VIVAnews - There are various different measures to combat corruption. It is crucial that we have to understand the nature of these measures to combat chronic corruption problem in Indonesia. Larmour and Wolanin categorized these measures into three different strategies: interventionism, managerialism, and organizational integrity.
These three approaches are specifically designed to curb corruption within agencies. Interventionism is an ex post ‘curative’ crime or corruption control approach, assuming that society is protected by enforcing laws.
This is done, for instance, by increasing the probability of detection, punishment and severity of the penalties imposed so that the potential and actual offenders are repressed of and deterred from committing or recommitting crimes or corruption.
On the other hand, managerialism model employs ex ante ‘preventive’ anticorruption measures by reducing the opportunities for corrupt behavior through the establishment of appropriate systems and management processes. The Klitgaard’s formula that Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability may suggest this managerialist approach.
This approach is employed by reducing corrupt opportunities through demonopolization or privatization?allowing the working of competitive market?and by establishing of clear, transparent and accountable decision-making processes of allocating the public goods and services.
Organizational integrity approaches of corruption control require the integration of corruption control strategies and ethical standards into an organization’s operational systems. In other words, as Larmour and Wolanin say ‘it is about establishing a social norm in an organization which accurately defines and resists corruption’.
The term ‘integrity’ is analogous to the structural integrity of a building. Thus, an organization has integrity if it can resist corruption in all of its operational systems. The Transparency International’s national integrity system anti-corruption approach may be classified into this category.
The ultimate goal of this system is to make corruption a “high risk” and “low return” undertaking by strengthening the structural organizational integrity of the state’s pillars, such the executive, the legislature, and the judicial system.
This approach was built on the John Braithwaite’s notions of reintegrative shaming. He said that the dynamics of shame in the society largely govern the incidence of deviance such as crime and corruption.
Hence, if society does not subject criminal or corrupt behavior to shame, the crime or corrupt behavior would flourish and tend to internalize as a group’s norm.
Gillespie and Okruhlik classified the anticorruption strategies or ‘corruption cleanups’ as societal, legal, market, and political strategies. Societal strategies essentially target to changing people’s attitudes and values from tolerance to intolerance to corruption through education, ethichal norms, and public vigilance.
Legal strategies focus on the use of sanctioning mechanisms to deter and repress corrupt behaviour or activities through the enforcement of legal codes by increasing the effectiveness and probability of detection, punishment, and imposed penalties.
On the other hand, market strategies stress the functioning of competitive market forces in the allocations of public goods and services through, for instance, deregulation and debureaucratization of public policies.
Finally, political strategies direct their tactics to control the use of public powers through, for example, the institutionalization of good governance in policy-making and decision-making processes.
Jeremy Pope, one of the founders of Transparancey International, categorized anticorruption reforms into four categories: prevention, enforcement, public awareness, and institution building?each targets to increase the risks or costs, and to decrease the incentives or profits, of the corrupt undertaking.
Prevention measures confront the problem of corruption by reducing the opportunities for the evil behaviour, through, to name some, the simplification of governmental process?for instance, deregulation and debureaucratization; privatization, institutionalization of vertical and horizontal accountability or good governance in the public management sector, transparency and public participation in decision-making process, and coalition building.
Enforcement strategies, comparable to the interventionism and legal strategies, focus their tactics on enhancing the likelihood and effectiveness of detection, punishment, and imposed penalties of the corrupt activities. For this purpose, therefore, it is essential to have an independent judicial and enforcement system. Rule of law must be enforced.
Furthermore, some legal measures may be proposed: enactment of free information, whistle-blower, free press, and judicial review laws; effective powers of investigation, prosecution, and adjudication; arrangements for extradition and international mutual legal assistance; reversed burden of proof and effective laws of evidence; and the use of civil remedies to forfeit the corrupt assets.
Public awareness measures, similar to the societal strategies, target the resources and tactics to engender anticorruption values, ethics, norms, and attitudes into the public’s mind, thus empowering them to fight or not tolerate the corrupt behaviour. Conducive legal, administrative, and societal environments must be created to facilitate these efforts.
Lastly, institution building approaches, like the organizational integrity strategies, aim their efforts at increasing the quality, integrity, capacity, and effectiveness of anticorruption and governance institutions in combating corruption.
Some of the initiatives that can be implemented are: creation of effective and independent audit; establishment of judicial, ombudsman, electoral, and anticorruption institutions with manifest integrity and adequate staff, resources, and powers; institutionalization of ethical norms and rules of conduct; sound and competitive procurement; and transparent and accountable decision-making process.
Essentially, all the above anticorruption approaches can be categorized into three typologies: preventive, repressive and educational strategies. Preventive measures?managerialism, organizational integrity, market, political, and institution building strategies?are basically ex ante strategies to prevent the problem of corruption from occurring in the first place. These are done by eliminating or reducing the opportunities, incentives or benefits?social, political, economic and institutional?for engaging in corrupt behaviour or activities.
On the other hand, repressive measures, such as interventionism, legal, and enforcement strategies, are essentially ex post approaches to fix the problem of corruption which has already occurred. The typical measures are to detect and sanction the corrupt behaviour in order to punish corrupt actors and deter potential offenders from committing the corrupt acts.
However, the implementation of repressive measures may reinforce the preventive strategies by surfacing their shortcomings that may then be fixed in the preventive stage.
Finally, educational approaches?societal and public awareness strategies?target their strategies to educate and change people’s attitudes, norms, and values from tolerance to intolerance to corrupt behavior.
Although these strategies contain some elements of corruption prevention, they focus more on tackling the supply side of the corruption problem external to the organizational settings of government.
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The writer is an Assistant to Head of the Indonesia Presidential Working Unit for Program Management and Reform; the opinions in this article are personal views of the writer?robybrata@yahoo.com
