(Assignment 2) Nandini JB

In this assignment I will be looking at three different blog posts focusing on Peru, Indonesia and North Korea.

Case of Peru

The post starts with providing a history of the political and economic situation in Peru and how the Fujimori government came into power. It goes on to explain about how the “Fujishock’ helped to bring the economy under control. It later explains about the video scandal which shook the country, where Vladimiro Montesinos, the intelligence service head was seen bribing his oppositions and media.

The post argues that there has been a shift in the recent instances of corruption to a more local level and that the increased decentralized governance can be a contributing factor. The post rightly points out that Johnston’s definition on ‘ Oligarchs and Clans’ only holds true for the first decade of Fujimori’s rule. The post provides very good examples of corrupt practices to support its arguments, such as the ‘glass of milk’ case.

The post concludes by putting forth the question of decentralizing governance and quoting Aristotle’s idea on politics.

Case of Indonesia

The post starts of by providing Fukuyama’s concept of social capital and trust.it goes on to introduce the concepts of social capital, i.e., ‘familistic associations’ and ‘voluntary associations’. This is then connected with idea of trust within members of the society and how it depends on the values and moral standards of the society they belong to.

The post then provides three instances of corruption in Indonesia, such as charity organizations established by Suharto which was actually funded by tax money, which then turned out to be a channel for embezzlement.

These examples show the lack of second social capital (voluntary association) which Fukuyama talked about. It rightly points out there in an increased sense of ‘familistic associations’ where close relatives are engaged in corruption as they have more sense of sharing. The corruption is based on loyalty and the post concludes by noting that Indonesia is a democracy with a feudalistic political culture.

Case of North Korea

The post has dealt with the case of the most corrupt nation alongside of Somalia. It describes North Korea as a hermit nation with its censorship policy within and outside the country

It talks about the two types of corruption found in North Korea, being the Human right abuse and the government’s illicit activities. And one of the drawbacks explicitly mentioned in the essay is that of the unreliability of the statistics which comes out of the state and very censored

The political system works under nepotism and the post rightly points this out by the example of Kim Jong un succeeding his father. It also mentions the fact that the corruption of public officials can lead to denial of human rights such as lack of freedom of speech, public executions, and censorships. It rightly points out the contradiction in its constitution which tells that it is a ‘dictatorship of the people of the republic’