Japan,Korea, the Philippines,China: four syndromes of corruption

Both generalizations about “Asian corruption”, and claims about greater or lesser amounts of corruption, tend to overlook the many variations existing among and within Asian societies, and among the corruption problems they experience. I suggest that deeper influences in social, political and economic development, and contrasting institutional settings, create four distinctive syndromes of corruption, each with its own set of implications for relationships between wealth and power. Japan is an example of “influence markets” in which private interests buy or rent influence over relatively specific policy outcomes within a strong state. Korea is a case of “elite cartels”, in which collusion and corrupt incentives enable several kinds of elites to cooperate in governing, enriching themselves, and resisting rising political competition. The Philippines is marked by “oligarchs and clans”, with powerful families and their entourages plundering a weak state in a climate of uncertainty and insecurity. China experiences “official mogul” corruption, in which officials abuse state power with impunity, although that process is becoming increasingly fragmented. The four syndromes may help us understand why corruption and rapid growth have coexisted in some, but not all, Asian states for long periods of time, and may also help us understand why some of those states will adapt to new global realities only with some difficulty. They also show how “consensus”-driven reforms emanating from the west may not only be ineffective, but may actually make matters worse.     

Political structure,legislative process,and corruption: comparing Taiwan and South Korea

Taiwan and South Korea have the same constitutional system, approximate economic scale, and similar cultural backgrounds, yet they differ in degree of corruption. What political structures and legislative processes cause this outcome is the major question posed in this paper. The political structure in South Korea is a centralization-of-power model, while that in Taiwan is a separation-of-powers model. This paper proposes that Taiwan and South Korea have different types of corruption and different political structures, and the legislative process in South Korea is more compromising than that in Taiwan. These factors contribute to greater corruption in South Korea than in Taiwan. This study clarifies how particular institutional dynamics reduce or enhance the prospects for democratic governance and help to better understand how political structure and legislative process channel different types of corruption into different degrees of corruption. Studies on the relationship between constitutional structure and corruption have concluded that parliamentarism can help reduce corruption more than presidentialism. This thesis argues that a country with centralized power tends to be less corrupt than a country with separation of powers. If this argument and the rationale behind it hold true for countries with both parliamentary and presidential systems, we can expect that semi-presidential countries with a centralized system are less corrupt than those with a decentralized system, all else being equal. However, by comparing these two semi-presidential countries, we find that South Korea, with its centralized model, was more corrupt than Taiwan, with its decentralized model. This comparative case study provides a counterargument to the conventional wisdom of constitutional structure and governance.     

Institutions and the culture dimension of corruption in Nigeria

Mention Nigeria to most people in the world and the retort is likely to be some reference to how corrupt the country is. Institutions, rules, and norms of behaviour have adapted toward the ultimate goal of predatory gain. When corruption becomes institutionalised in a society, it infiltrates the value-system, and it becomes a norm, part and parcel of culture. Nonetheless, one complicating and seemingly contradictory factor in this notion of the culture of corruption is that the majority of people in Nigeria do not internalise corruption as something morally acceptable. On the contrary, even if they have to take part in corrupt practices to get by or even to survive, they usually consider the practices as morally wrong. This work identifies, discusses, and analyses the weakness of institutions and the use and abuse of cultural norms as the primary reasons for endemic corruption in Nigeria.     

Bureaucrats’ corruption and competition in public administration

Competition in public administration is often advocated as a solution to bureaucrats’ corruption. However, there are no well developed analyses of how competition could succeed and the issue of its detailed design has not been carefully addressed so far. In this paper, we put forward a series of models that help understand what competition in public administration can actually accomplish. We distinguish two different shapes that corruption may take: bribery and extortion, and we demonstrate, under the usual assumption of asymmetric information as to the honesty of the bureaucrats, that while competition is effective in fighting extortion it exacerbates bribery. Given that corruption normally manifests itself simultaneously under the two different shapes, an anti-corruption policy based upon competition is bound to face a serious trade-off: trying to curb one of them through competition implies making the other worse. This result holds, with some differences, under exogenous and endogenous bureaucrats’ “honesty”. The dual aspect of corruption is probably one of the most serious—and so far largely neglected—obstacles to any effective anti-corruption policy.     

Misunderstanding Corruption and Community: Comparative Cultural Politics of Corruption Regulation in the Pacific

This paper will take as its empirical foundation the author’s experience of corruption and regulation in small Pacific island states. The argument is that notions of corruption and strategies for its regulation suitable for modernized societies, which lack cultural specificity and community engagement, may in fact stimulate corruption relationships in transitional cultures. The other consequence of the imposition of inappropriate definitions and regulation strategies is a profound misunderstanding of communities of dependence. In fact, corruption control can misconstrue and exacerbate economic and political dependence environments, fostering the conditions for corruption which accompany socio-economic development. Two remedies are suggested. First, corruption requires an appreciation which is ‘community-centered’, while at the same time not being neutralized by disconnected cultural relativity. Second, an enterprise theory of corruption in modernized societies and international political/commercial entities may assist in the relevant translation of global anti-corruption policies in a way which advances good governance in traditional communities. This is so when corruption is conceived as dependant on phases of modernization, and the tensions which arise when the interests of societies at different phases intersect. Corporate citizenship and compliance with anti-corrupt business practices by major corporations with a commercial interest in these transitional economies may be more beneficial than deference to uniform international codes of governance.

Dealing with corruption: the next steps

The 1997 White Paper from the British Government's Department for International Development (DFID) was specific in identifying the role of governance now being addressed by international and national donors: “improving governance can ... improve the lives of poor people directly. It is also essential for creating the environment for faster economic growth. Both aspects can be compromised by corruption, which all governments must address. In developing countries it is the poor who bear proportionally the heaviest cost“ (DFID, 1997, p. 30). Dealing with corruption is thus a priority both in terms of who it most affects and in terms of which objectives of governance — including participatory and responsive government and economic growth — it constrains. Although it has long held a specialist academic interest, corruption has become the subject of growing practitioner attention which means that the focus on corruption is beginning to move significantly from theory to practice and the practical. While there is substance to the belief that fire-engines cannot be designed without a thorough understanding of the fire they are intended to put out, there is also a sense in which the pervasiveness and tenacity of the current fires of corruption are such that action rather than refining theories and processes is what is now required. To paraphrase an analogy made by a senior British civil servant about the general issue of identifying policy — that corruption “is rather like the elephant — you recognise it when you see it but cannot easily define it” (quoted in Hill, 1997, p. 6) — is also to suggest that, while theorising may help draw up longer-term approaches to dealing with corruption, there is enough information and experience to develop best practice proposals for more immediate implementation and for developmental strategies that link to the longer-term approaches. This article addresses some of the issues of this agenda which seeks to develop, for those actively involved in anti-corruption initiatives, frameworks within which to consider realisable and cost-effective shorter-term anti-corruption strategies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Corruption and organized crime: Lessons from history

The intention of this paper is to serve in part as a warning to the international community concerned about corruption, to keep the focus based on the critical analysis of empirically verifiable information. In ways similar to how theorists spoke about organized crime in the 1960's and 1970's, articles today attempt to refer to corruption as if there were one agreed upon definition. However, like the concept “organized crime”, the term “corruption” involves diverse processes which have different meanings within different societies. Corruption (or a focus on corruption), may be the means toward very diverse ends and each may have a different impact on the society. While in some societies corruption may correctly be seen to be the “cause” of forms of social disorganization, in other situations corruption may be the “result” of larger changes. Understanding the processes within a specific context allows one to understand the nature of the corruption. Corruption rhetoric may too easily become apolitical platform for ranking and evaluating nations as to their worth based on criteria that lose meaning when applied across jurisdictions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Sugar coated bullets: Corruption and the new economic order in China

The recent political debate concerning the influence of corruption on the new economic order in the People's Republic of China is unique not only for its detailed and public manifestations, but also because it works around the acceptance of some degree of corporate private ownership of the means of production within China. The concern for corruption in Chinese government and commerce is not, of itself, novel.We prefer in this paper briefly to focus on the economic and political environment from within which this concern has been generated, to comment on the significance for the Government of the PRC in associating the pall of corruption with the undermining of more capitalist economic reform, and then to examine how the legal definitions and controls on corruption have been transformed to complement a new political agenda. Associated with this, it has been necessary to advance some rather tentative predictions concerning the development of new anti-corruption initiatives in the PRC, their justifications, and pressures on the economic transition which is said to be corruption generative.Speculation about the future face of economic corruption in China is of limited value when one is interested in questions of regulation and control. As the definition, indication and interpretation of corruption is a political process which may pay little regard to realistic indicators, so too the creation of control initiatives may not be dependent on predictions of actual developments in graft. We have endeavoured to show that recent regulatory programmes in the PRC themselves indicate much about the commercial contradictions that underly the new economic order, as well as evidencing the socio-legal dilemmas inherent in anti-corruption official discourse.     

清除腐败赖品德———兼论法律作用的有限性

腐败有掌权者腐败和机构腐败之分。掌权者腐败具有“行为的个别性”和“明显的不合理性”的特点。机构腐败也有两个显著特点：（1）它是机关行为或一定权力系统的行为,没有具体的责任人;（2）它的不合理性不十分明显,人们对它常常不能形成稳定一致的是非评价。由于腐败与执法的同源性、权力的不受惩罚性、反腐败的法令只能由不腐败的权力创制等原因,对腐败无法像对其他犯罪那样通过严格执法来实现治理目标。在民主政治下,根治腐败的根本出路是贯彻品德原则,建立对官员的品德评价系统。品德评价系统是依据品德标准对公职人员实施辞退、罢免、撤换的政治评价系统。这个系统由执法权自洁系统、监督系统和以公众为力量源泉的基础系统等构成。     

China’s anti-graft campaign and international anti-corruption norms: Towards a “new international anti-corruption order”?

This article analyzes the growing impact of an increasingly powerful China on the evolution of norms governing the global fight against corruption. Combining insights into the diffusion of anti-corruption norms and China’s ‘two-way socialization’ into the international order with an analysis of the Chinese leadership’s internationalized anti-corruption campaign, it argues that China’s active involvement in the international fight against corruption is bound to challenge prevailing international ‘definitions’ and ‘solutions’ of corruption. Despite the considerable attention to supposed incompatibilities between ‘culturally insensitive’ Western anti-corruption efforts and conflicting Chinese cultural norms, the actual ‘China challenge’ to the international anti-corruption regime is much less a cultural than a political one. While China’s formal-legal anti-corruption system has been receptive to international socialization, China’s own contributions to international norm making are defined by the Party’s top-level leadership, which promotes a different set of anti-corruption norms. However, a coherent alternative ‘Chinese model’ of anti-corruption, akin to the globally propagated ‘China path’ for economic development and poverty reduction, is not yet in sight.     

Dictatorship,democracy and corruption in Chile

The study of corruption in Chile suffers from the lack of a pre-existing body of academic research on which to draw for historical or contemporary analysis. This situation may be partially explained by several factors. Firstly, academic research tends to be reactive rather than proactive, in the sense that issues rarely become researched until they are either topical, or perceived to be problematic and significant. The configuration of historical circumstances in Chile has meant that corruption has been perceived to be considerably less widespread and less overt than in other parts of Latin America. For reasons which will be examined below, Chile is quite clearly not in the same league as Brazil, México or Venezuela in terms of corruption in the political system, and therefore the body of existing research has tended to focus on those cases where corruption is evident and more easily observable. Secondly, the lack of research material may also be partially explained by the nature of corruption in Chile. It undoubtably exists, but it has been characteristically low-key, assuming its own particular characteristics which have become known as corrupción a la chilena. Low-intensity corruption is undoubtedly more difficult to categorise, define and measure in comparison with flagrant abuses by individuals, sectors of society or ruling parties, and this may also be a contributory factor. A third factor may be that such low-intensity activities may become such an integral part of the political culture that they become accepted ways of the business of politics and therefore fail to even raise objections from public opinion. Only when the political environment changes do these issues become perceived as unacceptable. However, what is beyond dispute is that corruption has and does exist in Chile but it is influenced by the political culture of a particular period and by the political and social context.     

Roh regrets: Leadership, culture and politics in South Korea

South Korea has, in recent years, suffered a number of serious corruption scandals reaching to the very top of the political and economic worlds. This article attempts to explain why corruption scandals are so frequent in Korea. It suggests that practices that in the West are regarded as corrupt are seen as acceptable in Korea, but that nevertheless Koreans do take corruption very seriously. Korean culture is if anything less willing than western culture to see corrupt behaviour as normal; at the same time it is particularly susceptible to behaviour that is, within its own terms, corrupt. Corruption scandals are therefore frequent, both because there are pressures encouraging corruption, and because corruption, when exposed, is indeed seen as scandalous. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Can young pups teach an old Dog new tricks? Lessons for British reformers from eastern Europe's new constitutional democracies

This article analyses the process of constitutional reforms in eastern Europe and draws lessons for similar reforms in British politics. It looks, first, at electoral engineering and shows how political actors, pursuing their particular interests, try to turn proportionality back into majoritarianism, and how and why such moves do not necessarily result in their projected outcomes. In a similar vein, it then goes on to analyse parliamentary formal rules, such as standing orders, and demonstrates how attempts to manipulate them can be offset, not just by counter‐manipulation, but by underlying informal rules and cultural norms. Overall, we argue that, because constitutional change is an ongoing and crucially political process, its results are neither wholly predictable nor always welcomed. On the basis of the eastern European experience, we also suggest that constitutional change does not necessarily lead to increased legitimacy of the system, thus undermining one of the major hopes of reformers in Britain.     

A framework for the analysis of corruption

The article sets out a framework within which the problem of corruption may be analysed in any specific country. It does not seek to establish the importance of such activity in a general sense, or seek to propose particular economic policy or institutional programmes that should be pursued in order to reduce the impact on the development process. Rather, the objective is to provide a structure for two distinct areas of analysis. Firstly, it considers the investigation of the determinants of corruption, emphasising the environment in which corruption evolves — whether shaped by international, national or specific institutional factors — and the manner in which the different parties to corruption interact and organise themselves in conducting these activities. Secondly, the article focusses on the importance of corruption for economic development by considering the different forms of corruption and the characteristics of these forms that are most critical for economic activity. Here, the distortions that are introduced into on-going economic activity are identified, together with the manner in which these distortions redirect activity in sub-optimal directions. In addition, the nature of the uncertainty attaching to these differing forms of corruption is considered, and especially the degree to which a form may be considered anarchic or structured in character: the former reflecting a system of intense uncertainty, and the latter one of less uncertainty — perhaps, only minimal uncertainty — as a predictable and stable set of relationships between parties is established. Finally, the article reviews the empirical work that has been undertaken in this field. This article, therefore, seeks to identify how detailed case study analysis, focussed on individual countries — and, indeed, on specific institutions or sectors within those countries — could valuably complement these existing studies, and provide a framework for those seeking to design policy that is appropriate to any individual circumstance. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

European Constitutionalism and the Modern Social Imaginary

This article seeks to shed light on some of the problematic assumptions underpinning the contemporary debate over the constitutional identity of the European Union. The central claim put forward here is that the development of the European Union’s constitution is significantly constrained by what Charles Taylor has described as the modern social imaginary. The constraint operates at two levels. First, modern understandings of constitutionalism typically ignore or underemphasize its dynamic and historical characteristics and its relationship with the self-understanding of political subjects. Thus, modern constitutionalism fails to acknowledge the importance of historically conditioned assumptions involved in the formation of the identities of political subjects. In short, it fails to understand constitutionalism as a ‘regime’. Second, modern constitutionalism’s blind-spots result in a relatively unreflective adherence to a particular type of constitutional regime: the modern economy and its associated ‘consumerist’ form of political citizenship.     

Does Authoritarianism Breed Corruption? Reconsidering the Relationship Between Authoritarian Governance and Corrupt Exchanges in Bureaucracies

This article advocates for ethnographic and historical study of the political roots of corruption. Focusing on informal economies of Belarusian universities, it reexamines two theoretical propositions about corruption in autocracies. The first proposition is that authoritarianism breeds bureaucratic corruption; the second is that autocrats grant disloyal subjects corruption opportunities in exchange for political compliance. Using qualitative data, the author finds that autocracies can generate favorable as well as unfavorable preconditions for bureaucratic corruption. The author argues that lenient autocratic governance, characterized by organizational decoupling, creates favorable conditions for bureaucratic corruption. In contrast, consolidated autocracy, defined by rigid organizational controls, is unfavorable to such corruption. The author also concludes that in autocracies, disloyal populations may be cut off from rather than granted opportunities for bureaucratic corruption. These findings suggest that the relationship between autocratic governance and corruption is more complex than current studies are able to reveal due to their methodological limitations.     

Legal obligation as a duty of deference

An enduring question in political and legal philosophy concerns whether we have a general moral obligation to follow the law. In this paper, I argue that Philip Soper’s intuitively appealing effort to give new life to the idea of legal obligation by characterising it as a duty of deference is ultimately unpersuasive. Soper claims that people who understand what a legal system is and admit that it is valuable must recognise that they would be morally inconsistent to deny that they owe deference to state norms. However, if the duty of deference stemmed from people’s decision to regard the law as valuable as Soper argues, then people who do not admit the value of the state would have no duty as such to defer to its norms. And, more importantly, people who admit the value of the state would have a duty not to defer to particular norms, namely those norms which violate the values that ground their preference for a state. This critique of Soper operates within his parameters by accepting his claim that moral consistency generates reasons to act. Even on those terms, Soper’s defence of legal obligation as a duty of deference is unpersuasive. I wish to thank John Tasioulas, Joseph Raz, Bill Edmundson, Adam Cureton, the editors and referees of Law and Philosophy, and the participants of the Society for Applied Philosophy 25th anniversary conference, July 2005, St Anne’s College, Oxford.     

Hegel, Human Rights, and Particularism

Hegel's political philosophy gives prominence to the theme that human beings have a need for recognition of those qualities, characteristics, and attributes that make them distinctive. Hegel thus speaks to the question whether human rights law should recognize and accommodate the nuances of individual make-up. Likewise, he speaks to the question whether human rights law should be applied in ways that are sensitive to the cultural contexts in which it operates. But Hegel's political philosophy evaluates norms and practices within particular cultures by reference to the higher-order and universal criterion of abstract right. In light of this point and the inadequacies of political philosophy that privileges local norms and practices, a third approach to the protection of human rights is canvassed. This approach prioritizes neither universal nor local norms. Its aim is to ensure that both human rights and the cultures in which they are applied are taken seriously.     

The business of bribery: Globalization, economic liberalization, and the “problem” of corruption

This paper is intended as a critical response to the emerging consensus within both academic and policy literatures that we are currently facing an epidemic of corruption which threatens to undermine the stability of economic and political development on both a national and global scale, and which requires both immediate and wide-ranging policy interventions. Based on a review of the publications and policy statements of the leading anti-corruption crusaders — namely the OECD, the IMF, and the World Bank — it will be argued that the recent concern with corruption is attributable, not to any substantive increase incorrupt practices, but rather, to the re-framing of corruption in light of broader shifts and transformations within the global economy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Why is corruption in Poland ``a serious cause for concern'?

Public perceptions of corruption are significant for their political consequences. But they are conceptually and empirically distinct from corruption. First, because perceptions of corruption run far ahead of experience. Second, because different factors influence the one more than the other – indeed poverty and low education increase perceptions of corruption while decreasing participation in it. Third, because the political consequences of corruption and corruption-perceptions differ not only in degree but in their targets – perceptions and experiences of corruption erode trust in different politicians and institutions.External moralising from institutions such as the EU may reduce corruption in Accession States while simultaneously increasing perceptions of it. And within these states, that moralising `culture which can resist corruption' which the EU demands, itself tends, perversely, to increase (not decrease) perceptions, suspicions, and allegations of corruption.