Rethinking Corruption in an Age of Ambiguity

LS08CH23-Wedel ARI 9 October 2012 7:56 Rethinking Corruption in an Age of Ambiguity Janine R. Wedel School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia 22201; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2012. 8:453–98 Keywords The Annual Review of Law and Social Science is corruption, anticorruption, shadow elite, shadow lobbyist, online at lawsocsci.annualreviews.org accountability, transparency, state, governance, bureaucracy, social This article’s doi: networks, Cold War, post–Cold War 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.093008.131558 by 98.218.217.104 on 02/26/13. For personal use only. Copyright c 2012 by Annual Reviews. Abstract All rights reserved The central premise of the article is that the assumptions and approaches 1550-3585/12/1201-0453$20.00 of the “anticorruption industry” that debuted in the 1990s framed the issue of corruption and substantially shaped scholarly inquiry on the Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2012.8:453-498. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org subject. These assumptions and approaches also limited the ability to see other forms and patterns of corruption on the horizon. This article (a) critically reviews prevailing assumptions and approaches to the study of corruption during and especially after the Cold War, (b) examines the impact of economic frameworks and the anticorruption industry on post–Cold War scholarship, (c) explores contemporary forms of potential corruption, (d ) argues that prevailing approaches to corruption may make it more difficult to see contemporary forms of the age-old phenomenon and are ill-equipped to study them, (e) considers how corruption might be reconceptualized to encompass the new forms, and ( f ) argues for a reintegration of ethics and accountability. 453 LS08CH23-Wedel ARI 9 October 2012 7:56 INTRODUCTION fields such as criminology, sociology of law, and political science. Corruption may not be the world’s oldest This review concentrates on the most influ- profession, but it is certainly one of the world’s ential scholarship on corruption in the post– oldest themes. Through the ages, corruption Cold War era. Cold War literature is reviewed has been the subject of literature, social and selectively, with an eye toward that literature’s political discourse, law and public policy, and resilience and later impact. I contend that the philosophical and religious texts, from Plato most common understanding of corruption to the Qur’an and the Bible. Like corruptus, today—“the abuse of public office for private the Latin word from which it derives, the term gain,” as put forth by the World Bank after the corruption is morally charged, conjuring up Cold War (World Bank 1997, p. 8)—highlights failings of upright behavior or integrity.1 But certain practices and forms of corruption while the meanings of corruption and the practices overlooking others. That definition makes it the word evokes change over time and place, as more difficult for people, including scholars, to do the social and political uses of anticorruption see other forms of corruption that debuted over campaigns in the hands of leaders, organiza- the past several decades with the privatization tions, and political regimes. Scholarly defini- of government, the diffusion of global author- tions and approaches to the topic are also sub- ity, and the development of new information ject to the influences of time, place, and politics. technologies.2 Corruption research over the past half Thus this article critically reviews contem- century, especially over the past 15 or so years, porary approaches to the study of corruption has been substantially influenced by the per- in light of post–Cold War influences, ex- spectives, agendas, and resource opportunities plores contemporary forms of this age-old of the field of international development, phenomenon, and demonstrates how current the study and practice of which has been approaches limit the ability to recognize these dominated by economists. The development forms. Finally, it considers how corruption field morphed profoundly after the Cold War, might be reconceptualized to encompass new embracing the “Second World” of newly post- forms of corruption and better fit the current communist Soviet and Eastern Bloc states and era, which is marked by the ambiguity of cor- assuming the new priority of anticorruption. In ruption as well as of ethics and by checklist-type the process, economists, development experts, accountability systems that privilege appear- and other scholars focused internationally by 98.218.217.104 on 02/26/13. For personal use only. ance over actual performance. I argue that a and comparatively largely overtook domestic- return to classic understandings of corruption, oriented work on corruption by specialists in such as those revealed in texts such as the Bible and the Qur’an, may better serve both the study of corruption and practical efforts to counter it. Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2012.8:453-498. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org 1The word corruption, according to political philosopher Mark Philp (1997b, p. 445), “is rooted in the sense of a SCHOLARLY APPROACHES thing being changed from its naturally sound condition, into TO CORRUPTION IN A COLD something unsound, impure, debased, infected, tainted, adul- terated, depraved, perverted, et cetera.” “Corruption” not WAR WORLD only has a long history in the West but also has a stel- Corruption was not always the “hot” issue lar cross-cultural history in other orbits, for instance, in Chinese, Asian, and Islamic environments (e.g., Alatas 1990, (Sampson 2010, p. 262) it became in the 1990s pp. 40–124; Philp 1997a). Sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas and beyond, when corruption scholars were ex- (1990, p. 11) emphasizes that “the problem of corruption posed to a new set of global influences. The is trans-systemic: that is, it inheres in all social systems— feudalism, capitalism, communism and socialism.” See also Friedrich (2002, pp. 15–23), van Klaveren (2002, pp. 83–94), and Genaux (2002, pp. 107–21) for historical perspectives on 2For discussion of the impact of these transformational corruption. developments, see Wedel (2009, pp. 23–45). 454 Wedel LS08CH23-Wedel ARI 9 October 2012 7:56 editors of a 1964 article on bureaucratic corrup- point, assessed that “corrupt activities are tion in The American Behavioral Scientist (Leff more widespread—and more systematically 1964, p. 8) prefaced it with this statement: embedded—in many governments of the “Among scholars the subject of corruption is developing world than in the West” and that nearly taboo.” Today, it is unlikely that editors “corruption is one of the foremost problems of a major scholarly journal would feel the need in the developing world.” Political scientists, to justify an article on corruption. too, were often introduced to corruption Economists, political scientists, sociologists, while studying the Third World, albeit while anthropologists, criminologists, and legal spe- concentrating on colonial and postcolonial cialists contributed to the literature on cor- states, not economic development like the ruption during the Cold War. Economists and economists. And political scientists, too, often political scientists especially looked to develop shared the view expounded by economists, an overarching theory and engaged in key de- in the words of political scientist Joseph S. bates. They could be said to dominate corrup- Nye (1967, p. 418), that corrupt behavior “is tion scholarship. likely to be more prominent in less developed Although scholars from diverse disciplines countries because of a variety of conditions commonly found little convergence of ap- involved in their underdevelopment.”5 proach to the study of corruption, many shared In the mid-twentieth century, anthropol- a focus on the “developing” or “Third” World.3 ogists, in contrast to economists and political That focus is intimately tied to the geopolitics scientists, were already firmly entrenched as of the Cold War, which helped define the field students of what became christened the devel- of international economic development and oping or Third World. (In the traditions of encouraged its study and practice. Economists both British social anthropology and American often stumbled upon the issue of corruption cultural anthropology, scholars went to the in their exposure to developing countries.4 “field” to study exotic or small-scale societies Robert Klitgaard (1988, pp. 10, x), a case in that, by definition, were the Other.) For reasons we will explore shortly, anthropologists were largely silent on the corruption debate, 3The term Third World began to gain wide currency in the even as they studied activities that other social 1950s to denote countries that were not aligned with either scientists might label corrupt. the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War [see, e.g., the work of social critic Pascal Bruckner (1986), Thus, although the reasons were different, by 98.218.217.104 on 02/26/13. For personal use only. The Tears of the White Man]. Economists P.T. Bauer & B.S. the Other was frequently the focus of cor- Yamey (1980) and Bruckner (1986) demonstrated that what ruption for economists, political scientists, and Third World or underdeveloped countries had in common (with few exceptions) was that they were actual or potential anthropologists alike. Sociologists, criminolo- recipients of international economic development schemes gists, and legal specialists, by contrast, tended and foreign aid, not hunger, poverty, stagnation, exploita- to focus on the domestic front. Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2012.8:453-498. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org tion, or race. Bauer & Yamey (1980, p. 86) explained: “Of- ficial foreign aid has been the unifying characteristic of this Each discipline brought to the subject its huge, variegated, and utterly diverse collectivity ever since own definitions, frameworks, methods, and its components began to be lumped together from the late propensity to pronounce on policy questions 1940s onward as, successively, the ‘underdeveloped world,’ the ‘Third World,’ and now, the ‘South.’ These expressions and to design and implement policy pre- never made any sense except as references to a collectivity of scriptions.

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