1. Rushabh Menon: Kenya during Moi’s Regime
In this essay, Mr Menon examines how
corruption functioned in Kenya during Moi’s regime. He asserts that Kenya during Moi’s regime was an example of
the “Official Moguls” syndrome of corruption.
The effects of this syndrome include weak institutions and undemocratic
rule which allow a small coterie of insiders to profit illegitimately at the
expense of the rest of the county.
He gives three examples of corrupt
transactions that were facilitated by regime insiders who in turn made a lot of
money. He attempts to equate some of these examples with Indian examples to
make them more relatable.
Though he is constrained by the word limit
of his assignment, Mr Menon makes sound arguments and manages to provide data
to back up some the assertions that he makes. That is more than can be said for
many of his colleagues.
2. Varun Murthy:
Russia
Given Russia’s unique geopolitical situation,
it is usually unwise to try to force it within any framework or category of
analysis. Mr Murthy, thankfully, does not try to do so. Whether it was because of the above reason or
because he did not read the assignment rules carefully is not clear. He asserts
that corruption, whether through influence trading or outright scamming, is
necessary for Russia to stay together, that regional governments should be
given what they want so that National integrity is maintained.
In his two three examples of corruption
scandals, Mr Murthy uses sport-related examples (for that is what he is most
familiar with) to show how corrupt practices permeate every level of the
Russian sporting bureaucracy and athletic community, as well as the many and
varied ways in which Russians do corrupt things.
It is in his third example that Mr Murthy
falls flat, however. He ought not to have listed the 2005 Anti-Corruption drive
as an example. Mr Murthy asserts that
levels of corruption in Russia are too high to make a purge effective. That
does not belong in an example. The example is not about a corrupt transaction
or a scandal in any form, when it should have been. Mr Murthy also does not
cite any references throughout the paper, which makes the task of fact checking
his assertions a little more difficult.
3. Akshyah Kumar : Corruption in Italy
Ms Kumar once again, does not attempt to
use the Syndromes of Corruption framework, instead relying on other scholarly
theories to make her case.
She uses Banfield’s Amoral Familialism and
the Italian ideas of Nepotismo and Clientismo
, in addition to data about Italy’s North South Divide to make an argument that
while corruption in Italy is hard to understand, some theories can help lay
readers and academics make sense of some of the phenomena. She gives examples
from the Parentopoli scandal and Berlusconi’s regime to illustrate
how these theories operate in the real world.
While Ms Kumar’s paper begins with the
theories she intends to use and concludes with examples, a proper introduction
and conclusion would have helped her case enormously, as while she writes very
well, but the paper comes across as incoherent and aimless at times without an
overarching structure.
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