* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Corruption - predatory, organized from above, and accompanied by the very real threat of violence - has been a major issue driving the protests currently reshaping the political systems of the Middle East. Among many other changes, most citizens are demanding accountable and effective government. A variety of governments and international organizations are poised to support corruption-control efforts in the new regimes that may be taking shape.
That’s a fine idea, but it will not be easy. In fact a generation’s reform efforts by smart and courageous people have produced only indifferent success in countries around the world, proving mostly that corruption is tenacious and progress is difficult to measure and sustain.
Often, the best advice we can give is to spell out what not to do. Here are five ideas - among many possible - that would - be Middle Eastern corruption fighters should keep in mind.
1. First, Do No Harm
It is quite possible - and in rapidly-changing, fragile societies, all too easy - to do the wrong things for the right reasons. Pushing reforms that increase new leaders’ sense of political insecurity, dismantling existing institutions without putting something else in their place, relying on the allegedly self-regulating qualities of liberalized politics and economies, or abruptly dumping valuable public assets into poorly-structured private “markets” will only make corruption problems worse. Too much emphasis upon “best practices” and reformers imported from other countries may only increase resentment, and may not help citizens do the hard work of demanding accountability by themselves. Where corrupt dealings have been the glue holding ruling factions together, taking illicit rewards off the table - even if that is possible - raises the critical question of what will hold a new order together. And “reform” can degenerate into political pay-back; anti-corruption forces will thus have to walk a fine line, engaging enough self-interest to give people a stake in reform while not allowing one segment of the population to use corruption control to gain the upper hand over others.
2. Make Haste Slowly
Citizens of mature democracies often forget that their governments have corruption problems, and often had scandalous episodes in the past. Corruption control in the west, such as it is, took generations or centuries to accomplish, and in fact most contemporary safeguards were the outcomes of deep political change, not the causes of reduced corruption. Transitions to accountable government can move quickly, but behind those changes lie long processes of building political foundations under demands for accountability. And sustaining good government is a challenge that never ends. Reform advocates must avoid raising expectations they cannot reasonably fulfil. Corruption, after all, does not explain everything bad about any society - nor does it negate everything good.
3. Be Unexciting
The initial challenge may not be to finger the bad guys, and almost certainly is not to whip up national morality campaigns. Usually, it is to build trust - trust among segments of the population, in new leaders, and in the reform movement itself, which can very quickly become a target of continuing resentment. One way to do that is to provide basic services - utilities, law enforcement, and for the longer term housing, schools, and the like - in effective and even-handed ways. Doing that will require many of the same kinds of changes needed to check corruption, and can ease some of the day-to-day grievances that made corruption a compelling issue in the first place. A state that does what it promises, and that eases zero-sum struggles among factions, will not inevitably earn the trust of its citizens, but it will earn little or no such trust if it fails.
4. Don’t Assume All Corruption is Alike
Corruption problems come in many shapes and sizes reflecting the influence not only of old-fashioned greed, but also of contrasting historical and developmental forces. While we often rank countries on a single scale of corruptness, important differences in kind - not just of degree - are out there too. The particular kind of corruption found in many of the regimes now under siege, in which “official moguls” capitalize on top-level status or protection by using state power as personal property, is just one kind. Regime change may end that elite protection, but powerful figures and factions will remain - often, finding new opportunities in the unsettled political situation. Changing too much, too quickly, in the name of corruption control - and in particular, freeing up too many economic and political opportunities at once - can produce hyper-corruption and violence among those ex-moguls and their followings (think Russia in the mid-1990s…). At the very least, building new institutions, and providing them with resources and political backing, should often take precedence over the immediate dissolution of all the old ones. That leads directly to our fifth point…
5. Remember that “Halfway” Situations Can Be Valuable
Egypt, Tunisia, and their neighbors aren’t going to become squeaky-clean Finland and New Zealand any time soon. There are, however, some countries - South Korea is one, and Botswana another - where certain kinds and amounts of corruption have co-existed with economic development and democratization. And there are practices, such as paying officials for services on predetermined scales, or some forms of party-building through petty gifts and patronage - that correspond closely to things we did during our own institution-building processes. Such situations are far from ideal; at best they are a fourth-best way of doing things when numbers one through three are not yet in place. Still, they can provide a degree of order in government and predictability in corruption, and be vastly preferable to the sort of scramble outlined above. We probably cannot engineer any of those outcomes; still, we might well tolerate fee-for-service deals providing some predictability for citizens, income for underpaid officials, and accountability of sorts between them. And if corruption seems to be building a political stratum unified enough to govern, but not so secure as to repress the political competition, that’s not so bad either - for a time.
It will be easy to misread these points as a prescription for doing nothing, or as a wish that some invisible hand would eventually stop the abuse of power. Neither view would be accurate. The key is to help citizens demand accountable government, and protect their own wellbeing, by political means. That’s a long and complex process, one in which the law of unintended consequences always applies.
