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NEW! confronted by our societies and those scandals that enrage us. While producing various levels and forms of popular dissatisfaction and protest, both situations are the consequence of corruption in the system, and both challenge the leadership by reducing the amount of political support that keeps them in power.
The third scenario of stress for the political system comes in the form of external disturbances. These are events that occur in national and international society and modify the level of corruption tolerance among its members, producing new patterns of behaviour
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and organisational arrangements. The FCPA and the UNCAC are obvious examples, best manifested by the impact of the international anti-corruption movement on national legislation. By reacting to the persistence of underdeveloped integrity systems, any decrease in external corruption tolerance tends to increase the level of stress over local leaders, influence popular approval, diminish political support and threaten the corruption status quo.
Leaders push back
While all three scenarios represent a challenge to government stability due to the presence of corruption in the country, each one of them embodies a distinct set of wishes, anxieties, and demands from society, and therefore they are met with different responses. Straightforward strategies under each scenario will include the provision of subsidised goods or the adoption of market reforms to boost a corruptiondamaged economy; the swift prosecution of corrupt bureaucrats or the creation of special investigatory commissions to address scandals; and / or the production of new anti-corruption
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legislation to comply with international conventions.
What do all these measures have in common? Regardless of their normative benefits and potential, they are also vulnerable to symbolic adoption and political instrumentalisation, becoming in such situations mere coping strategies rather than real anti-corruption measures. For honest leaders, either case provides short-term political capital. For corrupt leaders, only the latter approach secures the stability of the status quo regarding illicit gains. This is the tragedy( and the explanation for the common failure) of anti-corruption implementation.
In short, different politically stressful scenarios caused by corruption do not only require different approaches from the government, but they also offer leaders different ways to harvest support while keeping the corruption status quo in place.
With these basic premises, then, we can finally begin thinking politically about anti-corruption without taxing the forces of reform with unnecessary cynicism. We do this by honestly and clearly reflecting on political channels in a way that not only accepts, but embraces, the tenets of political capital, political will and agency.
Joseph Pozsgai Alvarez is an international associate at the University of Tsukuba in Tokyo, Japan. + 81 80 4337 2367 | jpozsgai @ dailycorruption. info