The Politics of Elite Corruption in Africa

Uganda in Comparative African Perspective

Roger Tangri, Andrew Mwenda

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415644037
• eBook ISBN: 9781135047740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book considers the causes of high-level state corruption as well as the political constraints of countering corruption in Africa. It examines elite corruption in government as well as in the political and military spheres of state activity, and focuses on illegal behaviour on the part of state and non-state actors in decision-making.

Situating corruption and anti-corruption within a political framework, this book analyses the motivations, opportunities and relative autonomy of state elites to manipulate state decision-making for personal and political ends. Based on detailed case studies in Uganda, the authors focus on corruption in the privatization process, military procurement, foreign business bribery, illegal political funding, and electoral malpractice. The book examines why anti-corruption institutions and international donors have been constrained in confronting this executive abuse of power, and discusses the wider relevance of Uganda's experience for understanding elite corruption and anti-corruption efforts in other African countries.

The Politics of Elite Corruption in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, African political economy, development studies, corruption and government.

Part I

Introduction

1 Causes, costs and control of corruption in Africa

The past two decades have seen an upsurge of interest in the subject of corruption in the developing world.¹ Numerous works have been published seeking to explain the causes, costs and control of corruption. A feature of this recent literature is the role played by economists in the corruption debate. Much of this ‘economic’ writing is associated with the World Bank. This is largely because the World Bank has been the leading organization in the fight against corruption, viewing corruption principally as a public sector problem, and depicting it as ‘the abuse of public office for private gain’ (World Bank 1997c). One of its major arguments has been that excessive state intervention in the economy increased the likelihood of politicians and bureaucrats abusing their authority for private profit, and that this has proved especially harmful to economic growth in developing countries. In consequence, it has advocated reducing the economic role of the state in order to minimize the incentives and opportunities for corruption.

The approach to corruption and anti-corruption we adopt in this work is different from the one used by the World Bank and international donors. We focus on the political dimensions of the problem. This is not to deny that economic approaches have not enriched our insights into why corruption occurs in the public sector and why it has proven so difficult to control. Indeed, our politically oriented analysis incorporates some of these insights, although it emphasizes that politicians and state officials abuse or misuse their public position to pursue their political interests as well as their personal ones. In particular, our study examines how elite corruption in Africa involves the manipulation of state decision-making for achieving not only private financial benefits, but also for crucial political objectives. And although donor-sponsored economic reform programmes may be important in combating corruption, anti-corruption initiatives also need to confront the underlying political logic that drives corruption in African countries.

The term corruption covers a myriad of corrupt actions.² Corruption is complex and multi-faceted and resists a clear definition.³ We employ a restrictive definition, viewing corruption as the breach of laws in public office that affects state decision-making. The corruption phenomenon we investigate encompasses a range of illegal actions in many areas of government activity as well as in the legislature, the judiciary, the police and the military. But whatever the particular state institution or the specific area of state activity, state corruption involves the transgression of formal rules and regulations in the making of state decisions.

Both state and non-state actors are found engaged in state corruption. First, there are those agents occupying positions of public authority who behave contrary to the rules they themselves acknowledge and under which they are supposed to operate. Those in higher positions of public office include politicians (members of the executive and the legislature) as well as public officials (top civil servants, judges, and senior military officers). Corruption here refers to various illegal actions involving the abuse of public rules, roles and resources by state actors in decision-making.

Second, there are private groups such as business firms, which seek to influence state decision-makers to act in ways that deviate from the rules and regulations governing the behaviour of those in public authority. Corruption here refers to ‘improper’ actions by private actors as well as state decision-makers, both of whom behave in unlawful and irregular ways.

Our conception of corruption therefore encompasses state and non-state actors engaging in illegal behaviour in the making of decisions in various areas of state activity. A legal definition of corruption, however, does have its limitations as a precise guide to corruption. For instance, not all forms of misuse of public roles or resources constitute corruption. An incompetent public official is not generally considered corrupt. Also, the law may be silent on conduct widely perceived to be corrupt. Decisions made on ethnic, racial, or political grounds may be illegitimate but not illegal if they do not fall within the purview of the law. However, we assume that laws govern much of the behaviour of those holding public office in the making of state decisions in African countries. By focusing on highly-placed individuals, appointed or elected, who abuse their vested authority to advance their own interests, mostly by violating formal rules and procedures in state decision-making, a legal conception enables us to provide comparative insights on a very significant area of corruption in Africa.

In this work we examine how and why corrupt behaviour has occurred and affected state decision-making in various African nations. In particular, we focus on corruption at high levels in African governmental, political and military circles. We concern ourselves with elite rather than lower-level state corruption; with grand rather than petty corruption.⁴ We are also concerned with anti-corruption efforts, which involve examining the means adopted by governments, often with the backing of international organizations, to counter corruption,⁵ and especially the attempts of African governments to bring various forms of elite corruption under control.

The present chapter reviews briefly the recent literature on state corruption and anti-corruption, especially on African countries. We point to some limitations of the economic approaches that have been so influential in seeking to combat corruption. In this and the following chapter, we present an alternative political framework for understanding the causes and control of corruption in the Africa region.

The causes of corruption

Economic approaches to corruption have generally assumed that politicians and state officials are self-interested and concerned with private individual financial gain (Rose-Ackerman 1999). The World Bank has argued in various publications that a high degree of state interference in economic decision-making encouraged a high level of corruption among politicians and public officials, and contributed to serious economic decline in African countries from the time of independence in the 1960s through to the late 1980s (World Bank 1997b). Countries in the developing world which had ‘big governments’ were ‘more corrupt’ as ‘public officials use[d] the state to extract rents from private individuals and firms’ (Rose-Ackerman 1999: 102). Settings with a myriad of regulations and where opportunistic political leaders and senior bureaucrats possessed much discretion over these regulations encouraged the abuse of public office, powers or resources for private benefit, and were detrimental to economic growth.

Economic analyses of corruption in African states are important in demonstrating how overbearing economic interventionism can cause high levels of corruption. They do, however, have difficulties in explaining the low levels of corruption in countries such as Botswana and Malawi, which up to the 1990s had large public sectors. Moreover, economic analysis has been unable to explain convincingly the continuing high levels of corruption in most African countries, which have gone through major market-oriented reforms, prescribed by the IFIs as a cure for corruption. As we argue, the causes of public sector corruption in contemporary Africa lie not only in extensive state economic intervention but also in the way power is exercised.

As to why state and non-state actors engage in corrupt behaviour, an explanation can be found in terms of a simple model comprising two related concepts: motivation and opportunity.⁶ Our discussion here draws on prior studies of corruption in sub-Saharan African countries.⁷

By motivation we refer to those particular considerations on which a person acts in a way that is corrupt. State and non-state actors in African countries engage in state corruption because of different motives, mainly economic and political. Economic analysis often stresses that corruption arises from the personal need of public officials, and indeed, many African civil servants earning low wages need to augment their earnings through acts of (petty) corruption. Because those involved in petty corruption are usually middle- and lower-level government officials, discussion of this particular determinant of corruption falls outside the scope of our study. For our purposes, the causes of elite corruption in African state sectors are motivated by economic but especially political factors.

A prime economic motive for elite appropriation of public resources is that of personal accumulation or personal enrichment. The perpetrators of large or grand state corruption in sub-Saharan countries have generally been government ministers, senior civil servants and military officers. They are the ones who have been able to amass money and property by using their public authority to divert public resources into their own hands. Accumulation was made possible through top state leaders and officials possessing much discretion in decision-making, which they manipulated for corrupt advantage (Rose-Ackerman 1999). But given their complex nature, economic motivations are frequently not independent of political ones in playing a role in elite corruption.

In most African countries, the state has been seen as the primary means through which private wealth could be accumulated. There are few opportunities for accumulation outside the state. The private sector, for instance, has historically been weakly developed and has often been controlled by foreign firms. ‘Local accumulation rests heavily on political power and the ability it provides to appropriate public resources’ (Szeftel 2000a: 287). On the African continent, it is a nation's rulers that have established the conditions for politicians and public officials to pursue their own personal financial gains. In order to secure the loyalty and support of various political, administrative, and military elites, African rulers have allowed them to manipulate state powers for their own private benefit and personal enrichment. As we argue, elite corruption in African states is not only for attaining private financial ends but also directed to political objectives, such as rewarding trusted state cadres for their loyalty to the political regime.

A further economic motivation for corruption is that of corporate profit. For instance, private foreign companies often compete with each other to win lucrative government contracts. There is much African evidence that, in such situations, foreign businesses often resort to illegal means including paying bribes to secure profitable contracts from government decision-makers. Private business, both local and foreign, also makes illegal payments to influence access to a variety of other valuable resources controlled by governments for purposes of corporate advantage and profit. Yet, as we argue, African ruling elites often have both personal and political motives for encouraging business bribery in cases involving government contracts or other economic benefits. African rulers are known to use the bribes received from business for personal enrichment but also for financing costly election campaigns and other political projects. They have often cemented links with bribe-paying concerns for purposes of financial gain as well as regime consolidation. ‘Power and office, once acquired, must be held, sometimes by whatever means necessary’ (Szeftel 2000a: 302).

Foremost among the political determinants of elite corruption is the imperative of maintaining a regime in power. Because the state is ‘the primary fount of resources within the African political economy’ (Chabal 2002: 450) attaining and retaining control of the state is paramount. Elite corruption arises as African rulers illegally use resources from state coffers to (a) promote the loyalty of state elites to the incumbent political leadership, (b) maintain a relatively united and cohesive regime, (c) buy off political opponents, and (d) finance party candidates in elections. As we argue, corruption is linked with patronage or neopatrimonial politics, which is concerned with using state resources to maintain political support and to hold on to state power.

Political motives have, however, tended to be neglected by the IFIs and bilateral donors in their attempts to understand why high-level corrupt behaviour has occurred and why it has affected state decision-making in African countries. Partly this is because economic approaches assert the existence of a strong relationship between the incidence of corruption and the role of the state in the economy. International donors have justified their case for promoting market-oriented economies by claiming that restricted state intervention in economic life would lead not only to less public sector corruption but also to private sector-led economic growth and development. Political arguments (for example, that regime leaders provide a fertile ground for corruption in order that beneficiaries will support their rulers and the regime consolidate itself in power) are still largely absent from much economic analysis on corruption.

However, motivation alone is insufficient unless it is accompanied by an opportunity to engage in corruption. Opportunity refers to the environmental and structural factors that create the conditions for corruption. As argued by the international financial institutions (IFIs) – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – the opportunities for state corruption have arisen when there is heavy state intervention in the economy. This was the case during Africa's first two post-independence decades when politicians and bureaucrats made many economic decisions on tariffs, foreign exchange and credit, etc. and also when state-owned enterprises dominated in many economic sectors. Pervasive government economic involvement is commonly associated with greater opportunities for corruption. Since the 1990s, however, the economic role of the state has been reduced through IFI-sponsored structural adjustment programmes initiating privatization, economic liberalization and deregulation reforms. The IFIs believed that ‘by reducing the role of the state, the donors [would] both reduce its resources and the opportunities for access to those resources’ (Szeftel 2000a: 303). We argue, on the contrary, that in a number of African countries (Goldsmith 2000), infusions of donor aid have augmented state resources, and that continuing control over public resources, especially by members of the executive branch, has maintained the opportunities for corrupt interventions by ruling elites.

More recent work carried out by the World Bank reflects a growing interest in various political factors that have created the conditions for high-level corruption to flourish in the developing world (Lederman et al. 2005). Prime among these factors is that of little accountability in government operations. Checks and balances among the different branches of government have been typically limited in African countries. For instance, executive or presidential power has hardly been constrained by legislatures, especially when control of the legislative assembly is in the hands of the same political party of the executive (Stapenhurst et al. 2006). Moreover, not only those in the political executive, but also those in senior positions in the bureaucracy and the military, have often been sheltered from criticism, scrutiny and judicial prosecution. In settings where the chances of being caught and prosecuted are slight, corruption is thus perceived as ‘low risk, high reward’ and the corrupt African politicians, bureaucrats and military officers are unlikely to be detected and penalized.

A related political factor contributing to corruption in African public sectors is the existence of limited competition in the political system. Apart from a small number of countries, such as Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, the political opposition often has very limited opportunities to compete significantly in elections. This makes alternation in power very difficult or impossible, and thus limits the ability of the electorate to remove a corrupt government from power. It also results in only small numbers of opposition members in the legislature, who are hardly in a position to challenge the dominant executive in state decision-making.

For over a decade, the IFIs have been focusing on creating mechanisms that enhance competition and accountability in the political system and that can consequently curb the incidence of public sector corruption. This focus on political institutions is by no means misplaced; but there is a need to focus as well on key political factors that have affected the workings of these institutions and spurred elite corruption. In particular, presidential power and patronage-based governance are central features of African politics that require addressing in any effective anti-corruption strategy. The failure of neoclassical economics to take these features into account weakens its putative political analysis and offers only limited insights as to why African rulers manipulate state powers, institutions and resources to further their personal and political interests.⁸

The willingness or motivation to engage in corruption exists nearly everywhere. Nevertheless, state corruption is considered to be higher in African than in Western countries. It is the opportunities for corruption that distinguish varying levels of corruption. Western countries are considered widely to have low levels of public sector corruption, although this does not hold for the private sector. Low levels of state corruption exist because (a) government control and regulation of economic resources is limited, (b) the existence of political competition as well as checks and balances among the three branches of government is generally unrestricted, (c) there are mechanisms to prosecute and punish corrupt politicians and state officials, and (d) political systems are not predicated on personal rule and patronage politics. In contrast, relatively high levels of state corruption characterize African nations partly because incumbent political leaders and bureaucrats have extensive discretionary power over decision-making; partly because of low political competition; partly because presidents, government ministers, civil servants and military officers are rarely held accountable or punished for their wrongdoi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• List of acronyms
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Elite corruption in the context of Uganda's political economy under the NRM
• Part III Case studies of elite corruption in Uganda under the NRM
• Part IV Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index