds. Frank Anechiarico, a contributor to this volume, was a pioneer of this critical approach and argued (with James Jacobs 1996) that the layers of supervision introduced after each new corruption scandal in New York severely limited the effectiveness of the bureaucracy. More recently, scholars in Eastern Europe, particularly Andras Sajó, who gave an edited collection on corruption the revealing subtitle ‘A Sceptic’s Handbook’ (Kotkin and Sajó 2002), Ivan Krastev (2004), and Daniel Smilov (Tisné and Smilov 2004), another contributor to this volume, have raised questions about the negative consequences of donor-sponsored anti-corruption campaigns in Eastern Europe. Barry Hindess (in this volume) questions the doctrines of Transparency International, the pioneering anti-corruption NGO.

Another of our contributors Steven Sampson (2005) coined the phrase ‘integrity warriors’ to describe the new anti-corruption actors – government and non-government – that are the focus of analysis in this book. The term is slightly ironic in two ways that are important to our argument. The word ‘integrity’ suggests a condition in which there would be no corruption, so the term integrity warriors identifies those who are fighting to end it. Yet, there is disagreement about what such a society should look like and uncertainty about whether we could ever attain such a condition. Meanwhile we are faced with two all-too-real possibilities which might well coincide in practice: a ‘policed society’ might be possible – but at a high social cost – based on clean-up campaigns and selective or exemplary repression. A ‘hypocritical society’ is also possible and less costly, and would be based on feeding a scandalized public opinion with constant cosmetic reforms.

Sampson’s word ‘warriors’ points to both campaigns and institutions, but also to the very real personal dangers faced by whistle-blowers and opponents of the nexus between politics and crime. TI rightly celebrates these brave individuals in an annual awards ceremony. Yet a ‘war’ may also be invoked to silence dissent and paint critics as traitors; it does not have to compete with other priorities for public attention and expenditure. The term can be used to suggest that everything possible must be done to ensure victory. It leaves no room for grey areas, relativism, or the rights of those accused, perhaps wrongly, of consorting with the enemy – in our case, corruption. Historically the ‘war on corruption’ has followed the ‘war on drugs’ as an international projection of US domestic policy (Woodiwiss 2006). In campaigns against money laundering it now dovetails with the equally open-ended, dissent-intolerant, ‘war on terror’.

The purpose of this book is to understand the rise, future, and implications of two important new kinds of ‘integrity warriors’ – official anti-corruption agencies and anti-corruption NGOs – and to locate them in a wider context and history of anti-corruption activity. In what context were they born? What are their constitutive characteristics? How do they operate in pursuing their mission and mandate? How successful have they been in relation to expected results? To what extent are they aware of each other and how far do they cooperate with each other towards the common goal of fighting corruption? What explains this shift in emphasis, from national to international action, and from government ACAs to NGOs?

These are factual and pragmatic questions. The word ‘corruption’ also implies strong moral condemnation (Jos 1993). In the 1970s and 1980s, policy-makers tended to talk about ‘controlling corruption’. Today corruption-talk has a more open-ended and moralistic tone of the kind that is characteristic of many social movements. ‘Anti-corruption’ became the buzzword of the 1990s. We can also observe a shift in emphasis from prosecution of individuals or incremental managerial adjustments to a more thoroughgoing and holistic reform of structures and processes of government that will, it is hoped, prevent corruption from ever taking place. What explains this shift in attitudes towards the phenomenon? Have moral arguments become more salient in campaigns?

Changes in the nature of corruption

Could the new politics of anti-corruption simply be a response to changes in the phenomenon itself, and thus to the fact that old approaches to controlling it are no longer enough? Mény and de Sousa (1999) suggest corruption may be changing in at least five ways:

The intensity of corruption

It is commonplace to say that corruption has become more visible, more widespread, more threatening to the functioning of democracy and the State. But is this intensity of corruption real or the product of sharpened perceptions? These perceptions are strongly shaped by the media, which tends to focus on the misdemeanours of senior politicians rather than lowly clerks. Perceptions vary according to the type of corruption, the status of the actors involved or unveiled, but not necessarily its volume.

Crime statistics are not a good guide. Penal frameworks have evolved. Enforcement agencies have been given more means and training. New agencies have been created and control frameworks reassessed. So corruption statistics tell us more about the effectiveness of a judicial system in dealing with this sort of criminal conduct than about the underlying volume of the conduct. The cases that are detected and condemned may be the tip of the iceberg. Or a population suspicious of government may believe there is more corruption than ever before. Even if it is difficult to find reliable indicators of the intensity of corruption, the importance of corruption to public debate can hardly be denied. If we had to choose the most influential issue in public affairs in the 1990s, corruption is likely to be on everyone’s list – la décennie de la corruption as Mény defined it (1993: 19). In the early twenty-first century the intensity of concern has risen and involved more countries.⁵

The cyclical nature of corruption

While concern may be rising it could yet be part of a cycle of repression and toleration. Corruption is a dramatic policy issue with strong carrying capacity, determined in part by ‘repeated bombardment of the public with messages of new symbols or events about corruption’ (Frederickson 1993: 6), but there is no guarantee that such a rise in condemnation will endure. ‘In many countries, we have witnessed long periods of systemic corruption followed by “clean-ups” that are in turn followed by other periods of corruption’ (Bicchieri and Duffy 1997: 62).

Domestically, corruption seems to suffer from the same cyclical issue-attention as many other social problems. Following periods of increased concern about corruption, which leads to the passing or revising of control mechanisms, the issue of corruption is destined to lose intensity and enter hibernation until social forces mobilize it again. It is difficult, however, to determine what conditions lead citizens to become tolerant and lax about corruption. Some people may think that the most scandalous manifestations have been solved. Others may think that the issues at stake were after all not so problematic. Others again may become disillusioned or exhausted with campaigning. Once the issue drops from the public debate, political leaders feel consequently less pressured to reform. Public disinterest about corruption can be bliss to wrongdoers.

At the international level, however, the intertwined action of various governmental and non-governmental players may help to keep the issue on the agenda. This may have less to do with the strong carrying capacity of the issue itself, than with the fact that there is now a market for anti-corruption which needs constant feeding and care. What would happen to those UN, OECD, and World Bank (WB) anti-corruption departments and resource centres, and TI itself as the world’s leading anti-corruption NGO should corruption cease to be a visible issue and a priority for state and market reforms? Merton (1940) alerted us to the tendency of organizations set up for particular purposes to suffer ‘goal displacement’ towards their own survival. There is an industry of anti-corruption which is conscious that its work and existence is contingent on the preservation of corruption as a priority issue.

The growing complexity of corruption

Today’s corruption cannot be interpreted solely in terms of national criminal laws and penal codes. Heidenheimer (1989) distinguished black corruption – clearly defined, widely condemned, and prohibited by law – from those more grey transactions which have surfaced in many democracies in recent years, and whose definition tends to leave room for ambiguity, argument, and double standards. The complexity of today’s corruption involves:

• diverse actors: multifaceted relations between active/passive, individual/collective actors of a different size and nature (such as municipal mayors, parties, companies, foundations, businessmen, magistrates, etc.). Moreover, it often involves what Thompson (1995: 7) calls ‘institutional corruption’ where the gain sought is political rather than personal. As an example, we might think of the dishonest American and British case for invading Iraq. Thompson notes that institutional corruption is often hard to distinguish from conventional political conduct;

• complex exchanges: the dyadic exchange of a bribe is typically the pinnacle of a long process of socialization and construction of social networks which serve as camouflage for the illicit pact. Support and complicity reduce the costs of the transaction and the need for explicit language (the players involved know their role, what is at stake, and play along) (Della Porta and Vannucci 1999: 78–92). Corrupt exchanges are not simply about the payment of money in exchange for favourable decisions, but a complex set of relations that help constructing a climate of opacity and omertà.

• sophisticated mechanisms: lobbying a local councillor for future public works contracts does not require the same degree of sophistication as lobbying a minister for the adoption of a particular market regulation. Whereas the former is still based on familiar and personal relations, the latter is impersonal and often done through multi-client networks of influence. The creation of phantom centres of study or foundations to process false accounting in order to launder political financing operations or the commissions paid to brokers in arms deals, require a greater sophistication than the petty bribe paid to a traffic police officer to avoid having a driving licence suspended. Some of these mechanisms, such as the use of slush funds, false invoicing, and offshore accounts...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Foreword by Yves Mény
• Series editor's preface
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Theories and concepts Corruption, anti-corruption, and democratic politics
• 2 International anti-corruption as a programme of normalization
• 3 Anti-corruption as a risk to democracy On the unintended consequences of international anti-corruption campaigns
• 4 The development of inspection and oversight Blind alleys and open vistas in the case of American procurement policy
• Part II The vices and virtues of governmental anti-corruption
• 5 Matching workload, management and resources Setting the context for ‘effective' anti-corruption commissions
• 6 Anti-corruption bodies as discourse-controlling instruments Experiences from south-east Europe
• 7 Warriors in chains Institutional legacies and anti-corruption programmes in Taiwan and South Korea
• 8 Populist anti-corruption and military coups The clean-up campaign in Fiji 2006–07
• Part III The vices and virtues of non-governmental anti-corruption
• 9 Transnational anti-corruption advocacy A multi-level analysis of civic action in Russia
• 10 How do international organizations scrutinize transforming states? The case of Transparency International and the Baltic states
• 11 Corruption and anti-corruption in Southeast Europe Landscapes and sites
• 12 TI in search of a constituency The institutionalization and franchising of the global anti-corruption doctrine
• 13 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index