THE COLLECTIVE HULLABALOO
DÜNYADAN: Governments that have tried to fight corruption in contexts where it has become an acceptable way of transacting in society have also found that “corruption fights back” and government on its own cannot fight systemic corruption.
In 2018, the issue of Collective Action was discussed in diverse places such as Aswan, Egypt, in February, at a regional event by the Egyptian Junior Chamber; in Lagos, Nigeria, in June, at the 6th annual Christopher Kolade Lecture on Business Integrity, hosted by the Convention on Business Integrity; in London, England, in October, at the annual Members meeting of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN); in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October, at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference; in Switzerland, in November, at the Basel Institute on Governance’s conference and in Kyiv, Ukraine, in December, at a meeting of regional partners of the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) to name a few places.
Collective Action as an approach had existed for years before the World Bank jumped on the bandwagon and tried to make it native to H Street, Washington D.C. This did the anti-corruption community great service when they, over 10 years ago, put in some effort to articulate it and classify it into typologies giving practitioners a lexicon and common language with which to discuss and share the phenomenon. Before then, it was just something demanded by civil society and other non-State actors as an approach to curbing corruption and was certainly not a mainstream movement. Why is there now this increase in commotion, clamour, excitement and energy when Collective Action is mentioned these days?
Self-regulation preferred by business is the very thing that puts it in a catch-22 because this involves the unilateral choice to do right in a context where competitors are doing well by cutting corners, where clients are happy to pay for short-cuts to be followed or rules bent to get them off the hook, where government regulation lacks credibility in that it clearly serves special interests and not the public interest.
In places where corruption has become systemic, endemic and pervasive such as in many developing countries, governments have failed to effectively curb the menace of corruption which appears to be spiralling out of control. In those countries, government retains a monopoly over both the act of grand corruption and the institutional arrangements to fight it, leaving non-State actors looking on as mere spectators. In those countries many have come to believe corruption is a public sector issue with the power to fight it also residing there. This has increasingly been shown over the last decade to be a flawed conception of the problem.
In some of these countries, civil society in the belief that there is power in activism, have drawn attention to the problem through mass protests and media exposées. There has been a clamour for greater access to government held information, adoption of open government data standards around public procurement, whistleblower protection laws and so on. Today, there is a lot more transparency in many countries through what TI refers to as “sunshine laws” but this has not necessarily translated into greater levels of public accountability or a reduction in corruption. The leverage needed to translate the public anger and dissatisfaction over clear cases of corruption has not necessarily led to the anticipated change.
In all this, the private sector has typically kept its head down and stayed out of the fray. So, as far as some governments and civil society actors are concerned, business is part of the problem of corruption in developing countries, particularly big business.
The reaction of business has been typically to insist on self-regulation and non-interference from government and certainly civil society. However, self-regulation requires that business is clear and agreed on the standard with which to judge their actual or anticipated behaviour, presence of factors to make it strongly try to avoid some outcomes whilst gunning for other outcomes (in other words, presence of clear positive incentives to benefit from and real sanctions to avoid) and a strong internally motivating force keeping the entity focused on living up to behavioural standards it has set for itself. Thing is, in a context where the incentives are perverse in that those who do right seemingly gain nothing and those who do wrong are not effectively sanctioned, self-regulation is weak at best.
Self-regulation preferred by business is the very thing that puts it in a catch-22 because this involves the unilateral choice to do right in a context where competitors are doing well by cutting corners, where clients are happy to pay for short-cuts to be followed or rules bent to get them off the hook, where government regulation lacks credibility in that it clearly serves special interests and not the public interest.
Business in corrupt climes are often left wondering whether it wouldn’t be suicidal to do right. And why is it business in this dilemma? This is because business is one of the biggest victims of corruption – paying more than necessary for government services through corruption, vulnerable to unpredictable and corrupt demands from government inspectors and approval agencies, competing for business and losing despite having the better competencies, experience and pricing to deliver sound value because someone else has bribed. Many then wait it out trying to develop ‘algorithms’ that help them predict what they can do to also ‘win big’ like those who do so through corruption and success in business is reduced to the odds of a national lottery. If an individual business tries to go against this tide, it is easily crushed by the resulting backlash from the corrupt system.
Governments that have tried to fight corruption in contexts where it has become an acceptable way of transacting in society have also found that “corruption fights back” and government on its own cannot fight systemic corruption. Civil society on its own cannot fight the menace and business on its own would find it suicidal to do so. There is now growing consensus that the approach to fighting systemic corruption must be holistic involving citizens, civil society, business and government. This end and how to achieve it bounds the intriguing subject of collective action. Even though it makes sense that there is strength in such diversity, this does not happen automatically because of the conflicting interests between these groups and the job of the facilitator of collective action is in ensuring and maintaining an alignment of interests between the participants to channel their strengths and energies in the same direction.
Back to the hullaballoo. As anti-corruption specialists have gotten the point of the approach and are innovating to achieve and maintain this alignment of interests, successes are emerging. The innovations, successes and growing scale of application of the approach is causing commotion, clamour, excitement and energy amongst anti-corruption practitioners who are seeing greater breakthroughs against the malaise. I guess the excitement is akin to what cancer or HIV/Aids researchers might feel with every innovation that brings them a step closer to a cure for the disease. I think Collective Action is one such breakthrough, what do you think?