The Political Economy of Corruption and Economic Growth: Its Relevance to the Asia and Pacific Region
This paper has tried to present a case for an evolutionary approach to dealing with corruption. The fight against corruption in public life is a long fight and there are no outright victories. It seems to have been present, in some form, at all times: from the earliest empires to nation states today. It seems to also afflict virtually all forms of government: monarchies and empires, military dictatorships and totalitarian dictatorships, pluralist and single party dominated democracies, in strong states as well as weak.
Of course restricting the definition of corruption to private gain from public office leaves out many forms of dishonest behaviour, that is commonly thought of as corruption. If we were to extend this definition to its logical limits to include the dishonest behaviour of corporate managers who defraud shareholders of the company or executives of non-government organisations or political parties who divert collective resources to private holidays and undeserved bonuses the magnitude and frequency of corrupt actions would increase even further.
There are other cases where the current definition leaves much to be desired since it assumes a separation of public from private domain of activity, something which is common to modern democracies but has been unknown for much of human history. When the legitimacy of kings was based on divine right and not on political legitimacy based on popular election or voluntary consent corruption in the modern sense of the word would have little meaning.
The
purpose of this paper is to identify the nature of these concerns and
to find mechanisms that the donor community could employ to respond
creatively to the challenges that are likely to emerge in this domain.
