It is apparent that to effectively confront the problem of corruption, integrated preventive, repressive and educational approaches must be institutionalized and implemented. Repressive anticorruption policies will be ineffective if such policies do not tackle the root causes or sources for the corrupt opportunities. On the other hand, preventive anticorruption policies may fail if the potential offenders are not deterred by failing to effectively detect, sanction or punish the corrupt behaviour.
The repressive and preventive strategies, however, may also fail if people tolerate the corrupt acts and they themselves are corrupt and have become the sources of corruption; thus, these strategies must be integrated with the educational strategies.
However, the above anticorruption measures may not completely picture the reality of other available alternative anticorruption measures. These measures emphasize more on state-centric, top-down approaches in fighting corruption, thus disregarding any other possibilities of attacking the problem. The state-centric anticorruption measures therefore assume that only the state can or has the capacity to fix the problem.
The fundamental problem is, what if the state itself is dysfunctional or fails to perform its functions, for example in case of a failed state due to systemic widespread corruption, such as Indonesia under the New Order regime at the end of its collapse? As has been theoretically and empirically argued, corruption is a symptom of dysfunctionality of state institutions. In a failed, corrupt state, where the institutional structures and processes of implementing and enforcing anticorruption policies are defective and dysfunctional, the state-centric, top-down anticorruption measures may be ineffective or even fail in controlling corruption.
In this difficult situation, the state itself is the integral part of the problem, not the solution. Moreover, in a country with widespread, systemic and pervasive corruption, implementation of anticorruption measures is problematic (Manion 2004:22), or perhaps impossible, to some extent, because the state itself is dysfunctional or incapable of performing its functions, including its ability to combat corruption.
Therefore, in this problematic situation there are, and should be, other alternative measures to combat corrupt behaviour. In reality, in my view and observations, the available alternative anticorruption measures confronting the failed corrupt state are revolution, social pressure, coup de Etat, and international intervention. I categorize revolution and coup de etat as ‘radicalism’, and international intervention as ‘internationalism’.
Radicalism is the belief that ‘normal’ measures of anticorruption will not work to combat systemic corruption; therefore, ‘abnormal’ or radical measures have to be taken. Internationalism as movement, international policy or strategy believes that the problem of corruption and its effects have now become globalized, thus global anticorruption measures must be pursued. Revolution and social pressure as anticorruption alternative measures are more bottom up and people-centric approaches in combating corruption.
Revolution and coup de etat combat systemic widespread corruption by radically changing, usually by forces, a corrupt government and its corrupt political system?most of the cases, an authoritarian political system?and its rulers into a clean government and democratic political system.
For revolution, the collapses of the corrupt communist regimes in East Europe, the Marcos’s regime in the Philipines, and the authoritarian New Order regime in Indonesia, by massive demonstrations, ‘people power’, or social revolution, and the change of these regimes by relatively democratic governments and political systems may be classified in this alternative anticorruption strategy . The real examples of coup de etat as an alternative measure to fight against widespread corruption are perhaps the military coups in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Thailand.
Social pressure is a social movement, ussualy led and organized by civil society organizations or public interest groups, to pressure a corrupt government regime to control chronic corruption problem and to institutionalize good governance without necessarily involving the use of physical forces and the change of regimes. The social anticorruption movements in some Latin American countries, for instances, can be categorized in this anticorruption measure.
‘Internationalism’ as an alternative option to fix the problem of corruption is systematically organized efforts and pressures by international financial institutions, donor countries, or states to change and reform?to some extent by economic and political forces and influences?the corrupt governments and their economic and political systems of other countries into more democratic political systems and clean governments. The use of the economic influence or pressure by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to ‘force’ corrupt regimes to adopt anticorruption measures, and the adoption, ratification, and implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption and other anticorruption conventions by OECD and Latin American countries, are primary real examples of this anticorruption approach.
Having examined such alternative anticorruption measures the big, crucial question is, if we believe that the ‘new’ Indonesia under the reform government is classified as a failed state with corrupt, dysfunctional government, can this state or government combat its chronic and systemic corruption? Will this regime face radical anticorruption and antigovernment movements and fall down just like the New Order regime? The answer will very much depend on how the ruling elites and political leaders learn from history.
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*Corruption analyst
• VIVAnews
