Political Corruption in the Caribbean Basin

Michael W. Collier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135871864
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Political corruption in the Caribbean Basin retards state economic growth and development, undermines government legitimacy, and threatens state security. In spite of recent anti-corruption efforts of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations (IGO/NGOs), Caribbean political corruption problems appear to be worsening in the post-Cold War period. This work discovers why IGO/NGO efforts to arrest corruption are failing by investigating the domestic and international causes of political corruption in the Caribbean.

Chapter One

Introduction

Political corruption has been a Caribbean problem for centuries. It was not until the early 1990s, however, that the need to address the corruption problem became part of regional political discourse. Under increasing international and domestic pressure to do something about their corruption problems, the 34 Western Hemispheric heads of state and government attending the 1994 Miami, Florida, Summit of the Americas I (all less Cuba) established Combating Corruption as one of the 23 action items in their final declaration. This led to the March 1996 signing of the Organization of American States' (OAS) Inter-American Convention Against Corruption. By the late 1990s, the regional interest in anti-corruption programs appeared to be waning. At the 1998 Santiago, Chile, Summit of the Americas II, the Combating Corruption action item received only minimal discussion. By mid-2000, four years after its initial signing, only 18 OAS member states had ratified the Convention. At the same time, no OAS member had adopted the comprehensive package of domestic legislation required for the Convention's full implementation. The lack of sustained anti-corruption interest was especially evident in the Caribbean where many states neither signed nor ratified the OAS Convention.¹

Political corruption is an extremely complex behavior constituting a number of social factors. It is not a subject that is easy to study. Disagreements over political corruption definitions, theories, and measurement all contribute to the difficulties in its study. This does not mean that the study of political corruption should be forsaken. Instead, we must find new theories and methods to help us understand this complex social behavior.

This study investigates the research question: What are the domestic and international causes of political corruption in the Caribbean? The study argues that we cannot understand the many puzzles about political corruption unless we first have a comprehensive theory of its causes. The study adopts Onuf's (1989) rule-oriented constructivist analytic frame to investigate the research question. The study finds that while international factors such as colonialism, neo-imperialism, multi-national corporations, foreign businesses, and drug trafficking contribute to the Caribbean's continuing political corruption problems, the main cause of contemporary Caribbean political corruption are local governing elite who manipulate their society's political and economic development and plunder state resources for their own benefit at the expense of their citizenry. The key role of a state's governing elite in fostering political corruption is a factor that has not been sufficiently emphasized in Caribbean political discourse.

CARIBBEAN POLITICAL CORRUPTION ISSUES

The end of the Cold War helps explain the recent growing interest in political corruption. In the Western and Soviet Cold War struggle for spheres of influence, political corruption in the superpowers' client states was treated like the proverbial elephant standing in the living room, an anomaly obvious to everyone but that no one dared talk about. The superpowers seldom addressed corrupt behavior in their client states to avoid alienating friendly leaders. Robert McNamara, former President of the World Bank, highlighted the Cold War political incorrectness of raising political corruption issues when he asserted in the early 1990s that “the subject of corruption could not have been discussed [in international forums] 20, 15, or even 5 years ago” (quoted in Vogel 1993).

As post-Cold War trends toward democratization and neoliberal economic reforms lifted the veil of silence surrounding political corruption, international organizations; including the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, among others; confirmed that high levels of political corruption adversely affect societal development.² Political corruption undermines the legitimacy of political institutions (see Ryan 1998 51; Leiken 1996, 55). It reduces economic growth by diverting state resources toward inefficient (white elephant) projects and away from needed economic infrastructure projects (roads, ports, and so on). High levels of political corruption also reduce economic growth by decreasing investor confidence in corrupt governments, thus lowering foreign and domestic investment rates (see Mauro 1995, 1996, 1997a, 1997b; Tanzi and Davoodi 1997, 1998; Tanzi 1998). It also seriously degrades the welfare of a society's poorest citizens by diminishing the resources allotted to education and health programs and by fostering policies that increase income inequalities (see Mauro 1997a; Tanzi and Davoodi 1997, 1998; Tanzi 1998). Moreover, political corruption becomes a threat to the national security of many societies when, in alliance with transnational criminal organizations, it supports terrorism, arms smuggling, drug trafficking, and money laundering (Leiken 1996, 55).

The post-Cold War openness about political corruption helped uncover numerous examples of the problem that reached the very top of Caribbean governments. In 1992, Antigua and Barbuda's prime minister of 11 years, Vere Bird, Sr., agreed not to run again for public office, partly as the result of a string of government corruption scandals dating back to the mid-1980s that implicated either him or his two cabinet minister sons. In 1993, Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez was impeached by Congress, and later convicted, on charges he misused a secret U.S.$ 17 million government fund to pay for campaign debts and a lavish 1989 inauguration. In 1996, Colombian President Ernesto Samper was charged with knowingly financing his election campaign with U.S.$6 million donated by the Cali Drug Cartel. Samper was later absolved of these charges by the Colombian Chamber of Deputies, tainted by allegations of their own bribery by the drug lords. Also in 1996, over U.S.$120 million in unexplained funds were found in the foreign bank accounts of Raul Salinas, brother and political confidant of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas (1988–1994). While Raul Salinas was charged with illicit enrichment, money laundering, and drug-trafficking, his brother Carlos escaped into self-imposed overseas exile. These few examples are just the tip of the much deeper Caribbean political corruption problem.

The increasing post-Cold War exposure of political corruption problems led to the establishment of the Miami Summit of the Americas I Combating Corruption action item and the 1996 OAS Inter-American Convention Against Corruption. The Miami Summit declaration acknowledged that “[c]orruption…weakens democracy and undermines the legitimacy of governments and institutions” (Feinberg 1997, 222). The 1996 OAS Convention calls for a variety of Western Hemispheric state actions intended not only to prevent corruption, but also to strengthen states' abilities to prosecute those suspected of corrupt acts (OAS 1996). Amid a fanfare of international publicity, 21 OAS members initially signed the Convention. One analyst deemed the OAS Convention “the most far-reaching document of its kind in the world … the only treaty instrument addressing the problem of corruption … the first cooperative agreement on this issue negotiated by developed and developing countries” (Elliott 1996, 7). As discussed earlier, interest in hemispheric anti-corruption reforms appeared to wane by the late 1990s. This was highlighted in the aftermath of the 1998 Santiago Summit, when The Leadership Council for Inter-American Summitry (1999, 13) observed “there is little evidence of implementation [of the 1996 OAS Convention] in the sense of countries bringing their national laws into conformity with the Convention's articles and then enforcing them.”

Since the initial signing of the 1996 OAS Convention, Caribbean political discourse related to political corruption presents two general reasons why interest in the subject has waned. First, Caribbean leaders continue to argue that their political corruption problems are due to international and not domestic factors. Caribbean and South American political leaders lobbied to have the Combating Corruption item placed on the 1994 Miami Summit agenda (Feinberg 1997, 50–51). They intended for this agenda item to deflect the blame for their states' high political corruption levels from domestic factors onto multi-national corporations and foreign businesses that were bribing foreign government officials. The Hemispheric leaders were surprised when the majority of the anti-corruption measures called for in the 1996 OAS Convention dealt with domestic and not international reforms. Thus, the OAS Convention undermined the populist approach to political corruption as intended by hemispheric leaders outside the United States and Canada.

Caribbean leaders regularly adopt populist approaches to their societal problems, such as political corruption, that downplay domestic causes and blame their states' problems on international factors outside Caribbean control. Populist approaches play to strong nationalistic feelings in most Caribbean states and offer that political corruption is a product of the region's history of colonialism and the nineteenth and early twentieth century U.S. interventions. Caribbean leaders are also quick to attribute their political corruption problems to the neo-imperialism of continuing U.S. and European political and economic involvement in the Caribbean. A major target of the Caribbean anti-corruption discourse is Western-based businesses (multinational corporations, and the like) that bribe Caribbean officials in the quest to secure lucrative local government contracts or markets.

Caribbean leaders' uncertainty over the effects of neoliberal reforms on political corruption levels is a second area of recent discourse. Many Caribbean leaders are uncomfortable with world trends toward neoliberal economic reform and international financial institution demands for good governance reforms (see IMF 1997; Wesberry 1998). As a counter to developed state pressure in these areas, Caribbean leaders are quick to point out that recent regional economic and political reforms coincide with increasing Caribbean political corruption levels. Neoliberal market-based economic reforms, such as lowering tariffs and privatizing state-owned industries, and good governance reforms aimed at strengthening Caribbean democracies, are hypothesized as measures to decrease opportunities for graft and theft of state resources. However, Caribbean states implementing neoliberal reforms and transitioning from military-authoritarian regimes to representative democracies often experience the opposite effect. For example, Mexico, one of the Caribbean states employing aggressive privatization programs, experienced several of the region's most flagrant corruption scandals. Additionally, Panama's transition from military-authoritarian to democratic rule in the 1990s did little to lessen its political corruption problems.

Are the causes of Caribbean political corruption primarily international as many Caribbean leaders argue? Do neoliberal economic and good governance reforms increase opportunities for Caribbean political corruption? Are there deeper domestic or international factors that cause political corruption? What contributes to the lack of political will and/or political capacity that undermines Caribbean interest in anti-corruption reforms? These questions cannot be adequately answered, nor can effective Caribbean anti-corruption policy be devised, without first developing a comprehensive theory of the causes of political corruption.

KEY DEFINITIONS

Corruption is a complex, multifaceted, and contentious concept. Among the hundreds of scholarly studies of political corruption, there appear almost as many proposed definitions of this complex phenomenon. The lack of a single accepted definition of political corruption is one reason a comprehensive theory of its causes never emerged. Johnston (1994, 3) refers to the repeated attempts to conceptualize political corruption as a definitional quagmire and argues that we are unlikely to ever find a satisfactory single definition of corruption (also see Johnston 1996b; Johnston 1998, 89; Philp 1987; and Philp 1997, 22–30). Many political corruption studies have foundered simply on definitional issues. Gillespie and Okruhlik (1991, 77) submit that a definition of political corruption must be “general enough to allow cross-cultural comparison yet precise enough to be empirically useful.”

In an attempt to overcome the many conflicting definitions of political corruption, the World Bank takes a reductionist approach and simply defines the concept as the “abuse of public power for private gain” (World Bank 1997a, 1997b). This World Bank definition addresses public corruption that includes behavior such as bribery, extortion, and theft occurring within public, official, or governmental domains. It does not include private corruption relating to fraud or theft occurring solely within the realm of private commercial or financial transactions. It is all but impossible to explain both public and private corruption behavior in one study, as the two concepts differ in not only the actors involved in the corrupt activity but also in actor incentive structures (willingness and opportunities) to be corrupt. This study focuses only on a selected form of public corruption commonly referred to as political corruption.

Building upon the World Bank definition, this study defines political corruption as the abuse of public power by a governing elite for their private (personal) monetary, material, or non-material gain. Corruption scholars and policy analysts also refer to political corruption as grand corruption, or corrupt behavior by senior government officials who possess the decision-making authority to make policy allocating a state's resources (Moody-Stuart 1996). Political corruption is differentiated from the second form of public corruption known as bureaucratic-administrative or petty corruption that involves mid and low-level government officials who gain personally from their roles in executing government policies and programs. While the interdisciplinary theory of the causes of political corruption developed in this study has some applicability to both private and bureaucratic-administrative corruption, neither of these phenomena is addressed other than anecdotally in this study.

The above definition of political corruption focuses on the governing elite as the principal actors in corrupt or non-corrupt behavior. In conceptualizing a governing elite, this study draws upon the work of Bottomore (1964, 12) who notes “in every society there is, and must be, a minority— the “political class” or “governing elite,” composed of those who occupy the posts of political command and, more vaguely, those who can directly influence political decisions … (emphasis added).” Bottomore refines his concept of governing elite into two categories—political class and political elite. Political class refers to “those groups which exercise political power or influence, and are directly engaged in struggles for political leadership” (Bottomore 1964, 14). He sees the political elite as a subset of the political class that include “members of the government and of the high administration, military leaders, and, in some cases, politically influential families of an aristocracy or royal house and leaders of powerful economic enterprises” (Bottomore 1964, 14). The political class includes the political elite and “counter-elites comprising the leaders of political parties which are out of office, and representatives of new interests or classes (for example, trade union leaders), as well as groups of businessmen, and intellectuals who are active in politics” (Bottomore 1964, 14–15).

This study defines Caribbean in its geopolitical sense that includes those states and territories that touch upon the Caribbean Sea or have similar cultural or demographic characteristics to other Caribbean states. This Caribbean definition is similar to the Caribbean Basin geopolitical conceptualization that U.S. foreign policy circles began using in the region in the 1980s. This Caribbean definition includes the island states and territories of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, Mexico, Central American states, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, the Bahamas, and Bermuda. Table 1-1 summarizes the states and territories included in this Caribbean definition.

The Caribbean was selected for this study not only because it is the area with the most resistance to the OAS-led corruption reforms, but also because (1) it contains the majority of Western Hemispheric states, and (2) it displays wide diversity. If the study was expanded to the entire Western Hemisphere, the political corruption problems of the medium and small Caribbean states and territories, and their reasons for resisting corruption reforms, could become lost in the analysis of the more serious corruption problems in some of their larger Hemispheric neighbors. Table 1-1 demonstrates the diversity of the Caribbean in terms of state and territory size, population, health, education, incomes, official languages, and type governments....