Conferences
Redesigning the State? Political Corruption in Development Policy and Practice
A conference organised by IDPM, School of Environment and Development (SED), University of Manchester and Global Poverty Research Group (GPRG)
To be held at Dalton Ellis Hall, University of Manchester, UK
Friday 25 November 2005
Background
Political corruption has been central to good governance agendas since the 1990s, and has been recently prioritised by the UK-led Africa Commission as key to reform measures designed to bring Africa out from 'crisis'. The Commission identifies corruption as a "by-product of weak governance" (2005, 142), and as a central cause of underdevelopment and poverty. In its report, Our Common Interest , the Commission recommends that "African governments, together with their development partners, should broaden their investigation of means to address corruption at all levels" (2005, 143), and then summarises that "good governance underlies all development" (2005, 147). So is ending misrule and its manifestation in corruption the central task and panacea for restoring development, as the Commission claim?
This conference will ask why corruption is central, how it works and why poverty is a result. Is political corruption central to undermining development in Africa and beyond? If it is, can we identify corruption, measure it, and take successful measures to reduce or even eliminate it? If the African Commission call for £30 billion in aid per year for 10 years is met how can donors prevent the funds from being wasted by corrupt politicians, civil servants and company executives?
Although the conference seeks primarily to analyse corruption in newer nation states, which are predominantly in Africa, it will also consider papers concerned with corruption in other areas.
Papers will be welcomed on:
- well-researched, empirically-based case studies of political embezzlement and corrupt practice;
- reviews of anti-corruption policy measures and interventions which have impacted on prior levels of political corruption;
- analyses of the particular methodological problems of researching in this area, whether these, for example, concern qualitative judgement and moral relativism; the efficacy of constructivism; endogeneity of factors causing corruption; or relate to problems of quantification of scales and indicators and their accuracy or otherwise.
We will also welcome papers on the following themes:
Political corruption and development projects
The codification of institutional norms and moral assumptions within international finance institutions (IFIs) often leads to accusations of political corruption directed at elites in newer states. Yet in sponsoring concessionary finance do donors contribute to the opportunities for political corruption? How far are donor-sponsored contractors involved in corruption and do contracting procedures conform to transparent selection criteria? Alternatively, are arbitrary rules formed in order to secure donor friendly contractors? Is political corruption the inevitable accusation when indigenous economic and political elites replicate concessionary processes and arbitrary pricing, and/or when indigenous elites are forced to justify rapid wealth accumulation as a consequence of donor sponsored projects?
Global institutions and cultural and political discourses on corruption
The conference will analyse the moral assumptions of liberalism and deviations from liberal institutional norms practised by Third World elites in terms of processes of class formation and nation-building - without sliding into a romanticised justification for theft. How far are good governance criteria and political conditionalities on donor financing a universal standard or moral code, or how far do they dictate and proscribe the actions and actors within the development space? What possibilities exist for solidaristic donor policy conditionalities aimed at reducing political corruption? Can such policy avoid interfering with political sovereignty or the development project contracts legitimately won by indigenous business people (whether or not they are connected to government)?
Corruption within concessionary market spaces and government practice
How do policies on empowerment, indigenisation, and state-sponsored business codify private gain from public resources in a legitimate and transparent way? Where are the boundaries between illegitimate as opposed to rightful beneficiaries of a public monetary transfer? With a number of African countries struggling with historic patterns of highly unequal wealth distribution, how is public policy aimed at wealth redistribution distinguished from patrimonial practices of using state resources to finance an emergent postcolonial elite and state class? Can they be distinguished from each other, or are they inevitably interlinked?
Political corruption and governance
Political corruption is a key concern at the current time, particularly because of the impasse within the technologies of governance intervention more generally. This impasse encompasses a continued donor concern with bad governance combined with a lacuna over the legitimacy of political conditionality (partly embedded in post modernism).
In terms of political corruption, donor concern remains over mis-spent funds, but attempts to induce fiscal transparency seem to demand a deepened interventionism which sits uneasily with notions of partnership. Thus, efforts to reduce overt conditionality enacted on erring elites coexists in a contradictory manner with the desire to express solidarity with the downtrodden populations of the poor and dispossessed suffering under corrupt and authoritarian government. With the relationship between bad governance and continued poverty an axiom of development policy, what particular role does political corruption play in the sustenance of poverty and ill-being, and what can different stakeholders do to reduce corruption?
Over and above contemporary accounts of particular incidences or processes of political corruption the conference will have a further theoretical purpose. The aim is to re-interrogate the meaning of political corruption by analysing it within two particular contexts in which arbitrary behaviour is concentrated: within social processes of state sponsored 'market building' and within donor-financed interventions, although these contexts are not themselves mutually exclusive.
In particular, the conference will aim to understand the relationship between political corruption and nation-state practices in Africa and Asia, since it is within the context of new state formations and within development projects which seek to underwrite and expand states and markets that opportunities for systemic corrupt practices are particularly apparent.
Political corruption and state theory
However, the purpose of this exploration is not to assume that a deficient post-colonial state is central to an explanation of political corruption, but rather to explore how contestation over state boundaries and functions contributes to political and economic spaces in which corruption can flourish. The conference will consider how theories of 'failed states', patrimonialism and postcoloniality affect the centrality of the liberal state as the basis from which theories of corruption are invariably derived. In short, there is a need to (re)contextualise public service and government behaviour in the context of class formation and nation-building in particular countries.
Within this theoretical theme, papers may also explore regional, national or local historical contexts of 'underdevelopment' in which the state has disciplined social and economic processes of wealth distribution and accumulation in ways that have attracted moral opprobrium or the accusation of corruption to explore how nefarious practice is discursively and/or materially formed.
The state in this enquiry is understood as having a global frontier, contested boundaries, discursive moments and a political space in which non-national actors, such as international development institutions, may have a central role and considerable political power. Thus, when economic development is pursued through the state a negotiation over participation and benefits takes place in which institutional norms and values regulate the behaviour of both indigenous and non-national participants, and in which conflicts inevitably emerge. How are these conflicts to be resolved?
Endnotes
It is envisaged that about a third to a half of the papers will be theoretical, while the others will be based on case studies, although the two categories may overlap. There will also be a fairly even divide between those papers which focus on empirical context and those which analyse policy.
A novel subject area of the conference will be analysis of donor-supported projects and the behaviour of development finance institutions, both bilateral and multilateral, in providing or policing opportunities for political corruption.
Contributions from NGOs - large and small - and from public institutions working in this field are also welcome.