(Assignment 2) CORRUPTION IN THE TIMES OF OFFICIAL MOGULS - Akshyah Kumar

The three blog posts reviewed below dwell on the concept of breach of trust by those who are legally entrusted with the collective trust of the entire populace. But the concept of collectivistic trust is problemized in the context of Johnston’s Official Moguls – Nigeria, Indonesia, and China.

Ethnic Patron-clientism is the conceptual frame used by Ms. Jairam in her blog post on Corruption in Nigeria. Trust, as a concept that is exclusive to ethnic communities and exploited by those in positions of power, while capturing the nature of the existing rampant corruption in the African country, is inadequate in explaining its development. The role of imperial colonialism, post-liberal reforms, sudden oil discoveries and expansion of the bureaucracy also play a major role in Nigeria’s corruption story.

A similar approach, using the lens of Fukuyama’s ‘familistic’ associations, as opposed to voluntary associations, among kinship members is used by Ms. Angitha, in her blog post on Indonesia. She argues that this form of particularized trust is a form of corruption because those in positions of power compromise the trust placed on them by those who are not part of his/her kinship community. In this ‘feudalistic political culture’, the concept of generalized trust is alien.

In both the above two cases, corruption as a breach of generalized trust is emphasized. But the argument can be, and is by many theorists, extended as such: the concept of generalized trust is a colonial/western import that was superimposed into an ancient native system based on particularistic trust. This romanticizing of the ancient native systems becomes tricky in the context of another Official Mogul, China.

“’Those who operate within the letter of the law and attract widespread social support’ are riskier than public protestors as their aim is to hold the government accountable by drawing on its own promises’ and hence subjected to repressive measures by the Chinese state, is the baseline of Ms. Govindarajan’s post. This narration forces the reader to expand the ambit of corruption to include strong and repressive ‘rule of law’ against legal activism and civil society. This deviates from the above two narrations: trust in the context of china does not fit into the binaries of generalized and particularized trust. This is because corruption is not based on ethnic boundaries but rather modern constructs like the Party system. So there is breach of trust over the singular Party-State but since there is no other alternative, the breach of trust is most often than not, easily repressed.

In conclusion, “Powerful individuals (Indonesia) and small groups (Nigeria), either dominating undemocratic regimes (China) or enjoying the protection of those who do, use state and personal power ‒ at times, a distinction of little importance ‒ to enrich themselves with impunity” (Johnston, 2012) and thereby, breach the collective trust of the general and majority ‘other’, are considered corrupt by that general collective and not others.