Tag Archives: public opinion

Guest Post: Why We Should Be Excited About SDG 16

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GAB is delighted to welcome back Daniel Dudis, Senior Policy Director at Transparency International-USA, who contributes the following guest post:

On September 25th, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs identify development priorities and set measurable targets for progress that are to be met by 2030. They also replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted in 2000 and set to expire at the end of this year. The MDGs were aimed primarily at improving living conditions in developing countries, and focused on reducing extreme poverty and improving health, education, sanitation, and nutrition. Unfortunately, progress towards achieving the MDGs has been uneven at best. Notably absent from the MDGs were any commitments on improving governance or reducing corruption. Given that in most countries, government is the primary service provider for healthcare, education, and sanitation, and that government provides nutrition assistance and sets economic policy, the absence of any commitments to improve governance or reduce corruption was a notable blind spot. Honest, accountable, efficient government is the foundation upon which economic development and improved service delivery are built.

Happily, goal 16 of the SDGs fills this lacuna. Goal 16, which seeks to promote just, peaceful, and inclusive societies, includes (among other governance-related targets) significant reductions in illicit financial flows, progress on the recovery and return of stolen assets, and substantial reductions in corruption and bribery.

It is easy to be skeptical about the utility of ambitious international agreements such as the SDGs. Indeed, Matthew’s post last week, which criticized the Goal 16’s anticorruption targets on the grounds that they are ill-suited to quantitative measurement of progress, and Rick’s post yesterday, exemplify that view. Such skepticism, however, is misplaced. The inclusion of these targets in Goal 16 of the SDGs is an important step forward as it represents a clear endorsement by the community of nations that good governance and the fight against corruption are integral parts of the global development agenda. Continue reading →

Long Walks to Where? The Limits of Popular Protest as an Anticorruption Tool in South Africa

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Anticorruption popular protests seem to be having a moment.  From Brazil to Guatemala to Malaysia, citizens have taken to the streets in response to allegations of bribery and graft. Now, a group of South Africans is hoping to add their home to the list of countries where direct action has taken hold.  A loosely knit coalition of groups calling itself Unite Against Corruption has scheduled marches in Cape Town and Pretoria next week, on September 30.

The group has good reason to believe that South Africa is ready for this kind of popular movement, given the country’s many recent corruption scandals: despite the Public Protector’s best efforts and significant initial public outcry, the “security upgrades” at President Zuma’s home in Nkandla have been brushed off (though the Constitutional Court has agreed to take up the issue); a 1990s arms deal continues to have spillover effects; the Public Protector recently released a report highlighting widespread corruption and improper conduct at the nation’s rail agency.  The list could go on and on.

Nevertheless, even if high-profile events like these may have primed the general South African public to be open to a popular anticorruption movement, there are reasons to be doubtful that these marches will have meaningful long-term effects. The obstacles that Unite Against Corruption and its marches are likely to face are not necessarily unique to South Africa, but worth noting in an attempt to analyze this particular situation:

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Guest Post–Reflections on the “Guatemalan Spring”

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Mathieu Tromme, Senior Research Fellow at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, contributes the following guest post:

Guatemala is in the midst of its worst political crisis in the two decades since the end of the country’s civil war in 1996. Weekly marches, sit-ins and demonstrations keep drawing tens of thousands to the streets, denouncing corruption and demanding the President’s resignation, as well as a purge of politics and the judiciary (among other things). The scope and size of the demonstrations has been something of a surprise, given that the Guatemalan public often seems uninterested in political affairs or reluctant to express dissent. Although the protests originated in the capital, they have now spread to the whole country, and brought lower and middle classes together. The main cause of this discontent? Public anger over a string of corruption scandals.

The demonstrations—which some believe are the start of a “Guatemalan Spring”— began this past April, when the Office of the Public Prosecutor against Impunity, together with the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG in Spanish) published an investigative report linking fraud in the Customs Department to the Vice President’s Office. Specifically, Vice President Baldetti’s private secretary, Mr. Monzón Rojas, stands accused of being at the helm of a wide tax and customs fraud scheme known as La Linea (“the line”), which has defrauded the state of about US$120 million. Although Vice President Baldetti, tried to distance herself from her Secretary (who’s still on the run), mounting public and political pressure forced her to resign on May 8. In addition, there were further revelations that lawyers representing detainees in connection with La Linea attempted to bribe Chief Justices of the Supreme Court. And there were other scandals as well: the head of the Ministry of Energy and Mining lost his post over corruption charges, the Ministers of the Interior, Environment, and Energy resigned, and the President of the Central Bank and the head of the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security (who was formerly the President’s personal secretary) have been forced to resign after being accused of fraud and influence peddling.

Although there are many interesting aspects of these anticorruption protests, let me highlight what seem to me especially important features of both the protests and the underlying problems that triggered them—features which, though specific to Guatemala, may have broader implications for the fight against entrenched political corruption. Continue reading →

Scorpions with Wax Wings: How Anticorruption Agencies Can Avoid Flying Too Close to the Sun

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Public rhetoric about the battle against corruption often centers on the need for “zero tolerance”–the need for institutions, including perhaps most importantly law enforcement agencies–to aggressively root out graft through vigorous prosecution, no matter the circumstances.  What more often goes unsaid, though, is that actually following such strategies may end up being counterproductive.  The aggressive pursuit of corruption-busting litigation can lead to political elites pulling the rug out from underneath the anticorruption agency (ACA).  In South Africa, for example, the National Assembly dissolved the Scorpions, a special investigative unit, once it began going after high-ranking government officials.

As a result of the danger of being undercut, ACAs face an inherent tension in their work: they want to fight corruption to the greatest extent possible, but fighting it too aggressively can lead to the agency’s ability to perform its duties being completely undercut.  How far, then, can an ACA push? Though the unique context of any given ACA means no universal lessons exist, there are some general guidelines ACAs should consider when shaping their anticorruption efforts, if they want to avoid a backlash that ultimately consolidates the power of the corrupt:

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If It Looks Corrupt, It Is Corrupt

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In combatting corruption, how much conduct should be prohibited? This lively issue, implicated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent controversial decision in McCutcheon, is relevant to those drafting reform legislation worldwide. There are two different starting points for analysis. The first approach (call it the traditional view) aims to eliminate only “actual” corrupt behavior: the FCPA, for example, requires that to violate its anti-bribery provision, an act must be done “corruptly.” The second method bans acts that create the appearance of corruption: in the United States, for example, this standard governs the behavior of federal employees and federal judges (except the Justices of the Supreme Court).

My position is that anticorruption law should adopt appearance-based rules that prohibit behavior and relationships giving rise to a (reasonable) appearance of corruption. Under traditional thinking, these laws might be deemed too over-inclusive. However, this post highlights two crucial insights missing from the traditional calculus:

(1) The appearance of corruption creates a real harm to society, independent of the harm from “actual” corrupt behavior; and

(2) Recent empirical work shows that maintaining appearances is important: a decline in the public’s trust in government brings forth an array of nasty behavior from citizens.

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Yes, Corruption Is Bad for Development. No, Corruption Is Not a Western Obsession

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Recently there has been a spate of commentary in the blogosphere that revives a set of tired old canards about corruption and development — the related claims (1) that the focus on corruption and governance in the development discourse is misplaced, because there isn’t a lot of evidence that corruption matters much for development, poverty reduction, etc.; and (2) that anticorruption is a fixation of wealthy, mostly Western countries, because it enables people in those countries congratulate themselves about their moral virtue and to look down on habits and practices in the poor, benighted South. Recent examples include Chris Blattman’s posts on his blog (here, here, and here), Michael Dowdle’s contributions to the Law & Development blog (here and here), and Jason Hickel’s post on Al Jazeera English, though there are others as well.

Sigh. Do we really need to go through this again? OK, look: Yes, there are still lots of unanswered questions about corruption’s causes and consequences, and its significance for various aspects of economic development. And yes, some anticorruption zealots have sometimes over-hyped the role of corruption relative to other factors. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence supports the claim that corruption is a big problem with significant adverse consequences for a range of development outcomes. And the evidence is also quite clear that the focus on corruption as a significant obstacle to development comes as much or more from poor people in poor countries as it does from wealthy Western/Northern elites.

A blog post is not the best format for delving into a very large academic literature on the adverse impacts of corruption. And so the posts to which I’m responding might be forgiven for generally failing to provide much evidence in support of their claims that corruption is relatively unimportant for development, and largely a Western obsession. But, let me at least take a stab at trying to move the conversation beyond unsubstantiated declarations to some assessment of the actual evidence, starting with the impact of corruption on development.

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Do Americans Care About Corruption?

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We usually imagine that democratic accountability serves an important anticorruption function: since voters presumably do not approve of corruption, a benefit of democracy is the ability to give untrustworthy pols the boot. Yet in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Hilary Krieger provocatively claims that American voters don’t really care if a politician engages in corrupt acts, so long as “a political leader has otherwise furthered the public good.” In addition to this descriptive claim, she also makes the normative argument that Americans voters are right not to reflexively vote out politicians tainted by corruption.

Although both her descriptive and normative claims have some truth to them–elections are multi-faceted, and corruption is not the end-all-be-all issue–both the descriptive and normative arguments have serious flaws.

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