Political economies of corruption in fragile and conflict-affected states: Nuancing the picture (original) (raw)

Fighting Corruption in Post-Conflict Situations: Learning from the Past

UNDP, 2010

Based on empirical research in 5 countries (Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iraq, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste), "Fighting Corruption in Post Conflict and Recovery Situations: Learning from the Past" explores the dynamics between corruption and post-conflict situations and looks at the effectiveness of anti-corruption programming in that context.

Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Corruption has been recognized as a key challenge to post-conflict peacebuilding efforts, undermining the legitimacy and effectiveness of state institutions, and compromising key peacebuilding tasks such as disarmament and reconstruction. However, in the short run accepting corruption might be necessary to finding a political settlement and stabilizing a post-conflict order. Our review of the debate suggests that corruption in these contexts is first and foremost a political problem and needs to be addressed as such. Anti-corruption measures, such as promoting accountability and the rule of law, need to be considered in the context of wider peacebuilding objectives.

A Good Turn Deserves Another: Political Stability, Corruption and Corruption-Control

We build on existing literature and contemporary challenges to African development to assess the role of political stability in fighting corruption and boosting corruption-control in 53 African countries for the period 1996-2010. We postulate that on the one hand, an atmosphere of political instability should increase the confidence of impunity owing to less corruption-control. On the other hand, in the absence such impunity from corruption, political instability further fuels corruption. Our findings validate both hypotheses. Hence, contrary to a stream of the literature, we establish causal evidence of a positive (negative) nexus between political stability/no violence and corruption-control (corruption). The empirical evidence is based on Generalized Methods of Moments. The findings are robust to contemporary and non-contemporary quantile regressions. The political stability estimates are consistently significant with decreasing (increasing) magnitudes throughout the conditional distributions of corruption (corruption-control). In other words, the positive responsiveness of corruption-control to political stability is an increasing function of corruption-control while the negative responsiveness of corruption to political stability is a decreasing function of corruption. Simply put: a good turn deserves another.

Corruption Versus Development: The Real Issues and Challenges

Corruption and development in Africa have become dominant issues of discourse. Over decades, African politics has being a front burner on the world political discourse due to leadership crisis and the pervasiveness of ongoing corrupt practices which continue to cripple development within the continent. Although Africa has vast human and natural resources with great reserve, African economies have witnessed periods of stagnant economic growth particularly owing to corruption and gross mismanagement of resources. The Centre for Public Integrity (2004) notes that corruption erodes public trust in government, undermines the rule of law, weakens the state, and hinders economic growth by discouraging investment. In addition, corruption has an extremely negative impact on social and civil society maturation and the establishment of effective and responsive democratic government. The pervasiveness of corruption runs mostly on the shoulders of elected African leaders. Do you think Africa can achieve economic growth if corruption continues to persist within the continent? My paper explored both theoretical and empirical findings while a cross sectional survey was used in analyzing real issues and challenges involved in corruption versus development across selected African countries. The paper recommends a transformational leadership paradigm, respect of rule of law, strengthening of institutions, attitudinal change, cultural preservation, mentoring etc as various means to eradicate the confronting challenges of corruption which impedes growth and development.