{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Is corruption a moral or political problem?

http://www.observer.ug/viewpoint/41412-is-corruption-a-moral-or-political-problem

Is corruption a moral or political problem?

Written by MOSES KHISA

Last Updated: 03 December 2015

This question was a subject of heated debate on social media in reaction to video-recorded remarks by General David Sejusa, Uganda's controversial former coordinator of intelligence services.

A few weeks back, someone who easily matches Sejusa in combining intellectual brilliance with a gratuitous controversial streak, Andrew Mwenda, attracted strident condemnation when he asserted that corruption may not necessarily impede economic growth and transformation. I return to this in a moment.

Hate or love him, there is no gainsaying Sejusa's incredibly brilliant and fine-minded interpretation of key political questions. Yet it remains a disheartening hallmark of the Yoweri Museveni reign that someone with the nimble mind of General Sejusa rolled himself in the mud while at the service of an authoritarian ruler to the utter detriment of his own name.

In large part, because of his known role in the excesses of the Museveni regime and his flip-flopping opposition to the same regime, Sejusa today has a huge credibility deficit. But here is a guy with a first-rate grasp of the key political problems we face.

In the recording that made rounds on social media last week, Sejusa makes a most apt observation about corruption, noting that even if we disregarded the immorality of corruption; this monster of a problem can nevertheless lead to the disintegration of the state and breakdown of social order.

Sejusa's suggestion that we could well think of corruption not as a moral but political problem understandably drew protests, notably from Amos Kasibante, a keen and perceptive commentator on Ugandan politics.

I suspect that Sejusa appreciates that certain forms of corruption are morally reprehensible. But the bigger argument he sought to underscore is that with the current system of rule in Uganda built on rampant and institutionalized corruption, there is a grave danger of running down the entire state system in a selfish struggle for spoils, the upshot of which would be state collapse and social disorder. Congo next door is an archetypal case.

The scale and magnitude of looting public resources in Uganda, using public offices to accumulate personal fortunes, and disregarding societal common good in pursuit of private ends is profoundly subversive. This is quite apart from the kind of corruption Andrew Mwenda was referring to, which under specific conditions does little harm to economic growth and can in fact facilitate productive economic activity.

Mwenda's rather cozy and controversial association with State House Entebbe and Kigali makes many Ugandans overly suspicious and hostile to whatever argument he makes, regardless of the merits therein. His own hostility against critics and easy dismissal of arguments he disagrees with has only compounded matters.

Mwenda's point, which has been the subject of a large corpus of scholarly research, is that, under certain circumstances, certain forms of corruption are morally repugnant but economically benign. That is, they are wrong from the point of view of being inherently wrong, but they do not necessarily cause damage to public interests. Rather, they can facilitate certain positive economic outcomes.

This is especially the case in the realm of private business, where kickbacks and commissions are, strictly speaking, wrong but help facilitate transactions. In poor countries with less developed market institutions and weak enforcement of contracts, bribery and other forms of petty corruption function as a form of 'tax' that investors are willing to pay.

If they don't pay a bribe, business players risk bigger losses which in turn impact negatively on the overall economy. But for this kind of corruption to not have deleterious effects, it must be highly controlled and centralized as to constitute a relatively-predictable and stable regime.

One of my colleagues at Northwestern University is completing writing up a study showing that at local levels in China, private companies operate successfully in spite of rampant corruption because it's predictable as a 'tax'. It is predictable because of stability in leadership and absence of capricious turnovers that are disruptive and scare investors.

Also, informal ties and practices that entail corrupt behavior provide credible commitments to investors and substitute for the absence of, or weak, formal institutions.

So, for those who don't care about the immorality of corruption (I personally do), there is a point in arguing that given specific circumstances and political systems, corrupt practices can facilitate business. Yet this is hardly the case in Uganda, where graft is so decentralized and pervasive that it threatens to overwhelm the entire state system.

Ours is a system built on sharing spoils and cutting deals without much addition to the existing stock of wealth. The real problem is not so much that people in the private sector are paying bribes to successfully carry out business, however big a moral problem this is; the crux of the NRM corrupt and decadent regime is that everybody with access to a government office and state power easily gains access to looting from the public.

Going forward, if the available stock for looting drastically declines due to little productivity, the key looters could easily become warlords and ruthless predators. There would be no state anymore.
nmoses.khisa@gmail.com
 The author is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the department of Political Science, Northwestern University, USA.

Is corruption a moral or political problem?

http://www.observer.ug/viewpoint/41412-is-corruption-a-moral-or-political-problem

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