Transitions to Clean Government: Amnesty as an Anticorruption Measure

Abstract

Anti-corruption research has been dominated by inquiries into the formal structures of clean governance, while the actual process of changing the culture of corruption has been overlooked. This paper views ‘transition to clean government’ as a conceptual parallel to ‘democratisation’ and anti-corruption measures as instances of transitional justice. Contrary to the mainstream scholarship, it argues that: (1) Measures that lead to clean government differ from measures that contribute to its maintenance; and (2) amnesty may play a crucial role in establishing clean government, if it inspires a change in political culture. To illustrate its propositions, this paper applies the literature on transitional justice and democratisation to anti-corruption strategies and re-examines the particular circumstances surrounding amnesty in Hong Kong's successful transformation into one of the cleanest governments in Asia.

Notes

¹For instance, the Czech Republic and Poland were committed to the project of the European integration before they joined the European Union (EU). After they joined the EU, they tried to block the Lisbon Treaty that postulated further integration (see BBCnews.com 8 October 2009a, 2009b).

²The distinction may, on occasion, be blurred because clean government and corrupt government are ideal-typical categories. Corruption may exist in government that is largely clean and, vice versa, honest officials may be found within corrupt governments. There may be a limit to why corruption will never cease to exist. Acting in a corrupt way may be the best strategy in the environment where nobody else is corrupt because nobody would imagine such behaviour (Elster 1989, 104–5). In reality, however, it is possible to distinguish different social patterns of corruption, for instance, between Norway and Bangladesh.

³Naturally, some amnesties have been labelled ‘whitewashes’ to allow ruling elites to absolve their wrongdoings, especially in the transitions from above. Nevertheless, even in these cases, the purpose of amnesty is to separate two states of affairs.

⁴An almost identical citation was found in Lo (1993, 97).

⁵The legal power of this decision was dubious. The amnesty had to retrospectively legalised by the Legislative Council and became law on 16 February 1978 (ICAC 1978, 18 at 3.8).

⁶According to the Chinese Sing Tao (6 November 1977, 1), the amnesty was announced two months earlier than planned. According to Wong (1981), the issue of amnesty remained more or less prominent in public debate in the interim period between 1975 and 1977.

⁷Amnesty conditional on the exchange of information, similar to the South African amnesty process or the Polish lustration system (David 2006; David and Holliday 2006), may create uncertainty among the corrupt. It effectively breaks the relationships of trust within the members of a criminal network.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roman David

Roman David is Lecturer in Politics, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle, United Kingdom. He thanks Professor Susanne Y.P. Choi and two anonymous referees for their comments on this paper, and the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which provided support in finalising the paper during his sabbatical leave. The original versions of this paper were presented at the APISA Congress in Hong Kong in 2005 and at the annual meeting of the Law & Society Association in Berlin 2007.