Corruption: The Treatable Disease

As a word, corruption so easily triggers a sense of catchall moral fatalism. And certainly in a country like Haiti, where over $4 billion in aid money has been spent since 1990 to dubious effect, blaming government corruption for failure is an explanation that's both simple and seems natively true.

Sure, the word "corruption" has a fairly intractable ring to it. But seeing corruption as a simple, undifferentiated deadweight turns out to be a pretty damaging exercise. After all, there are layers and levels of corruption. Too often, the word "corruption" is used as a stand-in to describe other government deficiencies -- lack of capacity, institutional coordination, et cetera. To put it differently, in many circumstances, it's talking about the symptoms of a problem, rather than the disease.

On that note, Robert Klitgaard, author of Tropical Gangsters: One Man's Experience with Development and Decadence in Deepest Africa, has another way to look at the issue. Instead of thinking about corruption, he suggests, try substituting the word "disease." As he writes, no one would ever throw their hands up about disease, claiming that there was "no use for public health programs, doctors, hospitals, or medicine." (Okay, most people wouldn't, anyway.)

This month, Kiltgaard has released the paper called Addressing Corruption in Haiti, which builds on his previous anti-corruption work, specifically his experience working in Haiti during Aristide's first term. He raises a whole host of suggestions for specific ways to deal with corrupt systems, and the entire report's prescriptions are definitely worth checking out in full.

To deal with corruption, for example, he talks about the need to "fry the monkey" -- that is, make highly visible, cautionary examples out of certain corrupt individuals (what the Chinese call, equally colorfully, "killing the chicken to scare the roosters"). He also stresses the need for coordination across major government agencies (auditing, prosecution, investigation etc.), citing the work of Colombia's Anti‐Corruption Czars of Presidents Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe as one good model. Likewise, he talks about the importance of mobilizing citizens in the fight -- and using them to effectively crowdsource information about where pockets of corruption are most rife.

If corruption is a disease, Kiltgaard's message is that it's eminently treatable. Above all, his argument is an appeal to those who are quick to cast off government underperformance as just "corruption."

In recent decades, Western donors have channeled much of their aid money in Haiti through the 10,000-odd NGOs that operate inside the country. (And that trend continues, with less than $0.01 of every dollar in U.S. aid money going to the Haitian government.) Yet critics aren't so quick to call nonprofits' failures corruption. Instead, other culprits are defined: lack of coordination, poor mission focus, lack of responsiveness, local partners and more. What's the point of maintaining a separate -- and not incidentally, morally laden -- vocabulary for the failures of the Haitian government?

Photo Credit: US Mission Canada