(Assignment 2) Angitha SM

1.     Corruption in Bangladesh – Isha’s Blog post

This post tries to analyze the characteristics of corruption in Bangladesh using major corruption scandals happened in the country. The author finds few common facts across these scandals. One being multiple levels of bribery in each scandal and the other undue influence of powerful individuals. She also identifies government inaction as one of the prominent features in all the three cases considered for analysis. Though there is an undue influence of powerful individuals, the case of Bangladesh cannot be just limited to the syndromes of oligarchs and clans. The author rightly points out that in Bangladesh, corruption is not restricted to an exclusive elite network but extends across the interactions of state, market and civil society. Tackling corruption is also not that easy in Bangladesh because of the inaccessibility of justice due to the weak enforcement of laws.

The author also asses that for an effective change, first there must be committed political leadership in all institutional structures.

2.     Cases from Philippines – Sreedhar Vinayak’s Blog post 

The author uses three different corruption cases from Philippines and fits Philippines into the categorization in Michael Johnston’s Syndromes of Corruption, under ‘Oligarchs and Clans’. Through this cases, he demonstrates how their characteristics perfectly mirrors the properties of oligarchs and clans where a relatively small number of individuals use wealth, political power and violence to contend over major stakes and to reward their followers. The author identifies the major players in the scam as relatively small number of elites and their extended personal clans which shows these are clear cases of cronyism and nepotism which can be analyzed using the social trust of Fukuyma. The set of social capital which is the trust that exists between the family members being more than the trust between non-kinship relations resulting in doing favors to the immediate relatives than the public as a whole.

3.     Corruption in Nigeria – Nandini’s Blog Post

Through this post, the author is trying to provide an overview of corruption in Nigeria through a framework of social mechanism that influences these cases. The author identifies mainly two types of corruption and relates these forms to the social norms and structures of Nigeria. The first one being to extract rents from the state in forms of bribery, nepotism and cronyism and the second, to preserve power in the forms of political patronage and judicial corruption. The author takes the argument of Daniel Smith that patron-clientelism is the basis of Nigeria’s political economy and society. The author points out and shows through the case studies that the citizens of Nigeria are more likely to look for support from their own community. This clearly shows the lack of social trust outside the ‘familistic’ associations and on the bureaucracy of the state. Thus, the author takes this as given that it is understood that a person holding a position within the government is expected to employ others from his own community and to spend public money that benefits his/her community. This evidently shows how and why there is a lack of efficient allocation of public resources while trying to please one’s own community.