Category Archives: Commentary

Against Alarmism: Frank Vogl’s Misguided Critique of the DOJ’s Decision Not To Re-Try Bob McDonnell

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Earlier this month, the ongoing saga of the bribery charges against former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell came to an end—not with a bang but a whimper—when the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would not seek a re-trial in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to vacate McDonnell’s original conviction. Given that we’ve already had plenty of discussion of the McDonnell case on GAB (including commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision here and here), I wasn’t planning to say more about this.

But then I read Frank Vogl’s blog post on The Globalist. Mr. Vogl’s view is that the DOJ’s decision shows that, with respect to corruption, it’s now the case that “[a]nything goes in America, third-world style” and that “[t]he United States, once an admirable leader on combatting political corruption, has now fallen into line with the lax standards of business-political relationships that pervade many other countries.” (He later refers to the U.S. “a stinking city on the Hill.”) Mr. Vogl also declares that the “core message” of the DOJ’s decision not to re-try McDonnell is that the DOJ has “accepted an increasingly narrow definition of corruption,” and he further insinuates that Hillary Clinton and the mainstream Democratic Party (as well as the Republican Party) are “content to accept money in politics in all its forms.”

This is histrionic nonsense. The core arguments are so obviously flawed that at first I didn’t think it was worth writing a rebuttal. But Mr. Vogl is an influential voice in the world of anticorruption advocacy, given that he’s one of the 852 co-founders of Transparency International. (OK, OK, that’s an exaggeration. But if I had a quarter for every person I’ve heard claim to have been one of the founders of TI, I’d be able to buy myself a Grande Frappuccino at my local Starbucks, maybe even a Venti.) So I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why I had such a negative reaction to his piece. Here goes: Continue reading →

Larger Governments Have Less Corruption (Part 2 – Possible Explanations)

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In my last post, I argued that the familiar hypothesis—advanced by Gary Becker and others—that big governments are associated with more corruption is inconsistent with the available cross-country empirical evidence. In fact, though the results of different studies are not entirely consistent, the weight of the evidence seems to suggest that (controlling for other possible correlates), countries that have larger governments—defined primarily as those that have higher levels of government spending as a percentage of GDP—have lower levels of perceived corruption, as measured by the familiar indexes, such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Again, there are some questions about the robustness of this negative correlation—some studies find that it is statistically significant, while others do not—but there’s enough supporting evidence that I think it’s fair to (tentatively) treat this correlation as genuine.

Perhaps in hindsight this shouldn’t be so surprising. Putting aside multiple regression and other fancy statistical techniques, if one just eyeballs the CPI “league table,” it’s clear that the group of countries that consistently score near the top of the rankings include lots of countries—particularly countries in Northern and Western Europe—with quite large governments (such as Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, and Iceland), while the bottom of the CPI list includes countries with very small governments. (Even if one excludes barely functioning states, like Somalia, the bottom group in the CPI includes small-government states like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Haiti, Russia, and the Central African Republic). Of course, this by itself doesn’t tell us much, especially given the well-established correlation between GDP and the government spending/GDP ratio—but, again, multiple regression techniques that control for GDP and other factors show that the positive correlation is genuine, and the handful of favorite examples often trotted out to suggest that small governments are the key to lower corruption (like Singapore and Hong Kong) are in fact statistical outliers.

So let’s assume that, as most studies seem to show, there’s a negative correlation between the government spending/GDP ratio and perceived corruption. What’s the explanation for this?

The short answer is that I don’t know, and I’m not aware of any research that really nails this down. But here are a few possibilities, some cribbed from existing papers, others based on my own wild speculations: Continue reading →

Watching Out: Cambodian Corruption Video Documentation Where Censorship Fails

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Low-cost video, and easier video distribution, simple though it sounds, is emerging as one of the premier corruption-fighting tools. This is especially true for small countries with poor track records in public integrity. Consider Cambodia. Although Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 30-year rule has been rife with graft, cronyism, land grabbing, and political violence, the government has been able to keep the extent of this hidden from most of the Cambodian public. Yet video and video-sharing services have proved one form of protest that the reigning government cannot seem to quash.

The most recent video to provoke the ire of the ruling party has low production values and little action. Three men sit at a table, one talking for the majority of the eight-minute run time about a Global Witness report’s allegations of extreme nepotism and cronyism within the ruling family. The man speaking, Kem Ley, was an opposition politician who was assassinated in broad daylight at a gas station convenience store just two days after his remarks. Many commentators immediately suspected the killing was political; these statements themselves spurred lawsuits from the ruling party. Multiple YouTube versions of the video now have several hundred thousand views each, with video news stories covering the killing tallying hundreds of thousands more. Kem’s funeral procession brought out droves of Cambodians, some reports numbering the crowd at two million (in a country of around 15 million people).

Another recent video about an anticorruption campaigner has become extremely popular despite—or perhaps because of—the government’s best efforts to stop it. The video’s subject, Chut Wutty, worked to expose illegal logging in Cambodian forests, logging that often happened with police complicity or direct participation. While accompanying journalists to show them the extent of the illegal deforestation, Wutty was shot and killed by a police officer. The low-budget documentary about his life and death was released this spring. Banned by the government, the film also quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views and gathered plenty of attention.

In a country with state-controlled media, sparse internet connectivity, and extreme poverty, the exposure to corruption-exposing video is ad hoc but growing. Videos like these hold promise for the future of the long-struggling country for several reasons:

Continue reading →

Fighting Natural Resource Corruption: The Solomon Islands’ Challenge

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On September 8 & 9 the Government of Solomon Islands, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the UN Development Program will host a workshop in Honiara to discuss the national anticorruption strategy the government is preparing.  One issue almost certain to arise is how the government can intensify the fight against corruption in the logging and mining sectors. Both sectors are critical to the nation’s economic well-being.  Commercial logging is currently the largest source of export revenues, but earnings are expected to decline sharply over the coming decade as forest reserves are depleted (due in no small part to corruption).  The hope is that increases in the mining of the country’s ample reserves of bauxite and nickel will replace losses from forestry.

Corruption in both sectors has been documented by scholars (here, here, and here for examples), the World Bank (here), and the Solomon Islands chapter of Transparency International.  The government has not only acknowledged the problem but has committed to addressing it.  Its recently released National Development Strategy 2016 – 2035 makes controlling corruption in logging and mining a priority.  As the strategy explains, corruption in the two sectors robs government of needed revenues and deprives local communities of the benefits from the development of resources on or under their lands.

Identifying a problem is one thing.  Coming up with solutions is another, particularly in the case of resource corruption in the Solomons where the combination of geography, poverty, and huge payoffs from corrupt deals make curbing it especially challenging.  The remainder of this post describes the hurdles Solomon Islanders and their government face and suggests ways they might overcome them.       Continue reading →

Larger Governments Have Less Corruption (Part 1 – The Evidence)

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Many people believe that one of the most important root causes of public corruption is “big government.” This view was perhaps captured most famously and most succinctly by Gary Becker, the late Nobel Laureate economist, who declared (in a couple of memorable op-ed headlines), “If you want to cut corruption, cut government” and “to root out corruption, boot out big government.” Professor Becker was not what you would call cautious or circumspect in advancing this claim: He insisted that “instituting large cuts in the scope of government is the only surefire way to reduce corruption,” and that without such cuts even the most well-intentioned anticorruption reforms and crackdowns would fail, because “corruption always reemerges wherever governments have a major impact on economic conditions.” Though Professor Becker was perhaps the most blunt (and famous) advocate for this view, many others have taken this position. (See here, here, here, and here.) Indeed, a while back I attended an anticorruption conference at which a former senior minister of a European country (whose identity I cannot disclose due to the conference’s confidentiality rules) declared that the key to reducing corruption in his country was the decision to drastically shrink the public sector, slashing taxes, public spending, and the overall size of government–and this ex-official called on other countries to follow that advice as well.

But before we go charging ahead advising countries that the only way that they can get their corruption problem under control is to cut their governments, it might make sense to assess whether the available empirical evidence actually supports Becker’s hypothesis. Is it true that (all else equal) countries with larger governments have more corruption, compared to countries with smaller governments?

The answer is no. If anything, the evidence cuts in the opposite direction. Continue reading →

My Fellow Americans: Please Never, Ever Say (or Imply) That the United States Is the Only Country that Tries To Do Something About Corruption

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In my last post, I cautioned those of us who talk about corruption to be careful to avoid saying – even casually – that “everyone” in this or that country is corrupt, not only because that statement is incorrect, but also because it’s offensive and counterproductive. I realize that it wasn’t the most important of topics, but language matters, and the political sensitivity of corruption means that those of us from wealthier countries should be especially careful about the language that we use. (Think about David Cameron’s “fantastically corrupt” gaffe at last spring’s London Anti-Corruption Summit for an example of how poorly chosen words can get in the way of substantive engagement.) That’s not to say we should shy away from accurately describing and criticizing systemic corruption where it exists; it’s just a caution against careless hyperbole.

In that (perhaps trivial and nit-picky) spirit, I want to call attention to something else I’ve heard now several times from U.S. speakers at anticorruption conferences, which strikes me as extraordinarily arrogant, offensive, and incorrect. It goes like this:

  • American speaker gets up before multinational audience to talk about the U.S. approach to fighting corruption and, in an apparent effort to defuse precisely the risk of condescension that I’m complaining about, says something like, “Now, one thing we learn from the U.S. experience is that we have a corruption problem too. Corruption is a problem everywhere, including in the United States.”
  • OK, so far so good. But then the American speaker says, “The difference is that in the United States, we try to do something about it.”

Ugh. Is it possible to imagine a more ham-handed, condescending thing to say, especially to a multinational audience? I mean, look, I think that the U.S., for all its faults, can be justly proud of its law enforcement efforts to fight domestic corruption, particularly the role of the FBI, Department of Justice, and federal judiciary. While the U.S. is far from perfect, it’s my view that the culture of impunity pervasive in many parts of the world is, as a relative matter, not nearly as bad in the U.S. And I do think other countries can learn from the U.S. experience. But to suggest that the United States stands alone in its willingness to try to do something about corruption is (A) obviously factually incorrect, and (B) insulting to the hardworking, often heroic men and women in other countries who are fighting against corruption every day, and to the governments in at least some of those countries that have made anticorruption a priority, but are having trouble making progress due to a range of factors (severe resource constraints, powerful entrenched interests, complicated political situations, etc).

And really, what purpose is served, substantively or rhetorically, by saying, “The difference is that in the U.S. we try to do something about corruption”? The speech that follows that opening line would be just as effective if the speaker just said, “Now, one thing we learn from the U.S. experience is that we have a corruption problem too. Corruption is a problem everywhere, including in the United States. But the U.S. experience in our struggle with corruption – both the things we’ve done well, and the challenges and limitations of our approach – may provide some useful lessons for others engaged in a similar struggle.”

OK, OK, I know that this is beyond trivial, and I promise in future posts I’ll return to weightier topics. But this has just been bugging me, so I thought I’d get it off my chest.

Watch Your Language: Not “Everyone” Is Corrupt–Anywhere.

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I’ve noticed something about the way many people (including me) sometimes describe the severity of the corruption problem in many parts of the world: When calling attention to the problem of widespread, systemic corruption, it’s not uncommon to hear people say—usually in casual conversation, occasionally in more formal presentations—that in this or that country, or this or that government or department, “everyone” is corrupt, or “everybody” takes bribes, or similar. I’m sure I’ve used this or similar language myself, without even thinking about it. And I understand that when most people say things like “everyone in [X] is corrupt,” they don’t mean that literally. Yet I find myself increasingly bothered by statements like this, for several reasons: Continue reading →

Artful Transactions: Corruption in the Market for Fine Arts and Antiques

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The fascination surrounding art theft and forgery has long been the subject of much exploration. Only more recently, however, has the art market come under increased scrutiny regarding its connection to money laundering and corruption. It’s not just that stolen artworks often end up in the hands of criminals: even the market for non-stolen art is especially vulnerable to money laundering and corruption. With more banks cracking down on illicit activities, art has become an “efficient instrument for hiding cash.” As an article in the New York Times observed, no business seems “more custom-made for money laundering, with million-dollar sales conducted in secrecy and with virtually no oversight.”

Considering the attention paid by anticorruption and anti-money laundering activists to the role of the real estate market and the market for other luxury goods to facilitate money laundering and bribery, it is perhaps a bit surprising that there hasn’t been more attention to the art market—which is perhaps even more deserving of scrutiny. Continue reading →

When Lunch is a Bribe: American and Korean Law Compared

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It is the rare businessperson or lobbyist who takes a politician or bureaucrat they barely know to lunch just for the pleasure of their company.  Lunch-buyers may enjoy the food (particularly if the money comes out a corporate pocket) and not all politicians and bureaucrats are self-centered bores.  But face it: the main reason bureaucrats and politicians world-wide are wined and dined by people they hardly know is because they are in positions of power and the meal-buyers want to influence them — perhaps to persuade them to purchase the lunch-buyer’s product for their ministries, maybe to change their minds about pending legislation.  Yet as obvious as the reason for picking up a lunch the tab is, in the Republic of Korea, and many American jurisdictions as well, on its face the law provides that if lunch-buyers admit why they paid for lunch, they and their luncheon companion go to jail.

That despite these laws Seoul’s upscale restaurants and their counterparts in many American state capitols continue to do a brisk lunchtime business suggests many lunch-buying businesspersons and lobbyists and their government guests regularly deny the obvious.  It would be one thing if lawmakers had intended to turn this group into liars and hypocrites, but they did not.  It is instead an unintended consequence of laws actually meant to permit public servants to take lunch with those having business with them. Continue reading →

Culture Matters: How Indonesia Should Account Culture to Eradicate Corruption

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Corruption in Indonesia is endemic, permeating all levels of society. As I argued in my last post, Indonesia’s culture of corruption is a result of the corruption of culture: Far too many people see corruption as unsolvable and even “normal,” even though they clearly realize its wrongfulness.

To date, Indonesia’s independent anticorruption agency, the KPK, has pursued a main strategy of prosecuting the “big fish”—the high-ranking officials (including numerous parliament members and powerful politicians) whose corrupt behavior has caused massive damage to the country. Laudable though the KPK’s bold enforcement efforts have been, eradicating corruption requires more than prosecutions. Rather, the KPK needs to complement its aggressive law enforcement with preventive measures designed to change Indonesia’s “culture of corruption” to a “culture of anticorruption.” There are several strategies the KPK could pursue to foster such cultural change:

Continue reading →