*Anti-Corruption/Good Governance Programs Fail*

*Anti-Corruption/Good Governance Programs Fail*

Anti-Corruption Efforts Fail: Front Line

John Gledhill, Anthropology Professor, University of Manchester, 2004, Between Morality and the Law: corruption, anthropology, and comparative society, ed. I. Pardo, p. 158-60

At first sight, from an anthropological point of view, these problems seem to revolve around an uncritical approach to “Western values.” Sachs regards the claims made for the multilateral framework as little short of hypocrisy, the expressed concern with corruption as a pretext for pushing forward other agendas, and the dominant agendas as a cause of deepening corruption. Yet he is still quite clear that “corruption is a barrier to development,” by which one assumes that he means “development” as defined in the North and that this is an unambiguous social good. Nor is he very clear about what the “solution” to the problem in the form of strengthening civil society actually entails, or even what “civil society” is.

The first apparent difficulty is that the supposed paragon of a “strong civil society,” the United States, does not appear immune from what some would regard as serious forms of corruption. The linkage between size of campaign contributions and George W. Bush’s early enthusiasm for removing controls on lignite mining and a raft of other measures that are profoundly disturbing to environmentalists may have the merit of a certain “transparency.” So, for that matter, does Silvio Berlusconi’s approach to the problem of keeping private and public interests separate in Italy. These two situations provoke criticism from groups within the societies of the two countries (let us leave “civil” out of it for the moment). But they arise in the first place because enormous concentrations of economic power – including power over the mainstream media – seem to be giving some elements of society an increasingly determinate say in public policy. The fact that the ethics of such situations of plutocracy are debated does not, in itself, guarantee that a normative consensus is established one way or the other within “society,” and the United States, like many other countries, seems to have a problem with drawing a clear boundary between the social and the political, and the private and the public.

This should lead us, secondly, to question the coherence of the notion of “civil society” and the way it unreflectively juxtaposed to “the state” in these discussions. Chabal and Daloz suggest that “civil society” might be construed as “the creation of social networks distinct from the state and capable of transcending primordial family kin or even communal ties” (Chabal and Daloz 1999, p. 19). This definition might, however, embrace mafias or collective interests, and if we included on “recognized bodies,” such as professional associations, trade unions or economic associations, we would have to include some business organizations that had especially privileged access to and influenced upon “the state” (ibid. p. 20). The idea that “civil society” is a counter-hegemonic force owes much to assumptions drawn from liberal challenges to Absolutist monarchies in the West. It is far from clear that this construct begins to transcend ideology, even in the “Western” context. What we might be able to say is that there is a model of political rule in the United States that includes ideas about the normative separation of public and private interest, celebrating certain “civic virtues” that can be opposed to the power of money alone. As even the most superficial evidence of cultural production in the United States demonstrates, however, this is not the only way in which US citizens can imagine the state and the power congealed within and behind its public face. Nor are these different imaginaries distributed evenly among a uniform “citizenry” since experiences of the state (and politics) evidently differ in accordance with place in the economic system and “race.” The apparent triumph of plutocracy may simply promote a declining confidence in politics as an arena for solving social problems and an attitude of cynicism and withdrawal on the part of a growing number of citizens.

A third problem is the definition of “corruption.” Although the assumption that “corruption” was a problem restricted to the public sector was questioned at the Harvard conference, most participants clearly did take the view that open economies, privatization and the flourishing of a market society would make a positive contribution to creating the conditions under which the problem could be more effectively addressed. In his opening remarks, John Coatsworth defined corruption as “the abuse of public power for private gain.” He argued that this form of corruption should be distinguished from “the kind of corruption related to the production and distribution of illegal substances,” even though the two kinds frequently “interacted”. Although Coatsworth was careful not to tie corruption to particular cultures, he remained rather unclear about the nature of this interaction globally.
ANTI-CORRUPTION EFFORTS PUSHED BY EXTERNAL ACTORS HAVE FAILED IN AFGHANISTAN

Antonio Giustozzi, Crisis States Research Centre, 2004, “Good” State vs. “Bad” Warlords? A Critique of State-Building Strategies in Afghanistan, October, [http://www.crisisstates.com/download/wp/wp51.pdf], p. 15

The difficulties found in reforming the ministries and the administration, and the different degrees of success met, show how external pressure can play a key role. The greater advancement of the reform of the Ministry of Finance, for example, is to be attributed in part to the personality of the minister, Ashraf Ghani; but also to the concern showed by international donors, who considered accountability a precondition for continuing to fund the state budget of Afghanistan. The example of the MoI demonstrates how the will of a single individual, albeit the minister in charge, is not enough to achieve any lasting change. Few doubt that Minister of Interior Jalali is genuinely committed to reform, but it is also evident that he has achieved little. The pressure of donors on the MoI has not been as strong as on the Ministry of Finance, but most importantly the internal resistance to change within the ministry proved much stiffer, because the MoI was taken over by one of the militia factions (Jamiat-I Islami) and transformed into its fiefdom. While the central government has some interest in the accountability of the provincial administrations, especially when they are controlled by ‘warlords’ opposed to the ruling factions, it rarely has any interest in its own accountability. Patronage politics remains the norm, even for most of the members of the ‘enlightened’ elite.
IMPOSING ANTI-CORUPTION POLICIES THROUGH AID CONDITIONALITY UNDERMINES ITS LEGITIMACY WITH THE PUBLIC

Mlada Bukovansky, Professor of Government, Smith College, 2002, ‘Corruption is bad: normative dimensions of the anti-corruption movement’, Australian National University Working Paper, 2002/5, p. 36-7

Any time political actors attempt to inject moral content into international politics, they face difficult theoretical and normative issues. In a nutshell, when someone is pushing to internationalize a moral standard (even one concealed in the technical terminology of economic development) the possibility of contestation emerges, and ought to emerge. Other parties may deem the standard inapplicable to their particular case, accuse the standard-bearers of imperialism, or present an alternative standard for consideration. That this be done in public seems to be a minimal criterion for legitimation. It may be possible to prevent some of the more polarizing effects of ideological jousting by engaging in reasoned public discourse about the values at stake in the anti-corruption campaign. Failing to engage in such discourse implicates the anti-corruption crusaders in unreflective imposition of apparently universalistic standards on societies which may not accept them.

In fact, anti-corruption efforts are highly likely to engender agreement on the idea that corruption is bad: “…there is widespread disapproval of corruption in all countries, even (perhaps especially) in those where corruption is rife, and, no matter how systemic high-level (or “grand” corruption may be, it is still practiced furtively.’ It is not a huge stretch to assume that corruption is widely viewed as a bad thing. The anti-corruption regime thus has an advantage which other regimes such as environmental protection or even human rights may not enjoy. Nevertheless, the devil comes in the details: what exactly constitutes corrupt practice in a given society depends on where and how that particular society draws the line between public and private spheres, and public and private roles. Not all societies even draw such a distinction, even if they are nominally governed by a state apparatus that has inherited such a distinction from a colonial or other external influences. If the determination of whether and how the line between public and private should be drawn comes bundled in a somewhat coercive package, externally-imposed—say, as a form of conditionality accompanying an IMF loan—then its perceived legitimacy in the target country may be limited.

Madalene O’Donnell, NYU Center on International Cooperation, 2006, Post-conflict Corruption: A Rule of Law Agenda?, Draft Chapter for International Peace Academy, Civil War and the Rule of Law, [http://www.worldbank.org.ezp1.harvard.edu/wbi/governance/pdf/corruption_conflict_and_rule_of_law.pdf], p. 9-10

Bruce Bailey, OECD, 2003, Synthesis of Lessons Learned of Donor Practices in Fighting Corruption, July 1-2, [http://www.u4.no/document/showdoc.cfm?id=61], p. 18

It is important to be aware that there are few success stories or examples of actually reducing corruption in a sustained way. The only clear-cut successes have been in Hong Kong and Singapore, both city-states that had fairly authoritarian governments when they initiated their anti-corruption efforts. They are also special cases and it is debatable how much these examples apply to other countries. There may be better lessons to be learned from countries like Botswana, Chile and Costa Rica that for some time have had relatively decent track records. More recently, Uganda has been cited as an example of improvement, but it is not clear if the gains are significant. There also appear to interesting localized experiences such as Campo Elias, Venezuela; San Salvador, El Salvador; La Paz, Bolivia; Puno, Peru; and Port Alegre, Brazil. (Kaufmann 2000) Of concern is the extent to which many of these localized efforts can be sustained. TI notes modest success stories in the banking sector of some of the European Community accession countries, the Estonian State Audit Office and Hungarian Customs. No doubt the extent to which the larger environment is more or less systemically corrupt will have an important bearing on the sustainability of these efforts.
LACK KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT WORKS TO REDUCE CORRUPTION

Bruce Bailey, OECD, 2003, Synthesis of Lessons Learned of Donor Practices in Fighting Corruption, July 1-2, [http://www.u4.no/document/showdoc.cfm?id=61], p. 50

Morris Szeftel, Politics and International Studies-University of Leeds, 2000, Review of African Political Economy 84: 287–306, p. 298