The Rector's Lecture (2)

"The Rector went on, 'Corruption can negatively affect political systems (e.g. democracies or autocracies) and regimes (the team running the system) in numerous ways. For example, it can unfairly increase the power and influence of individual legislators willing to privilege whoever is prepared to pay them bribes or enhance their prospects in future elections. The latter is seen around the world in the form of pork-barrelling—the utilization of government funds for projects designed to please voters or legislators and win votes, whereby legislators inappropriately allocate or promise funds to particular constituencies so as to increase voter support.

However, this point about inappropriate favouritism leads us to a particularly grey area in corruption studies, the issue of lobbying. In countries such as the USA, lobbying is legal and formally organized. But some see lobbying as a form of corruption, and have argued that it is essentially a functional equivalent in wealthy states of the more clearly corrupt attempts to influence politicians in poorer countries. But in deciding whether or not lobbying constitutes a form of corruption, it is necessary to examine the precise nature of specific cases; generalization can be misleading.

Many organizations lobby for causes that most people would consider perfectly legitimate, such as the World Wildlife Fund or other charity organizations, and such lobbying should be distinguished from that relating to more obviously vested interests. Moreover, if the funding of lobbying is of officially registered agencies rather than for paying bribes, and if—and this is an important caveat—the financial details of such agencies are fully transparent, then it would be inappropriate to label this corruption. Lobbying by some types of organization might seem unfair, giving those with sufficient resources better opportunities than are available to the average person to attempt to influence political decision-makers, but it is only another aspect of the political inequality that exists in even the most democratic systems. It is thus as much a problem for theorists of democracy as for analysts of corruption.

Another tricky issue for both theorists and practitioners of democracy is how best to fund political parties—in particular, whether or not this can be done in a corruption-proof way. In 1999, Germany witnessed the emergence of the so-called Kohlgate scandal, in which honorary chair of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Helmut Kohl was accused of being involved in the corrupt acceptance and distribution of illicit funds for his party during his term as Chancellor (prime minister) of Germany (1982–98). The CDU was eventually found guilty of corruption, and the President of the lower house of parliament sought to fine the party a total of just under 50 million marks (approximately 25 million Euros). Although this penalty was eventually quashed, German party financing rules were substantially amended—rendered more transparent and less dependent on business contributions—as a direct result of the Kohlgate affair. The particular significance of this case was less the fact that a leading Western politician had been accused of corruption—France’s Jacques Chirac and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi have also faced charges of corruption in recent years—but that it happened in a country reputed to have one of the best party financing systems in the world.

Corruption can undermine electoral competition, increasing inequalities between political parties, and reducing party competitiveness. Electoral fraud and impropriety assumes many forms; two of the most common are ballot-rigging and vote-buying. There have been innumerable alleged and proven cases of both in most parts of the world in recent years. But, as with so many forms of corruption, neither is either a new phenomenon or unique to developing and transition states: an early example of vote-buying is the 1768 ‘spendthrift election’ in Northamptonshire (UK).

Citizen despair can increase the attractiveness to voters of extremist politicians, whether of the left or the right, who promise to eradicate corruption. Empirical research indicates that such extremists generally prove to be ineffectual at reducing corruption if elected; but there is a widespread belief in some countries that they have a magic bullet.

Accusations of corruption by one party or politician can attract counter-accusations. This can result in increased dissatisfaction among voters, with various undesirable outcomes. One is that citizens become cynical, and therefore alienated from the political system, albeit in a passive way. Another is that they become incensed, leading to active mass unrest that delegitimizes and destabilizes the system and can lead to the overthrow of the regime, or even the system itself. In his 2012 analysis of corruption, Frank Vogl focuses on the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, and sees public anger at corruption as a major factor in the collapse of the regimes and systems in Egypt and Tunisia.

Thus corruption can undermine system legitimacy—the perceived right of the rulers to rule. Too much corruption and its reporting can result in people losing faith in the market, democracy, and the rule of law. While this tends to be more destabilizing in transition states, the point applies even to developed Western states. In January 2013, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe argued that ‘Corruption is the biggest single threat to democracy in Europe today. More and more people on our continent are losing faith in the rule of law.’

If people lose faith in the rule of law in states where it has previously existed, the likelihood of arbitrary abuse of civil liberties and human rights increases. While this problem initially affects ordinary citizens, excessive arbitrariness can be dangerous to political elites too, as their rule is threatened by mass unrest. Like so many other aspects of corruption, this danger is nothing new; in East Asia’s traditional concept of the ‘mandate of heaven’, the people had the right to remove an emperor who was inept, tyrannical, or corrupt.

For a state to exercise its defence, law enforcement, and welfare functions properly it needs adequate funding; if corruption reduces government revenue, this has detrimental effects on the state’s overall capacity to protect the populace. There is a strong correlation between weak states and high levels of corruption.

During the 1990s, when security at military bases in many Soviet successor states was frighteningly lax, various Western government reports and academic analyses claimed that corrupt officials in Russia and Ukraine were illegally selling nuclear materials to whoever would pay them. While much of the evidence on this is circumstantial, there is irrefutable proof that corrupt officials in weak states have sold various kinds of weapons to organized crime gangs and terrorists.

But this point can apply to mature democracies too. In March 2014, as a result of an FBI sting operation, a Californian state senator was arrested and charged with colluding with US-based Chinese organized crime in trafficking weapons to an Islamic rebel group based in the Philippines: the senator’s pay-off, according to the FBI, was donations to his political campaign. He was allegedly planning to expand his trafficking operation into Africa, and was indifferent to the harm his trafficking might cause; the case was kept ongoing.

A final point about mature democracies and arms dealing is that a number of Western corporations have been accused of paying substantial bribes to overseas government officials to secure contracts for the purchase of military equipment; it is not only individuals and gangs that are corruptly involved in this potentially deadly business.

Some of the effects of corruption in one country on other countries are irritating rather than a real danger. For instance, car insurance premiums in Germany increased in the 1990s partly because so many cars were being stolen there and smuggled to Central and East European states; this racket often involved gangs bribing customs officials to look the other way while the cars were in transit.

But many international ramifications of corruption are far more serious. For instance, criminal organizations involved in international trafficking—including of drugs, weapons, humans, and human parts—would be far less effective were it not for the fact that they can often bribe customs officers, police officers, and other officials to turn a blind eye to their activities, or to warn them in advance of impending raids (e.g. of illegal brothels in which there are transnationally trafficked persons).

Unfortunately, pragmatism often dominates principle in international relations, and countries that appear to have relatively low levels of corruption may de facto tolerate high levels of corruption in a country that has nuclear weapons or commodities (e.g. oil) on which the less corrupt countries are highly dependent. But occasionally, the corruption in another country becomes so intolerable that other countries decide to do something about it. A prime example is the USA’s 2012 Magnitsky Act, which was designed to punish (through visa-bans and freezing bank accounts) Russian officials deemed to have played a role in the death of auditor Sergei Magnitsky. The relevance to corruption is that Magnitsky had been investigating fraud among Russian tax officials and police officers, and had then been arrested himself for alleged collusion with an investment advisory company that had reported alleged corruption to the Russian authorities and had in turn been accused by those authorities of tax evasion. Magnitsky’s death in custody was highly suspicious. Not unexpectedly, the act soured relations between Moscow and Washington; the Russians soon produced a list of Americans who would not be granted visas, and placed a ban on US families adopting Russian children.

Many readers who prefer a broad definition of corruption will be aware of the allegations made against various international sporting bodies, including the leading soccer organization, FIFA. In early 2014, the most widely reported example related to the bidding process for the 2022 World Cup. Such allegations, whether proven or not, undermine the international legitimacy of such bodies, as well as of the states accused of involvement in corrupt practices.

Corruption is what social scientists call a ‘wicked’ problem, meaning that it is so complex that it can only ever be partly solved; it can be controlled, but never completely eradicated.  The state is only one of many actors with a role to play in controlling corruption.

I will conclude this lecture with just one sentence, 'That one of the causes of Radicalism

—or Radicalized—is CORRUPTION!"

The audience clapped their hands, and all sang,

Kisah usang tikus-tikus kantor

[An old tale of office mice]

Yang suka berenang di sungai yang kotor

[Who likes to swim in dirty rivers]

Kisah usang tikus-tikus berdasi

[The old story of mice wearing ties]

Yang suka ingkar janji lalu sembunyi

[Who always break promises and then hide]

Di balik meja teman sekerja

[Behind the coworker's desk

Di dalam lemari dari baja *)

[Inside the steel cupboard]

Before she go, Laluna said, "Many analysts maintain that the ultimate success or otherwise of anti-corruption measures, depends on political will. Political leaderships must not only be genuinely committed, i.e. have the political will to combat corruption, but must also have the capacity to implement their will.

Many cultures and languages have the phrase ‘A FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD’, meaning that corruption will be worse where the political elite sets a bad example. In this sense, it might seem that the will of the leadership is all-important. But while this is crucial, it is not the only will that matters. A leadership may be genuinely committed to fighting corruption, but nevertheless have insufficient control over its own bureaucracy to turn this commitment into reality. And Allah knows best."

Citations & References:
- Leslie Holmes, Corruption: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press
*) "Tikus-tikus Kantor" written by Iwan Fals

[Part 1]

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