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Flexibility versus Inflexibility: Discursive Discrepancy in US Democracy
Promotion and Anti-corruption Policies
Jeff Bridoux and Anja Gebel
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Abstract
This article analyses US discourses on democracy promotion and anticorruption
strategies. The analysis shows that there is a cosmetic agreement in the democracy
promotion and anticorruption discourses on notions of the good society that identify
democracy as a good thing and corruption as a bad thing. However, despite this
agreement, there are differences in the discourses on the measures recommended to
promote democracy and fight corruption that may lead to policies and processes
pulling in opposite directions. This discrepancy arises, on the one hand, from a mode
of operation of democracy promotion that is flexible and adaptable to various
contexts, and on the other hand, from uncompromising and inflexible language of
anticorruption policies that threatens to ‘undo’ what US democracy promotion’s
rhetoric aims to achieve: ownership and sustainability of democratic reforms through
re-empowering the state.
Introduction
This article performs a discursive analysis of US discourses on democracy promotion
and anticorruption strategies. The analysis reveals discursive consistency in the
purported ideals of both discourses but a source of discursive disparity that originates
in discourses on the implementation of those strategies. The article does neither aim
to explain the origins or to assess the degree of internal consistency of US democracy
promotion nor do we aim to provide an empirical analysis of democracy promotion
and anticorruption policies. Our focus is exclusively on how specific positions on
democracy and anticorruption measures play each other out and how they condition
specific normative understandings of democracy and corruption. Thus, we aim to
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show how US discourse on these two issues shapes the relationship between
democracy and corruption.
The US discourses on democracy promotion and on the need to fight corruption sound
more technical than normative. Even though this is more the case for anticorruption
than it is for democracy promotion, both agendas share the use of ‘technical’
vocabulary and approach their respective topics mainly as a matter of technical
institutional adjustments.1 Both undertakings, however, are inherently normative in
that they make claims about good and/or bad forms of societal organisation. US
official discourses on democracy promotion and corruption make clear that
democracy is considered a good thing and corruption an evil that needs eradication.
The key policy documents that frame US foreign policy agree that the promotion of
democracy results in governments that are ‘more just, peaceful, and legitimate’ and
societies that are more stable.
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In contrast, corruption threatens a country’s
development and good governance and is thus a menace for global stability. 3
Corruption constitutes a direct assault on democracy because it imperils transparency
and accountability, which are two pillars of a democratic regime. Democracy is good,
corruption is bad.
Consequently, the US official discourse on democracy promotion frequently refers to
corruption as an obstacle to democratisation in developing countries. Similarly,
anticorruption documents label corruption as damaging for democracy. Yet, even
though there seems to be an agreement on their purported ideals, the concrete
conceptual links between the two agendas are hardly ever made explicit. We argue
that this lack in explicitness could lead to contradictions in the implementation of
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democracy assistance and anticorruption programmes. Hence, this article seeks to
answer the following question: Do US discourses on democracy promotion and
anticorruption complement or oppose each other? The findings of this paper point at a
two-layered discursive discrepancy: 1. On the surface, there is agreement in
democracy promotion and anticorruption discourses on notions of the good society,
identifying democracy as a good thing and corruption as a bad thing; 2. Despite this
agreement, there are discursive differences on measures recommended to promote
democracy and fight corruption that may lead to policies and measures pulling in
opposite directions. To drive this point home, this article takes a detailed look at both
sets of discourses – at their ideational and policy-implementation dimensions – and
inquires into their relation. The article reveals interesting insights into how the
embedded ideals of societal organisation are in tune or contradict each other.
This potential contradiction between US democracy promotion and anticorruption
agenda is a timely and important issue to address. Recent reforms of the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID) emphasise a model of development
co-operation that privileges the ownership of development by aid recipients. This
view is especially present in the official rhetoric on democracy promotion, which
insists on allowing those countries on a democratisation path to choose the contours
of the democracy they wish to live in. The US thus offers a certain degree of
flexibility in the political, economic and societal organisation of target countries
benefiting from US democracy assistance. However, this flexibility is not present in
US anticorruption discourses. Indeed, those discourses organise a comprehensive and
intrusive restructuring of target countries’ politico-economic systems along neoliberal
recommendations. Consequently, there is a risk that anticorruption strategies – with
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their focus on neoliberal tenets – diminish the potentially emancipatory impact of
democracy assistance – with its emphasis on ownership of democratisation and local
control over economic development – and uphold a traditional Western-centred
directive modus operandi within development aid.
The ‘Good Society’ in US Democracy Promotion and Anticorruption Rhetoric
The article starts with a discursive analysis of US statements on democracy promotion
and corruption through the concept of ‘the good society’ as an analytical prism. We
have chosen a discourse analytical approach because it highlights the ways in which
the meaning of concepts like (anti)corruption and democracy is constructed through
both linguistic as well as non-linguistic practices, both of which are comprised in the
discursive field of meaning. 4 From a post-positivist, discourse theoretical point of
view, our reality is not seen as something that is stable and can be observed from an
objective viewpoint; rather, it is produced and reproduced, structured, shaped and
transformed by the way we talk about and act upon things like (anti)corruption and
democracy. Established – but transformable – discursive formations, in turn, influence
the ways in which we talk about and act upon (anti)corruption and democracy.
Moving away from a one-directional conception of material structures as influencing
ideas, discourse analysis illuminates the ways in which normative dichotomies
between good and bad ways of societal organisation are constructed and held together
through words and actions at the same time.
In order to understand US politics on anticorruption and democracy promotion it is
therefore enlightening to look at how, in US discourse, reality is constructed around
these concepts. We approach this discourse from the perspective of purported ideals
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or aims, and from the perspective of statements about the ‘right’ measures to reach
those aims. The combination and comparison of these two levels of linguistic
practices is important since it is not only the level of aims and stated ideals that shape
the normativity and political character of US discourses. Indeed, far from being just
technical or neutral, knowledge about ‘right’ measures for their implementation is
highly normative and political in that it is linked to very particular conceptions of how
a good society should be organised.
US Democracy Promotion Rhetoric on the ‘Good society’
In his National Security Strategy 2010, President Obama clearly commits to support
democracy and human rights abroad because ‘governments that respect these values
are more just, peaceful, and legitimate’ and because ‘[p]olitical systems that protect
universal rights are ultimately more stable, successful, and secure’. 5 The US
administration’s justification to promote democracy is thus in line with democratic
peace theory – expanding democracy creates conditions congenial to a better world, in
which conflict, disorder and poverty are replaced by peace, order, and stability.
Democracy thus contributes to the making of good societies. But what is meant by
good society?
According to US democracy assistance experts, a democratic society strengthens the
rule of law and respect for human rights, promotes more genuine and competitive
elections and political processes, increases development of a politically active civil
society, and has a government that is transparent and accountable. 6 To this political
definition, the Obama administration adds an economic dimension: social and
economic needs of the populations of developing countries must be addressed if
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democracy is to take root and succeed in the developing world. Hence, there is a
renewed emphasis on social and economic justice, gender equality, and the fight
against corruption to advance democracy. 7 Thus, in the US official discourse,
promoting democracy in developing countries does not only mean the provision of
democratic political institutions that organise the exercise of democracy by the
population, but also the delivery of economic and social benefits that contribute to
render society just and ‘better’.
This approach constitutes a partial departure from the so far promoted politicoeconomic model of democracy based on the prioritisation of elections, institutionbuilding, defence of human rights and empowerment of civil society, as well as on an
expansive economic liberalism advocating free markets to foster economic growth. In
addition to this classical model, US democracy promotion nurtures development, now
considered as ‘a strategic, economic and moral imperative’.8 The focus is still on civil
society actors and the development of a democratic culture 9 alongside the usual
institutional work, but now also includes strengthening the capabilities of developing
countries – democratising or not – by addressing ‘underlying political and economic
deficits that foster instability, enable radicalization and extremism’ and hence limit
the capacity of governments to deal with threats and to address global common
challenges.10 Ownership and sustainability are two key words in recent US official
discourses on how to practice development aid and democracy promotion. Indeed,
USAID, for example, has recently broadened its traditional democracy assistance
focus on civil society action and good governance by integrating social and economic
justice issues; the organisation conceived a form of social pact between government
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and people to address inequalities and those abusive economic practices that are
responsible for social instability and hence a threat to the good society.11
Thus, in US rhetoric on democracy promotion, a good society is a democratic society
based on a representative government, with a high degree of citizen participation in
governance and public affairs, and allowing for a ‘more bottom-up, community-based
system of economic and social management than the centralized, bureaucratized,
liberal-capitalist system evident among advanced industrial states today’. 12 Similar
conceptions are present in the US rhetoric on corruption.
US Discourses on Corruption and the Menace on the ‘Good society’
The international anticorruption discourse in general is characterised by the fact that
there is hardly any opposition to it. One reason for this might be that corruption is a
powerful concept with a heavy negative moral weight, able to generate great support
for international anticorruption efforts as a matter of course: ‘Being against corruption
is a bit like favouring sunshine over rain’.13 Justifications for fighting corruption are
essentially based on correcting issues of political, economic and social justice;
corruption raises ‘major moral and political concerns’ and constitutes a major threat
to good governance, economic development, democratic progress and fair business
practices. 14 The United Nations Convention against Corruption offers a telling
summary of the negative impact corruption has on developing countries:
Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on
societies. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human
rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime,
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terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish. This evil phenomenon is
found in all countries - big and small, rich and poor - but it is in the developing world
that its effects are most destructive. Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by
diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government’s ability to
provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice and discouraging foreign aid
and investment. Corruption is a key element in economic underperformance and a
major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development.15
Given this series of negative outcomes, corruption needs to be addressed if a society
is to become a ‘good society’. However, and this is the second reason why
international anticorruption measures face so little opposition, the discourse
paradoxically presents the concrete ways to fight corruption foremost as a technical
and politically neutral enterprise. It operates with a clear-cut universalist definition of
corruption and claims to be mainly about the solving of specific ‘technical’ problems,
mostly in the design of institutions and laws. While its effects are portrayed as highly
normative - namely, negative, corruption itself is conceptualised as a technical issue
that affects the obvious good functioning of a society; and as such, it can be
‘repaired’.
These two features can lead to an absence of awareness on behalf of anticorruption
practitioners about the normative grounds of anticorruption efforts, as well as to an
absence of discussion about the politico-economic implications and ends of
anticorruption measures. However, the international anticorruption campaign is in fact
a very political enterprise, advanced by very powerful and resourceful international
actors. Anticorruption campaign also serves to reform the politico-economic
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governance systems of whole countries in particular ways. It is therefore of great
relevance to open a political debate on international anticorruption and its relationship
with democracy promotion through an analysis of its normative and politicoeconomic foundations. Our starting point is similar to the existing literature on the
origins of the concept of corruption: corruption necessarily denominates something
bad and is therefore a normative concept.16 It is similar to other, positively formulated
concepts - like sustainable development, health, or democracy - in that it embodies an
ideal good. The peculiarity of corruption consists however in its negative nature,
which reveals this ideal only indirectly, through its negation.
Yet conceptions of ‘good society’ vary within and across societies 17 , making
corruption a highly contestable concept, as Philp argues: political corruption is the
subversion of the naturally sound condition of politics;18 a definition that insists on
the many possible conceptions of what constitutes the ‘sound condition of politics’.
Political discussions about the naturally sound condition of politics are however often
successfully avoided through the widespread acceptance and use of seemingly
‘technical’ definitions of corruption as ‘the abuse of public office for private gain’19
or ‘the abuse of entrusted power for private gain’. Such definitions obscure the fact
that ‘the concept is rooted in ways of thinking about politics – that is, of there being
some “naturally sound condition” - variously described - from which corrupt acts
deviate’.20 Philp convincingly argues that any definition of corruption, which insists
that the deviation must happen for ‘private gain’, implies a notion of the public
interest or common good – which obviously cannot be conceived in merely technical
terms.
21
Consequently, any discourse on political, administrative or economic
corruption and on corrective anticorruption measures entails particular conceptions of
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the public interest, which – even if not explicitly – are linked to notions of a just
society and good societal organisation.
This idea of good societal organisation is present in US official discourses, where the
promotion of a good democratic society also entails the protection of democratic
procedures and institutions from threats – and where corruption is regarded as
looming large among those threats to democracy. 22 Like democracy promotion, the
issue of domestic and international corruption is undeniably an important component
of the United States’ foreign policy and their national security strategy23; the latter
underlines the need to dispose of corruption, which is seen as the source of social,
political and economic dislocation especially in developing countries.
24
US
governmental anticorruption actors adopt a definition of corrupt behaviour as ‘the
abuse of entrusted authority for private gain’. 25 Corruption is regarded as being
situated at both ends of political as well as economic deficiencies plaguing developing
countries – it is ‘both the product and the cause of numerous governance failures,
economic dysfunctions and political shortcomings’.26
Even though patterns of corruption vary, corruption is clearly identified by the US
government as a major impediment to economic and social development and a cause
of many ills if widespread in the public sector.
27
Corruption imperils good
governance, defined as ‘ruling justly, encouraging economic freedom, and investing
in people’.28 The lack of just rule, translating into government officials putting private
interests ahead of public interests, distorts the allocation of resources and delivery of
public services. This, in turn, threatens social cohesion and limits participation,
especially of the poorest segments of the population, in economic and political life.29
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Thus, USAID argues, social, political and economic development is imperilled by
corruption: social development is inhibited most of all through shortcomings in
service delivery – public investments go towards more lucrative areas like
infrastructure projects, and weak procurement systems and poor financial
management cause fraud and unaccounted-for leakages in public budget allocation.30
By crippling democracy through undermining the legitimacy and effectiveness of new
democracies, corruption endangers democratic values of citizenship, accountability,
justice, fairness, free speech, public accountability in the public realm, and limits
freedom of information.
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In the economic realm, corruption distorts public
investment in infrastructure, reduces foreign investments, skews domestic public
investment, encourages firms to operate in the informal sector, alters the terms of
trade, and weakens the rule of law and the protection of property rights, thus
impeding economic growth.32 Finally, because of all those structural governmental
weaknesses, corruption also contributes to make states vulnerable to terrorist
networks and drug cartels, thus making corruption a matter of US national security.33
The catalogue of ills caused by corruption leads to conclude that corruption threatens
the ‘good society’ as defined by US democracy promotion. Based on this conception
of a ‘good society’, US anticorruption as well as democracy promotion discourses
seek to achieve the implementation of measures facilitating economic growth, state
services, rule of law, equality, democracy, and individual freedoms and rights. The
next section identifies how these aims are to be reached.
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The ‘Right Measures’ in US Democracy Promotion and Anticorruption Rhetoric
The first part of the analysis revealed that there is a general discursive consensus
within the US government on the inherent goodness of democracy and intrinsic
nuisance of corruption, which impedes the attainment of the ‘good society’ as
described above. However, this apparent consensus does not yet tell us much about
how the ‘good society’ is supposed to be achieved in the discourses under
consideration. Accordingly, it does not yet allow for an assessment of how societal
ideals actually cohere amongst those two discourses. In order to be able to compare
those ideals, it is necessary to perform a more detailed analysis of the discourses on
the measures advocated to promote democracy and fight corruption.
The ‘Right Measures’ in US Democracy Promotion Rhetoric: Flexibility and
Adaptability
The analysis of the contemporary US discourse on the implementation of democracy
assistance reveals that there is a mutually supportive relation between democracy and
capitalism.34 However, this relationship is more nuanced than in past US democracy
promotion discourses. Free market economy is still considered as the main driver of
economic development but USAID, for example, calls for a more vigorous control
over the economy by governments of developing countries and an empowerment of
civil society through enhanced control over economic and political liberalisation.
The current reorganisation of USAID illustrates this discursive shift on the
implementation of democracy promotion. Indeed, the reform programme USAID
Forward insists on the need to move from a top-down in favour of a bottom-up
approach to development aid.35 USAID now promotes new partnerships, an emphasis
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on innovation and a relentless focus on results’. 36 The idea of ‘New partnerships’
essentially means to develop a partner country’s capacity and to strengthen local civil
society and private sector capacity to improve aid effectiveness and sustainability.
The rationale of the reforms is to trigger ownership of development aid on behalf of
recipients and improve long-term sustainability.37
This conception of ‘new partnerships’ indicates that the discourse shifts the way in
which US democracy promotion is to be carried out in the political realm from active
promotion to a more supportive and cooperative mode, which has been termed
‘democracy support’.38 Democracy suppport thus displays more flexibility in the way
it is implemented as it is more responsive to local conditions. This more flexible and
benign approach is less based on an imposition of a liberal political and economic
model and rests more on an understanding of the constraints on the progress of
democracy in recipient countries.
Democracy support thus deploys a two-fold strategy. Firstly, political assistance
strengthens good governance ‘by responding to their initiatives, while sustainingly
scaling it to countries’ size’.39 Secondly, economic assistance targets a reduction of
‘corruption, absolute poverty, and helps consolidate nascent indigenous efforts,
delivering on the promise of democracy and bringing “freedom from want”’. 40
USAID now advocates ownership of democratisation by recipient countries leading to
sustainability of democratic reforms in the long term, arguing that if democracy is
genuinely asked for, or generated by recipient countries, it has better chances to take
root than if it is imposed from the outside without consideration for the context in
which democratisation is supposed to happen. This focus on sustainability and
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ownership of democratisation translates into a bigger role for the state to control
potential harmful effects of market liberalisation on developing societies and to
ensure that poverty is reduced through the provision of basic social services.
Yet, this notion of ‘new partnership’ is under threat. According to democracy
promotion discourse, corruption in the public and private spheres threatens US
strategies of democratisation of the political and economic life of developing
countries, and hence development. The next section identifies what needs to be done
to fight corruption according to the US discourse and asks whether anti-corruption
measures advocated and the ideal of societal organisation they construct fit the ‘good
society’ articulated in democracy promotion discourse. The analysis shows that
combating corruption is above all an enterprise that leaves little room for political
manoeuvre for those at the receiving end of anticorruption policies.
The Right Measures in US Anticorruption Rhetoric: Uncompromising and
Inflexible
The approach to anticorruption depicted in the US discourse is global. According to
the US government, the fact that corruption is a transnational phenomenon requires a
multilateral effort to fight it.41 The US recommends a strong line on corruption and
posits itself at the forefront of the global anticorruption fight. Indeed, American
commitment was decisive in pushing through the adoption of international
anticorruption standards – legal frameworks to fight and prevent corruption, which
have been agreed on multilaterally in the 2003 United Nations Convention against
Corruption (UNCAC), the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign
Public Officials in International Business Transactions, the Middle East Partnership
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Initiative (MEPI), the G-8 Comprehensive Transparency Initiative, and by the G-20
and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). According to the US Department of State,
the international acknowledgement of the transnational character of corruption and
the leading role of the United States in international anticorruption result in a global
unification of conceptions of corruption, as well as of adequate action, namely
through the standardisation of anticorruption measures in international legal
frameworks like UNCAC.42 While the framework for action is decisively global, the
US implementation of anticorruption measures at country-level is comprehensive and
unilaterally directive.
Indeed, US anticorruption discourse focuses on corruption in the public sector as well
as on interactions between public and private sectors. As USAID explains, this has a
multiplication effect for the aid given to developing countries ‘because working to
change the way the public sector manages public resources and interacts with the
private economy expands the impact of USAID programs to entire sectors and
economies’.43 Despite the definition of corruption used by the US government - ‘the
abuse of entrusted authority for private gain’, which could theoretically also
accommodate the abuse of power in the private sector, the phenomenon thus seems to
be identified mainly in the public and not in the private sector. The worry about the
market-distorting influence of public-private corruption points to the belief in free
markets as the best engine of economic growth. Free market needs political and social
stability to operate smoothly. Hence, the US promotes rule of law, democracy, state
services and legitimacy of government as the means to achieve such stability in
countries undergoing political transition. Frequent reference is also made to the
concept of good governance, which has been criticised as a technical approach to
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solve political problems that promotes procedural or minimalist conceptions of
democracy.44
The measures to tackle corruption in US discourse thus consist in reformatting the
legal and institutional arrangements in target countries. Prevention and enforcement
are the two main components of the advocated dual-track strategy designed to
improve the productivity of public expenditures, trace and reduce leakage, and to
enhance citizen oversight; this is to happen essentially through ‘providing technical
assistance to countries to address the causes of corruption and modify behaviors and
incentives in the future’.45 We can identify here a conception of people as rational and
self-interested, calculating their risks and gains and responding to any given
incentives when engaging in corruption or not. The conceptualisation of a society as
made of such people automatically focuses on ‘technical’ measures that set the ‘right’
incentives.
Indeed, contrary to the discourse on democracy assistance, the anticorruption
measures enounced by USAID have little to do with ownership of the processes to
reduce corruption. Recipient countries are given a set of seemingly technical
procedures to implement, without much latitude to refuse or modify the
recommendations they receive from the US government. Thus, where democracy
promotion displays flexibility in its implementation through the integration of the
recipients’ opinions about how best to achieve democratisation, anticorruption
measures are far more rigid, less proactive, and imposed on developing countries.
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This is interesting because, in order to be able to properly reform a country’s legal
and institutional framework, the US argues that it is essential to assess the specific
contexts allowing corrupt practices to thrive and be tolerated. Yet, what might at first
glance sounds like a consideration of socio-cultural differences in norms, values and
related conceptions of corruption, is rather an assessment of country-specific problem
constellations. Corrupt practices, and their tolerance, the USAID argument continues,
are embedded in the political and economic contexts of corrupted countries – which
can be objectively assessed and reformed accordingly.46
Consequently, the US government advocates traditional anticorruption strategies that
coerce deviant behaviours and re-structure ‘weak’ legal and institutional
frameworks.47 In addition to these measures, USAID wants to eradicate political and
economic conditions that favour what the US discourse defines as corruption. USAID
identifies ‘corruption syndromes’ that develop according to three variables:
‘institutional endowments, and social attitudes and mobilization’ as well as
‘imbalances between political and economic attributes of developing societies’. 48
This constitutes the second set of anticorruption measures lauded by USAID; it adds
to the legal-institutional reforms a set of programmatic responses to corruption that
shifts the focus from traditional public sector reforms ‘to focus on ways to shift the
incentives underlying political and economic competition and political will’. This
shift translates into the adoption of anticorruption measures that target political and
economic conditions that are allegedly conducive to corruption. Measures consist in
‘donor coordination to consolidate external pressure for reform, industry-specific
transparency initiatives to reduce the risks of “resource curse”’ and enhancing
economic competition; they also aim to ‘promote open political competition,
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safeguard natural resources’ through improving local communities control, ‘identify
abuse of parliamentary immunity, promote independent monitoring of large
procurements or concession awards, generate credible information, improve civilian
oversight on military budgets, augment economic diversification’.49
INSERT TABLE 1
These countermeasures unfold in the political, civil society and economic spheres and
vary according to the ‘syndrome of corruption’ detected in a particular society. This
syndrome is more or less severe depending on the nature of the political regime,
which plays an important role for corruption to flourish. 50 USAID, for example,
observes that authoritarian regimes are more likely to suffer from corruption than
electoral democracies and hence to experience slower social and economic
development. This reiterates the notion that democracies are better able to provide for
their citizens, thus ensuring overall stability.51 With the ideals of societal organisation
in mind, USAID contends that good political organisation consists of multiparty
democracy and plural political competition in free and fair elections, where
competition takes place according to politico-economic agendas and interests rather
than along personal, clientelistic or ethnic lines. This is to be achieved by setting the
right economic incentives to essentially self-interested actors. An independent but
slim and fast bureaucracy 52 is also deemed important, as are regulations creating
financial, political and administrative transparency to enable accountability in the first
place. Furthermore, an independent judiciary is needed to ensure the rule of law, and
to safeguard civil liberties, which are a precondition for the legitimacy of the
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government, which in turn ensures stability. This stability is further reinforced by the
development of an active and critical civil society.53
Indeed, a good civil society, according to US anticorruption discourses, constantly
monitors and checks upon public officials. Officials are immediately singled out when
corruption is detected and held accountable according to democratically expressed
group interests. People are supposed to fight for their own politico-economic interests,
and they are to be active and vigilant participants in their country’s politics. To that
end, people need certain capacities and information, which aid agencies can provide
them with, but it is also important that individual human rights, including civil
liberties and social rights, are guaranteed. Apart from its watchdog role, civil society
is expected to increase ‘awareness about the costs of corruption, decrease tolerance
for corrupt behaviour, and change the expected norms of ethical behavior’. 54 As
USAID points out: ‘Ninety percent of missions indicated the long-term embedded
nature of corruption represented a key constraint and necessitated large-scale shifts in
public attitudes and practices’.55 The so-called ‘empowering’ of civil society, which
could also be viewed as its co-optation to participate in the creation of a Westernliberal model of society without getting any more decision-making powers, is
obviously regarded as part of those shifts. Next to the empowerment of civil society,
the economy of targeted countries is another main field on which to fight corruption.
Indeed, good economic organisation includes open and formally regulated markets, an
internationally open and active banking sector as well as firmly established property
rights. The state must reduce risks and ensure stability of expectation in markets, and
encourage economic activity and participation throughout the whole society - not just
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the elite - in order to promote economic growth.56 What is particularly interesting is
the assertion that the rights of businesses are to be protected, as is the private sector to
be protected from public officials – and not the other way round. This reiterates the
heavy emphasis on corruption in the public sector and the neglect of dubious practices
in the private sector, which could be seen as equally damaging to the public interest.
Furthermore, it becomes apparent that in highly corrupt settings, the US discourse
gives economic priorities precedence over political and social priorities: the
suggestion to offer existing elites rewards for accepting economic reforms - again
according to an economistic model of human nature - can hardly mean anything else
than compromising democracy for economic openness.57
We can conclude that far from being politically neutral and essentially technical, the
US anticorruption discourse clearly advocates a Western liberal politico-economic
model for societal organisation – with emphasis on the principle of citizen
responsibility. It is based on a conception of human nature as essentially selfinterested and rational, seeking most of all wealth – property, economic growth – and
stability and security. The conviction that economic growth is best achieved through
open and free markets, which are ‘protected’ from state intervention, reflects the
belief that ‘well-functioning markets are the most efficient way to allocate
resources’. 58 Free market economy automatically generates efficiency and the
accumulation of wealth, while resources will be redistributed ‘justly’ across the
society, which in turn provides some degree of social stability, aided by the rule of
law. These two objectives are seen as endangered by corrupt behaviour of public
officials who are not properly controlled and interfere with the principles of a free
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market economy – in this logic, an expanded state apparatus increases the risk of
corruption and must therefore be reduced.
One method to prevent such behaviour is the creation of transparency, which enables
the rational and self-interested actors to check whether their interests are violated and
to act accordingly by holding corrupt actors accountable in the democratic process.
Such mechanisms however presuppose an informed and capable civil society; how to
act according to their own self-interest and to adequately use the freedoms granted by
the liberal state is therefore something that civil society actors are being taught by
international aid agencies. The other main method is the neoliberal technique of
strengthening the market principle of competition in the public sector and in the
relationships between public sector and civil society. According to USAID, to
increase competition is a critical element of any anticorruption strategy.59
Overall, measures targeting political society and civil society become less important
than economic measures when corruption is more present. This indicates the belief
that economic openness leads the way in creating a good, corruption-free society.
Indeed, the less open the political system, the more decisive economic measures to
combat corruption are, while political measures and actions in the civil society
develop at a more gradual, or moderate pace.60
Conclusions
Both US democracy promotion and anticorruption discourses portray their respective
goals as globally desirable and as only attainable with international efforts. At the
same time, both agendas are presented as being important and conducive to the US
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national interest of global stability and security through global prosperity. Therefore
the US assumes a symbiosis of global interest with its national values and interests.
These values and interests translate in US discourses on democracy promotion and
anti-corruption strategies into a set of ideals to promote. Both discourses agree that
economic growth, state services, rule of law, equality, transparency, democracy, and
individual freedoms and rights are important qualities of a ‘good society, and hence
should take root and be preserved in target countries.
However, there is a discrepancy between both discourses with regards to policy
implementation. Indeed, democracy promotion measures show a degree of flexibility
in the relationship between the political and economic spheres to accommodate local
political specificities and to ensure ownership of reforms. Anticorruption methods, in
contrast, reveal an inflexible stance on implementation, in which technical and
institutional anticorruption measures are force-fed to target countries, without concern
for their political impact. Accordingly, it seems that US democracy promotion and
anticorruption discourses are incoherent; at least on the level of linguistic practices,
they pull in different directions.
Indeed, US anticorruption discourse outlines very precise, closely intertwined
features, which a good society should have. What is advocated, in a rather directive
way, is a clear neoliberal model of societal organisation: restricted government
intervention unless it facilitates free market economy, and heavy emphasis on market
principles as means of economic regulation, and as shaping socio-political struggles
throughout the whole of society. This vision is based on universalist assumptions of
people as rational and self-interested and of markets as the main generators of the
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good life. Consequently, we argue, the correct implementation of anticorruption
measures as advocated by the US can amount to a very intrusive and comprehensive
restructuring of politico-economic systems of countries undergoing political and
economic liberalisation.
In contrast, US democracy promotion discourse is less assertive regarding the
political organisation envisaged. Although the aim is definitely some kind of
democratic society, there seems to be flexibility as to the exact type of democratic
society to be constructed. The discourse places an emphasis on the importance of
government – also with regards to the regulation of the economy, and on participation
in and ownership of reforms by the people in countries benefiting from US
development aid. This discourse seems to take the democratic purpose seriously in the
sense that opinions of people in supported countries are included instead of the
imposition of a particular model of democracy. US democracy promotion discourse
could therefore be regarded as allowing for the possibility that, in the course of
democratisation, countries in transition could choose forms of political organisation
that are more participatory or inclusive than a liberal democratic model and inclusive
of much greater state activity in the regulation of societal relations. There is thus a
risk that anticorruption strategies – with their focus on neoliberal tenets – diminish the
potentially emancipatory impact of democracy assistance – with its emphasis on
ownership of democratisation and local control over economic development – and
uphold a traditional Western-centred directive modus operandi within development
aid.
24
Considering that US anticorruption policies are closely linked to and considered part
of US democracy promotion activities, these contradictions in respect of the model of
democracy to be chosen by developing countries generate questions as to how these
oddities play out in practice. Further research on the actual implementation of the two
agendas will be necessary to answer a series of questions: Which agenda turns out to
be more dominant once political reforms are implemented? Does the anticorruption
agenda prevent the democracy promotion agenda from becoming emancipatory? Does
a seemingly open and emancipatory but vague US discourse on democracy promotion
show its real face through assertive and directive anticorruption measures?
Regarding the question of how these discursive contradictions came about we can
only give a tentative answer here. US democracy promotion has experienced a serious
setback in Iraq and Afghanistan, facing criticisms of neo-imperial liberal practices.
This led to a reconsideration of the assertive nature of the promotion of liberal
democracy and consequently to a more cautious and less directive approach.
Anticorruption policies however have so far remained untroubled by such criticisms.
The reason for this may, in part, lie with the heavy negative-normative weight that is
inherent to the concept of corruption. Who would question policies that are supposed
to fight something as inherently bad as corruption? The actual political content of
international anticorruption policies in general has therefore remained largely
unquestioned – by target countries but also by most academic scholars, politicians and
by organised civil society. What has remained undiscovered is that the US
anticorruption agenda aims at reconfiguring whole societies according to very specific
Western neoliberal models.
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Another conclusion gained from the present analysis is therefore that US
anticorruption discourse but also US democracy promotion discourses, even if to a
slightly lesser extent, reflect universalist claims about the inherent goodness of liberal
democracy and economic liberalism. Both hold that those are the right forms of
politico-economic organisation for any society, and that they must be actively
promoted and defended against subversive behaviours that threaten to destroy them.
Irrespective of their discursive inconsistencies, both agendas can be regarded as
representing assumptions of Western superiority over developing countries – if not
morally, then with regards to the ‘technical’ superiority of liberal democratic and
economic institutions in dealing with the ‘universal’ human nature as conceived by
Western liberalism. A political debate about the respective normative content of those
discourses will therefore have to consider not only their compatibility but also
question their relations to societal norms and ideals in developing countries.
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30
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Milja Kurki and Heikki Patomaki for their invaluable comments on previous
versions of this article.
Notes on Contributors
Jeff Bridoux is Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of International Politics at
Aberystwyth University. He studies democracy promotion, post-conflict reconstruction, and US
foreign policy. His most recent book is American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction (2011).
Anja Gebel is a PhD candidate in the department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. Her
thesis is entitled ‘The Ideal within: Conceptions of Politics, Economics, and Civil Society in the
International Anticorruption Discourse’.
Disclaimer
Jeff Bridoux, Lecturer in International Politics and Anja Gebel, PhD candidate ‘Political Economies of
Democratisation’, European Research Council, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth
University. This project is funded by the European Research Council under the European Community's
Seventh Framework programme (2007-13) – project grant no. 202596. The views expressed here
remain those of the authors.
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