Upholding public institutions in the midst of conflicts: the threat of political corruption

ABSTRACT

Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centrepiece of institutional reconstruction programmes. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal anticorruption standards and punitive measures. We offer a normative critical discussion of this approach, particularly when it is initiated and sustained by external entities. We recast the focus from an outward to an inward perspective on institutional action and failure centred on the institutional interactions between officeholders. In so doing, we offer the normative tools to reconceptualize anticorruption in terms of an institutional ethics of ‘office accountability’ that draws on an institution’s internal resources of self-correction as per the officeholders’ interrelated work.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict
• institutional reconstruction
• political corruption
• institutional ethics
• office accountability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ A previous version of this paper was presented at a workshop at the University of Oxford. We are grateful to the participants for their comments. We are also indebted to Riccardo Ceva and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their contributions to improving the article.

² For example, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the Doha Declaration identifies corruption-resistant public institutions as crucial to good governance (https://www.unodc.org/documents/congress/Declaration/V1504151_English). This preoccupation has led, among other initiatives, to the United Nations Security Council’s ‘First-Ever Meeting on Corruption’ in September 2018, as well as the recognition of the battle against corruption as one of the crucial components for achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development(https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12017.doc.htm).

³ Given the focus on political corruption and the reconstruction of public institutions in the aftermath of conflicts, we shall not discuss the qualifications that may extend our considerations to such private organizations as corporations or private associations. While we recognize the role of these entities in reconstruction programmes, our discussion focuses on the social and political institutions of the state. Any extension of our study requires a separate work, which accounts for both the analogies and the disanalogies across the different domains.

⁴ The institutional dimension of corruption has been widely discussed from a teleological perspective by Thompson (2018), Lessig (2018), Miller (2017), and, with reference to the context of democracies, Warren (2004).

⁵ While, for Miller, institutional goals are collective, they are also upheld by each institutional role occupant individually; in this sense, his view of institutional action is reductionist.

⁶ We hereby reject a collectivist methodology (see, e.g. Bratman 2014; Gilbert 2000), but embrace an approach that shares a family resemblance with Larry May’s concept of interdependence and its emphasis on relationships and social structures (May 1997).

⁷ For a discussion and a typology, see Philp 2009.

⁸ Data from the Global Peace Index 2020 (https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GPI_2020_web.pdf#:~:text=GLOBAL%20PEACE%20INDEX%202020%20%20%7C%20%20,the%20measure%2C%20in%20the%20GPI%E2%80%99s%20case%2C%20global%20peace) compared with Corruption Perceptions Index 2020 (Berlin: Transparency International, 2020: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/nzl).

⁹ For some examples, within the framework of the UNDP’s mission (https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/democratic-governance-and-peacebuilding/responsive-and-accountable-institutions/anti-corruption/) see the Global Anti-Corruption Initiative (GAIN – 2014-2017: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/democratic-governance/anti-corruption/undp-global-anti-corruption-initiative–gain–2014-2017.html).

¹⁰ Discussions of the costs of political corruption can be found, among others, in Uslaner 2015. In the context of anticorruption measures, see Rose-Ackerman and Palifka 2016.

¹¹ For a characterization and an analysis of ‘colour revolutions,’ see (Mitchell 2014).

¹² For a general presentation of the programme, see https://www.oecd.org/mena/governance/; for the Tunisian initiative, see https://www.oecd.org/mena/governance/anti-corruption-tunisia.htm. Some observers have pointed out that one main failure in dismantling corrupted networks is the persistent relation between local kleptocratic elites and foreign interest (see, e.g. Anderson 2011). In such cases, mobilizing and sustaining new ethical resources from within an institution may be the only viable path for discarding and changing those relations.

¹³ For a discussion of whistleblowing as an answerability anticorruption practice of this kind see Ceva and Bocchiola 2018; Ceva and Ferretti 2021: chapter 5.

¹⁴ Some experimental studies have casted doubts on the proficiency of this methodology in actually preventing corrupt practices as they risk reproducing in decision making officeholders’ asymmetries of power, see for example Schikora 2011; Lambsdorff and Frank 2011. Such remarks are important to assess the efficiency of the particular method to initiate a critical reflection about the cluster of accountability practices into which the institutional ethics of office accountability we have defended could (or could not) be translated in specific circumstances.

¹⁵ For example, for an account of e-Taxation and e-Procurement project in Croatia, see Council of Europe 2006, 89.