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Robert Manchin:
Democracy - corruption. Is there a link?
The Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding
Integrity II (The Hague
28-31 May 2001).
Thesises on the workshop I: Integrity and Governance
sub-session 5.: Democracy and Integrity
May 29th
Corruption / integrity
- Trust - honesty - loyalty
different at the personal and
the social level
- One-time shift
rearrangement of social norms
rapture
Great Transformation?
- Who are the winners and the losers? Do perceptions differ?
- Kompromat politics
- In EE those who lost their privileges are the main
proponents of a corrupt state
- Politics as mass entertainment / shock
Corruption - in post-socialist transitions
- Is this special
and if it is
what is the best explanatory
framework for understanding the relation between Corruption
State and Democracy?
- Change of "politics as usual" in Austria
Italy
Germany
France
- Are 40 / 70 / 400 / 1000 years of history the best
cultural
explanatory framework?
- The Oligarch hypothesis and the post-Leninist analysis
of the nature of State
Trust
Civil Society -Good or Bad?
- Is a high level of trust necessary for developing a well-functioning
public service infrastructure
or is it the other way around?
- Balkan and other cultures have high levels of interpersonal
trust and dense social networks / baksish / bribe is based
on trust
- A functioning business culture is based on rich
mutual
non-formal
personal exchanges - so does any criminal and
corrupt network
Two views of social networks
- Condition of functioning democracies; rich interpersonal
trust-based interactions
developed civil society
- Exchanges need to be rule-based
non-discretionary
impersonal
transparent
- Destroying local
personal networks is in the interest
of those outside these networks who wish to gain access
to resources based on different norms / rules
Who defines corruption?
- Is civil society the ultimate barrier to global market
forces?
- Is corruption the ideology of global investors? - if the
main problem with corrupt states is that corruption hinders
foreign investment
and consequently economic growth
one
can talk about a "Washington" view of corruption
- Central anti-corruption drives have little to do with
democracy - China
Russia
Singapore…
Institutions or morals?
- Good governance
Weberian bureaucracy
clean judiciary
- INSTITUTIONS DO MATTER
but
- Public morals have to support institutions
- Social norms are not created by institutions only
o Education
socialization
personal honesty
- Macroeconomic situations - corruption happens both
in buyer's and seller's markets
- A legacy of Marxist culture - ridicule "moralizing"
no moral judgment or positive thinking
OK
now what?
- Corrumpare = to break something
- Only shared social norms can be broken.
- Keep up the moral outrage - keep an engaged citizenry.
No trust / no loyalty - no loyalty to democratic ideals
- no social control / breakdown or failure to build democracy
- Avoid general "perception-reinforcing" media-based campaigns
and develop institution-level monitoring social technologies.
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