International Cooperation Against Corruption
| Author | Robert Klitgaard |
| Position | Dean and Ford Distinguished Professor of International Development and Security at The RAND Graduate School, Santa Monica, California |
| Pages | 3-6 |
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Combating corruption is such a difficult and sensitive issue that many national political leaders who support such ef forts in principle are hesitant to undertake them in practice. How can international cooperation help build support for fighting corruption, both nationally and globally?
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VIRTUALLY all forms of corruption are proscribed by virtually all countries. Why, then, don't countries take more steps to reduce corruption? If countries have trouble fighting corruption, it may be because they lack sufficient will or sufficient local capacities, such as proper strategies and structures (including incentives), to prevent corruption. In some instances, local capacities are constrained by costs, in others by a lack of know-how, and in still others by insufficient efforts to devise strategies to combat corruption.
International cooperation can help individual countries to develop the necessary will and capacities. This article proposes several new initiatives in which international cooperation could play crucial roles in combating corruption. One is the sponsorship of regional diagnostic studies. Countries would cooperate in organizing and funding, and then share the results of, private sector studies of systematic corruption in several areas (such as procurement, health care, and courts). These studies would help identify systematic improvements that might be made and suggest how to ensure the permanence of improvements through monitoring.
The article also proposes holding a "contest" among developing countries to see which could develop the best national strategies for reducing corruption. Regional seminars could broach the idea of developing a national strategy against corruption and provide examples of how this might be done, and technical assistance could help countries that wished to enter the contest to design their proposals. The winners (perhaps one or two countries for each continent) would be rewarded with seven years of sustained and additional aid. The rest of the world would learn from the good ideas generated by the contest, many of which could be implemented even in the absence of extraordinary international assistance.
In Belgium and the United Kingdom, Japan and Italy, Russia and Spain, and other countries, allegations of corruption play a more central role in politics today than at any time in recent memory. Corruption is hardly a problem exclusive to developing countries or countries in transition. It is true that in Venezuela a local dictionary of corruption has been published in two volumes (Diccionario de la corrupción en Venezuela, 1989). But it is also true that a French author put together something similar for his country (Gaetner, 1991). Probably every country could publish a similar work.
The fact that much corruption in developing countries has important industrial country participation is now a commonplace. The nongovernmental organization Transparency International focuses on corruption in "international business transactions" and points out that there are First World givers of many Third World bribes. In coming years, the World Trade Organization is likely to find that this issue is a central one.
The reminder that corruption exists everywhere-in the private as well as the public sector, in rich countries and poor-is salutary, because it helps us avoid unhelpful stereotypes. But to contextualize the discussion is not to end it. In fact, noting that corruption is widespread may convey its own unhelpful subliminal messages. It may suggest, for example, that all forms and instances of corruption are equally harmful.
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Even more perniciously, it may lead less discerning listeners or readers to the conclusion that because corruption exists in every country, nothing can be done about it where they live. Consider the analogies to pollution or disease. Both phenomena may be observed everywhere, but their extent and patterns of incidence differ radically among various regions, countries, and localities. Questions of degree and kind are crucial, and this is also true of corruption. No one would conclude, for example, that because water pollution and AIDS exist in every country that nothing can or should be done to reduce them.
Corruption is a term with many meanings. The beginning of wisdom on the issue is to subdivide and analyze its many components. Viewed most broadly, corruption is the misuse of office for unofficial ends. The catalogue of corrupt acts includes-- but is not limited to-bribery, extortion, influence peddling, nepotism, fraud, the use of "speed money" (money paid to government officials to speed up their consideration of a business matter falling within their jurisdiction), and embezzlement. Although people tend to think of corruption as a sin of government, it also exists in the private sector. Indeed, the private sector is involved in most government corruption.
Different varieties of corruption are not equally harmful. Corruption that undercuts the rules of the game-for example, the justice system, or property rights, or banking and credit-devastates economic and political development. Corruption that allows polluters to foul rivers or hospitals to extort exorbitant or improper payments from patients can be environmentally and socially corrosive. In comparison, providing some speed money to get quicker access to public services and engaging in mild irregularities in campaign financing are less damaging.
Of course, the extent of corruption also...
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