Tag Archives: democratization

Kyrgyzstan’s Elimination of Immunity for Ex-Presidents is No Win for Anticorruption

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Last October, the Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan ruled that Kyrgyzstan’s law granting legal immunity to ex-presidents was unconstitutional on the grounds that Article 16 of the Kyrgyz Constitution makes all people equal before the law. Because the Kyrgyz immunity law was one of the broadest and most protective in the world, those of us who care about corruption might cheer this ruling as a win in Kyrgyzstan’s fight against corruption. However, viewed in context, the ruling portends problems for Kyrgyzstan’s nascent democracy and may even be counterproductive in the fight against corruption itself.

Many countries have ex-presidential immunity regimes. The downside of such laws—which exist throughout Central Asia and in countries as diverse as Burundi, France, and Uruguay­—is that, by making it difficult or impossible to prosecute a former president, these laws eliminate one of the most important deterrents to executive corruption. Kyrgyzstan’s law was especially problematic in this respect, as the immunity granted to ex-presidents was unusually broad—covering not merely conduct related to the former president’s exercise of her or his official duties, but any act committed during the term of office, with no exceptions even for high treason or other grave crimes. The Kyrgyz immunity law also protected an ex-president’s property, and it blocked searches and interrogation in addition to prosecution, thus stymying investigations even where the ex-president was just a witness. For these reasons, getting rid of the immunity law might seem like a step forward in the fight against corruption.

However, laws that grant immunity to ex-presidents also have an upside, especially in authoritarian states or fragile democracies. These laws may ease and encourage peaceful political transitions, because with no threat of prosecution, a sitting president may be more willing to peacefully cede power. One might therefore be worried about the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision on Kyrgyzstan’s fledgling electoral democracy. Those worries would be well founded given the political context in which the Supreme Court rendered its decision.

To understand why requires understanding recent events in Kyrgyz politics, and in particular how the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the ex-presidential immunity law appears to be part of a larger campaign by the current President to suppress political opposition led by his predecessor:

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U.S. to Honor Corruption Fighters from Afghanistan, Angola, Guatemala, Malaysia, and Ukraine

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Afghanistan NGO leader Khalil Parsa, Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, Guatemalan judge Claudia Escobar, Malaysian civil society activist Cynthia Gabriel, and Ukrainian investigative journalist Denys Bihus will share the 2017 Democracy Award for their work promoting democracy in their countries.  Bestowed annually by the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. democracy promotion agency, the ceremony will be held June 7 at the U.S. Capitol.  Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and the House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will both speak.

This year’s award is significant for three reasons.  In the wake of concerns Trump Administration rhetoric has raised about America’s commitment to human rights and democracy, Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi’s participation is a reminder that a strong, bipartisan consensus on these basic, universal values remains deeply embedded in U.S. political culture.  Second is the recognition by the National Endowment, perhaps the world’s leading advocate of democracy, that the fight against corruption is an essential element in building a democratic state.  Finally, the award is one more sign that those fighting corruption at home are not alone, that the international community supports them and stands with them.

More on the ceremony, biographies of each recipient, and the National Endowment’s democracy promotion work here.

Are Anticorruption and Prodemocracy Policies Antithetical?

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That is the question Pennsylvania State University Political Scientists Vineeta Yadav and Bumba Mukherjee leave readers to ponder at the conclusion of their fine new book, The Politics of Corruption in Dictatorships.  But not before the authors provide a plethora of new insights on anticorruption policy and political change in authoritarian states.

They begin with the well-known finding that non-democratic states are more corrupt than democratic ones and continue with a review of the standard explanations for why this is so.  Authoritarian states lack a free press, separation of powers, and the other means democracies have for holding corruption in check.  Furthermore, corruption is many times the glue that holds a dictatorial government together.  It’s the way rulers buy the support of the security services, business elites, and others that might be tempted to overthrow them.  It also provides leaders an insurance policy in the event supporters don’t stay bought as they can siphon off a bit (okay often a lot) into a rainy day fund somewhere offshore.

If the story were that simple, an examination of non-democratic states’ scores on cross-national measures of corruption would reveal two things:  first, the scores would all cluster at the “most corrupt” end of the measures; second, absent the rare political upheaval, the scores would remain relatively stable over time.  Here is where the story gets interesting – and where Yadav and Mukherjee go to work. Continue reading →

Indonesia’s Election Results–Some Snap Reactions on Implications for Anticorruption

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Two days ago, after about two weeks of wrangling, accusations, and general uncertainty, Indonesia’s General Election Commission declared Joko Widodo the winner of the July 9 presidential election. Mr. Joko, the populist governor of Jakarta and former mayor of Surakarta, defeated Probowo Subianto — a retired army general and son-in-law of former President/dictator Suharto — by about 8 million votes (out of almost 135 million total votes cast). Mr. Probowo is still contesting the election result, asserting widespread fraud, but most observers doubt that the Constitutional Court will overturn the result, particularly given the margin of victory and the fact that the outcome was consistent with a number of independent polls conducted by reputable organizations.

This result is a big deal for many reasons–including the implications for the struggle against corruption in Indonesia and elsewhere. I am certainly no expert on Indonesian politics, so there’s much about this development that I don’t understand. But, having followed the Indonesian election from a distance, let me toss out some off-the-cuff thoughts on how one might think about the result from an anticorruption perspective. I hope that people who know this stuff better than I do will weigh in with their own reactions. Here goes:

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Corruption and Liberalization: Two Paradoxes

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Some aspects of a comprehensive anticorruption strategy are specifically targeted at corruption itself. But sometimes it makes sense to consider how broader political or economic reforms might ameliorate or exacerbate the corruption problem. Indeed, fighting corruption is often invoked – perhaps sincerely, perhaps strategically – as a justification for more general political and economic liberalization. But the relationship between political and economic liberalization, on the one hand, and corruption, on the other, is complicated, and beset by two seeming paradoxes:

Here’s the first paradox: On the one hand, longstanding democracies seem to have lower levels of corruption than do non-democracies. However, the process of democratization – the introduction of democratic reforms, along with a general liberalization of the political system – often seems associated with a significant increase in corruption. Indeed, countries going through democratic transitions, or those that have been democratic for a shorter time, seem not only to have more corruption than established democracies, but also to have worse corruption problems, on average, than non-democracies.

The second paradox, on the economic side, is similar: Some research suggests that more open economies – with more market competition, fewer state-owned enterprises, and less central economic planning – have lower levels of corruption than more statist economies. (This should not be overstated: it’s not that more regulation always increases corruption, nor is there convincing evidence that “bigger” governments, measured by the size of the public sector relative to GNP, have more corruption. Still, the balance of the evidence suggests that more open, liberal economies have less severe corruption than more statist economies.) However, the process of economic liberalization—including privatization, deregulation, etc.—often appears associated with an increase, often a dramatic increase, in corruption.

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