*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Anti-Corruption Efforts Fail: Conditionality Counterproductive
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- Anti-Corruption Efforts Fail: Assistance Generally Increases Corruption
Anti-Corruption Efforts Fail: Conditionality CounterproductiveUS CONDITIONING ASSISTANCE ON IMPROVED GOVERNANCE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Phil Williams, Rand, 2003, Faultlines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, ed. Olga Oliker & Thomas Szayna, [http://192.5.14.110/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1598/MR1598.ch4.pdf], p. 105 It is clear that increased U.S. economic assistance has been the price to pay for Uzbekistan’s support for U.S. military actions in Afghanistan. Yet there are also opportunities for U.S. policy. Support for Uzbekistan that is made conditional upon economic liberalization and more serious moves toward democracy and respect for individual rights offers some prospect for engineering reform. The danger here, however, is that this process will weaken the regime’s coercive power while doing little to increase its legitimacy and authority.
Morris Szeftel, Politics and International Studies-University of Leeds, 2000, Review of African Political Economy 84: 287–306, p. 300-1 Corruption is thus far more complex than the donors elect to view it. Aid and pressure which serves to strengthen anti-corruption activities in areas covered by quadrants a [action is lawful and regarded as right] and d [action is unlawful and regarded as wrong] are likely to receive public support and to strengthen democratic development. They may well find a more positive response from ruling elites as well (although this is less certain where regimes have collapsed into warlordism or where governments have undertaken policies which render the rule of law nugatory). Where pressure is exerted to force changes to patterns of behavior that affect large groups of people negatively, there is likely to be far less ‘political will’ to act against corruption. If anti-corruption measures reduce the capacity of ordinary people to access the bureaucracy, for example, or are seen to punish political opponents, while leaving political leaders free to accumulate large fortunes and loot national revenues, such measures may themselves come to be regarded as inequitable or corrupt. However well intentioned donor aims might be in this area, there are no universal principles, no one-size fits all solution. AFRICA PROVES THAT EXTERNAL PRESSURE FOR CORRUPTION REFORMS AND AID CONDITIONALITY ACTUALLY INCREASES CORRUPTION Morris Szeftel, Politics and International Studies-University of Leeds, 2000, Review of African Political Economy 84: 287–306, p. 303 The crisis of development which has ravaged Africa since the mid ‘70s thus increased pressures for corrupt behavior. But such pressures were greatly magnified by the structural reforms introduced by the donors to regulate debt servicing. In part this was because liberalization created new opportunities for private appropriation of public resources, not only in Africa but everywhere. More importantly, by reducing the role of the state, the donors both reduced its resources and the opportunities for access to those resources. At the same time, the crisis did not reduce dependence on state resources for private accumulation. Corruption has tended, since 1975, to go well beyond the appropriation of surpluses and extend to the looting of the very fabric of the state itself. At the same time it has intensified competition for the right to plunder. Corruption in 2000 is more widespread, more pernicious, more devastating than it has ever been. The irony of the donor reform program is that, in setting out to guarantee the conditions for capitalist accumulation and liberal democracy, it has produced increased pressures for corruption. CONDITIONALITY IS COERCIVE AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. Phyllis R. Romerantz, World Bank Specialist in Rural Development, 2004, Aid Effectiveness in Africa, p 22 But even if it is the right thing to do, the coercion inherent in most forms of conditionality engenders resentment and gets in the way of lasting change. In most African countries, debate is immediately hijacked into a discussion of whether or not the policy was forced upon the country by the IMF, World Bank, or some other donor. No matter what the policy, more often than not, it is the kiss of death if a policy change is seen to be the result of external pressure or conditionality. ADOPTION OF ANTI-CORRUPTION POLICIES COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO DECREASING CORRUPTION Heather Marquette, International Development Department, University of Birmingham, 2003, Corruption, Politics and Development: the role of the World Bank, p. 58 Corruption, development and democracy were inextricably linked in earlier work by Huntington, who wrote that “corruption’s extent correlates reasonably well with rapid social and economic modernization…[with] the development of new sources of wealth and power, and the appearance of new classes making new demands on government.” This is due to changing norms and values, a new distinction between the public role and private interests and the expansion of government’s role and activities. Because increased corruption, at least in the short term, is for Huntington a natural part of the development process, combating it will often prove counterproductive. “In a society where corruption is widespread the passage of strict laws against corruption serves only to multiply the opportunities for corruption.”
Stephen Browne, UN Aid Program Director, 2006, Aid & Influence: do donors help or hinder? p. 139 Aid’s most vocal critics contend that government-to-government transfers result in diversion and waste by corrupt recipients with weak institutions. Unfortunately, they are not wrong. For all the talk of accountability, aid has been poured in substantial quantities through the coffers of unreliable regimes, and the donors – whether bilateral or multilateral – have usually succeeded in justifying it by claiming mitigating factors. Bilateral donors have overridden these preoccupations by appealing to concerns about the strategic significance of the recipients, or the commercial opportunities they offer. Multilateral reasoning is obfuscated by attention to the technical details of the assistance and the perpetual belief that governance is about to improve. These excuses demonstrate the limits of upward accountability.
Olav Stokke, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1995, Aid and Political Conditionality, ed. Olav Stokke, p. 71 This applies to the “good governance” agenda as well, although it is probable that aid in pursuit of various objectives will have to be directed to a greater extent through the governing structures and will therefore be more vulnerable in cases where an authoritarian or repressive government is deeply involved in corrupt economic or political practice. Foreign aid is likely to have little of its intended impact under such circumstances; it may actually fuel corruption even if the regime may pay lip-service to the values in question. To be effective the various forms of aid from outside have to be fed into a reform process initiated by the recipient authorities themselves. U.S. ASSISTANCE FUNDS CORRUPT GOVERNMENTS – PRECLUDES SUCCESS Nicolas van de Walle, Professor of International Studies & Director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University, 2004, Overcoming Stagnation in Aid-Dependent Countries p. 21 In the language of economics, the prebendal relationship provies classic principal-agent dynamics in which the principal has few effective means of monitoring the agent’s behavior. The precise nature of the arrangement is typically ambiguous or flexible and thus unstable. In some cases, the right to benefit from state resources and appropriate public revenues is explicitly given to the officeholder. President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire famously commanded his ministers to enrich themselves but not “to steal too much” (Young and Turner 1985). He could not know exactly how much each of his ministers actually took in, so he regularly rotated officials in and out of office periodically arrested a minister to scare the others. Governments know there is considerable rent seeking by officials but are unable to control its extent, even if they wished to do so (Blunco and Olivier de Sardan 2001). Alternatively, governments by necessity choose to countenance practices they know about. The state’s top officials probably do not formally sanction teachers who charge an unofficial tuition to their public school students or policeman who charge cars at informal road blocks. The government often accepts such behavior as a form of informal revenue generation it cannot itself undertake.
[http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:rbClK5XeBpoJ:www.twnside.org.sg/title2/resurgence/179/cover1.doc+millennium+challenge+accounts+neoliberalism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=19&gl=us&client=firefox-a] But some aid can do more harm than good. A recent IMF report argues that aid can lead to lower growth if it distorts wages and exchange rates which in turn reduces competitiveness. Some argue that it is the size that matters. When aid exceeds 15% of GDP, it is more likely to do more harm than good because it exerts a negative pressure on absorptive capacity. But there is also a political explanation as to why aid dependency hurts. Higher levels of aid tend to be associated with higher corruption and the erosion of the quality of the bureaucracy. It undermines accountability by prioritising accountability of bureaucracies and the political elite to aid arrangements rather than citizens groups. Aid tends to reinforce the power of the executive over the legislature, thereby weakening political checks and balances central to democratic governance. More than everything else, aid carries with it a set of ideas with privileged access to the executive, thereby effectively leading to a monopoly of the ideas conveyed by the aid system. The power inherent in this is referred to as discursive power, as opposed to directly coercive power conveyed through conditionality. Aid basically undermines autonomous thinking and the confidence to rely on domestic ideas and domestic sources of development finance. That is why we have governments all over the continent who sound and act more neoliberal than Hayek (the godfather of neoliberalism), parroting the IMF and the World Bank and selling the interest of their people down the tube without noticing. Aid destroys democracy even more when ruling parties see their chance of continued rule in receiving disbursements of aid crucial to buying patronage. Aid and independence move in different directions.
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