Business
How to think
politically about
anti-corruption
Why do people even care about corruption?
By Joseph Pozsgai Alvarez
W
hen we think of corruption,
we automatically associate
the word with a state
of rotting affairs, events pernicious
to our health and / or the state of
our countries. Conjuring up such
mental images is a natural reaction,
as historically the term was first
associated with the decay in moral
standards; only later did it assume
a legal connotation. Its conspicuity
in the media is a relatively recent
feature, however. Since the mid-1990s,
corruption has become a regular feature
of front pages and television reports
throughout the ‘free’ developing world,
as well as a regular topic of conversation
in many industrialised nations.
The reason for its salience is
fairly easy to identify: international
organisations and national leaders
finally recognise the economic
costs of allowing corruption to run
rampant – as information from Brazil
currently demonstrates. Anecdotal
information and scientific research
abound and, consequently, the
international community has taken
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important steps over the past two
decades to curb malfeasance in public
and private life as a way to defend
commerce and investment, from the
unilateral efforts of the American
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
(FCPA), to the global and far-reaching
United Nations Convention Against
Corruption (UNCAC). The impact of
the international movement against
corruption can be felt in almost
every single country. But corruption
is also a popular pastime for the
elite and the masses alike, and its
scandalous nature commonly has a
ripple effect on the political system,
demolishing careers and bringing the
rise of new leaders and parties in their
wake. This is the way most citizens
construct their impressions on the
subject and on their representatives,
sometimes with much effect on
elections, sometimes with little.
Although the academic community
has gathered a great deal of knowledge
on both the causes of and the potential
solutions to corruption, it is still a risk to
assume that the academic perspective is
in complete sync with reality. Corruption
continues unabated in many places
throughout the world, despite the
amount of foreign aid and technical
advice provided, and particularly despite
the common political discourse of
leaders who enshrine anti-corruption as
the core of their electoral platforms. The
sharp difference between expectations
and reality begs a simple but powerful
question: why does corruption
continue, unaltered … unfaltering?
The anti-corruption dilemma
As early as the 1980s, Robert Klitgaard
gave ample thought to the magnitude
and the complexity of implementation
embedded in the anti-corruption idea.
Considering the variety of activities and
instruments that could be adopted to
fight corruption, Klitgaard suggested
that it would be inefficient to invest
resources in all of them without
considering the relative impact they
potentially offered, and realised that
‘the ideal level of anti-corruption
efforts will be short of the maximum,
while the optimal level of corruption