(Assignment 3) Corruption – Diagnosis and Treatment - Charlotte

The author suggests that anti-corruption measures fail if the diagnosis of corruption is not done right, thus making a case against the blind reproduction of anti-corruption instruments in post-communist and post-colonial states. One should identify the typology of corruption – if it is a norm or an exception (p. 91), whether it is an “individual case of infringement” (pp.86) or a “social organization” (pp.87), “what is being corrupted” and “what are the main spoils of corruption” (pp.93) before treating it. Then, we need to organize the losers in the system, institute the norms of universalism, and create incentives to go clean, and then “institute” anti-corrupt mechanisms, instead of only relying on government mechanisms which are the very own vehicles of corruption in these states.

1.     “The argument I advance is that many anticorruption initiatives fail because they are nonpolitical in nature, while most of the corruption in developing and post-communist countries is inherently political.” (pp.86)

2.     “This (universal) definition of corruption rests on the presumption that the state operates under some norm of universalism and that public integrity is understood as equal treatment of citizens.” (pp.87) but particularism.

3.     “Their treatment (of people in a patrimonial state, as opposed to a liberal state) depends on their status or position in society, and people do not even expect to be treated fairly by the state; what they expect is similar treatment to everybody with the same status.”  (pp.88)

4.     Bribery and corruption, then “occurs as a means of circumventing inequality; for the many people with lower status, bribing an official may be the only way to secure equal treatment.” (pp.88)

5.     “Societies in the real world do not all neatly divide into the categories of particularism and universalism, but can be placed on an imaginary continuum between these two poles.”  (p.88) “Within the intermediate category of regimes described above, which I call “competitive particularism”, corruption explodes.” (pp.89)

6.     “The differences among these (competitive particularistic) regimes” “are outweighed by their main similarity—the combination of pre-modern and modern corruption, or rather of old particularism and new corruption. It is this original vicious distribution of influence, not democratization that is to blame for the corruption.” (pp.90)

7.     “The overall message of the anticorruption industry is that corrupt countries should replicate the institutions of clean countries. Many countries, however, have adopted various Western institutions without affecting the core elements of particularism. Particularism cannot be fought by government—that is a contradiction in terms.”(pp.96)

Primary Reference:
Mungiu, Alina. "Corruption: Diagnosis and treatment." Journal of democracy17.3 (2006): 86-99.

Figure 1 On how to diagnose Corruption, Mungiu (pp.94)