Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Flexibility versus Inflexibility: Discursive Discrepancy in US Democracy Promotion and Anti-corruption Policies Jeff Bridoux and Anja Gebel 1 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 2 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. 2 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 3 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 4 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 5 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 6 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 7 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, 8 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 9 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 10 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 11 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. 31 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. 12 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 13 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 14 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 15 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 16 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. 17 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, 18 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 19 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 20 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 21 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 22 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 23 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. 25 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. 1 See C Hobson and M Kurki, The Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion, Abingdon: Routledge, 2011; G O’Donnell and P Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, London: John Hopkins University Press, 1986; S E Finkel, A Pérez-Líñan, M A Seligson and C N Tate, Deepening Our Understanding of the Effects of US Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building Final Report, Washington D.C., USAID, 2008. For corruption see M Bukovansky, 'The hollowness of anti-corruption discourse', Review of International Political Economy 13, 2006, pp. 181 – 209; M Johnston, Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power, and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 2 The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf, accessed 19 October 2011, p. 37; US Department of State, Leading Through Civilian Power. The First Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, Washington D.C., US Department of State, 2011, p. 89. 26 3 The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, pp. 38, 45. US Department of State, Leading, pp. 118, 152. J Torfing, New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999, p. 40. 4 5 The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, p. 37. 6 National Research Council of the National Academies, Improving Democracy Assistance. Building Knowledge through Evaluations and Research, Washington D.C.: National Academies Press, 2008, p. 22. 7 The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, pp. 37-9; B Obama, ‘Remarks by the President to the United Nations General Assembly’, United Nations Building, New York, 23 September 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/23/remarks-president-united-nations-generalassembly, accessed 19 October 2011. 8 The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, p. 15. 9 T Carothers and M Ottaway, eds., Funding Virtue. Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000. 10 The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, p. 26. 11 U.S. Department of State, Advancing Freedom and Democracy Reports, Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 2010, p. 95. 12 B J Cook and N M J Pickus, ‘Challenging Policy Analysis to Serve the Good society’, The Good Society 11, 2002, p. 4. 13 L De Sousa, B Hindess and P Larmour, eds. Governments, NGOs and Anti-Corruption – The New Integrity Warriors, London: Routledge, 2009, p. xix. 14 OECD – Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, OECD, at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/18/38028044.pdf, accessed 20 October 2012, p. 6. 15 United Nations Organization, Office on Drugs and Crime, United Nations Convention against Corruption, Vienna, New York, 2004, p. iii. 16 See M Génaux, ‘Social Sciences and the Evolving Concept of Corruption’, Crime, Law & Social Change 42, 2004, pp. 13-24; P. Bratsis, ‘The Construction of Corruption, or Rules of Separation and 27 Illusions of Purity in Bourgeois Societies’, Social Text 77 (21), 2003, pp. 9 – 33; M Philp, ‘Defining Political Corruption’, Political Studies 45, 1997, pp. 436-62. 17 M Walzer, ‘What is “The Good Society”? Dissent 56, 2009, pp. 74 – 8. 18 Philp, ‘Defining’, p. 445. 19 This definition is still officially used by the World Bank. See World Bank, Strengthening World Bank Group Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption. Improving Governance, at http://www.improvinggovernance.be/upload/documents/gacpaper.pdf, accessed 20 October 2011, p. i. 20 Philp, ‘Defining’, p. 446. 21 Philp, ‘Defining’, p. 440. 22 The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, pp. 38, 45; USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, Washington D.C., USAID, 2005, pp. 5 – 6. 23 B Obama, ‘Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. Transparency and Open Government’, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment, accessed 26 October 2011. 24 The White House, National Security Strategy 2002, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-020920.pdf, accessed 26 October 2011; The White House, National Security Strategy 2006, http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/nss2006.pdf, accessed 5 November 2011; The White House, National Security Strategy 2010; H Clinton, ‘Video Remarks to the 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference’, Washington D.C., November 10, 2010, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/11/150727.htm, accessed 5 November 2011; The White House. ‘G-20: Fact Sheet on a Shared Commitment to Fighting Corruption’, The White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/11/12/g-20-fact-sheet-a-shared-commitmentfighting-corruption, accessed 5 November 2011; E G Verville, ‘The Fight against Kleptocracy. Collaborative Efforts to Combat High-Level Corruption’, US Department of Treasury, 2011, http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/pressreleases/Documents/dasvervilleremarks%20112608%20b.pdf, accessed 7 November 2011; R E Rubin, ‘Statement of Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin. A Global Forum on Fighting Corruption: Safeguarding Integrity Among Justice and Security Officials’, Federation of American Scientists, 1999, http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/02/99022403_clt.htmRubin, accessed 7 November 2011; US 28 Department of Treasury, Treasury International Programs. Justification for Appropriations FY 2009 Request, US Department of Treasury, 2009, http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/completefy2009cpd.pdf, accessed 7 November 2011; USAID, Promoting Transparency and Accountability: USAID’s Anti-corruption Experience, Washington D.C., USAID, 2000; USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy; USAID, ‘Sri Lanka. Democracy and Governance’, Washington D.C., USAID, 2011; USAID, Evaluation Policy, Washington D.C., USAID, 2011. 25 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 1; Millenium Challenge Corporation, Building Public Integrity. MCC’s Role in the Fight against Corruption, Washington DC, undated, p. 3. 26 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Assessment Handbook, Washington D.C., USAID, 2009, p. 1. 27 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Assessment, p. 4; USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, pp. v, 6 – 7. 28 E L Seats and S H Vardaman, ‘Lessons Learned Fighting Corruption in MCC Treshold Countries: The USAID Experience’, Management Systems International, 2009, http://www.msiworldwide.com/documents/TCPReport12-14-09final.pdf, accessed 15 November 2011, p. 9. 29 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 1. 30 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 5. 31 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, pp. 5 – 6; Clinton, ‘Video Remarks’. 32 USAID, Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity, Washington D.C., USAID, 2002, p. 67; USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 1; USAID, User’s Guide to DG Programming. Washington D.C., USAID, 2010, p. 39; Millenium Challenge Corporation, Building Public Integrity, pp. 1, 3; Verville, The Fight against Kleptocracy. 33 USAID, Foreign Aid, p. 40; The White House, National Security Strategy 2010, p. 57; US Department of State, Leading through Civilian Power, p. 12. 34 H Clinton, ‘Remarks on the Human Rights Agenda for the 21 st Century’, Speech at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., U.S.A., December 14, 2009, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/12/133544.htm, accessed 16 November 2011; H Clinton, ‘Civil Society: Supporting Democracy in the 21st Century’, Speech at the Community of Democracies, Warsaw, Poland, July 3, 2010, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/07/143952.htm, accessed 16 29 November 2011; DRL – Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Democracy, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/democ/index.htm, accessed 17 November 2011; DRL, DRL Programs, Including Human Rights Democracy Funds (HRDF), http://www.state.gov/g/drl/p/index.htm, accessed 17 November 2011; DRL, August 2010 Proposal Submission Instructions (PSI), 2010, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/p/august_2010/index.htm, accessed 17 November 2011; DRL, DRL Monitoring and Evaluation Primer and Sample M&E Plan, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/138430.pdf, accessed 17 November 2011; US Department of State, Advancing Freedom. 35 US Department of State, Leading through Civilian Power, p. ii; National Research Council of the National Academies, Improving Democracy Assistance; Government Accountability Office, Democracy Assistance. U.S. Agencies Take Steps to Coordinate International Programs but Lack Information on Some U.S.-funded Activities, Washington D.C., GAO, 2009; USAID, Evaluation Policy. 36 USAID, USAID Forward, http://forward.usaid.gov/about/overview, accessed 19 November 2011. 37 USAID, USAID Policy Framework 2011-2015, Washington D.C., USAID, 2011, http://www.usaid.gov/policy/USAID_PolicyFramework.PDF, accessed 19 November 2011, pp. 9, 13. 38 A T J Lennon, Democracy in U.S. Security Strategy. From Promotion to Support. Washington D.C., Center for International and Strategic Studies, 2009, p. v. 39 Lennon, Democracy, p. 5. 40 Lennon, Democracy, p. 5. 41 Verville, ‘The Fight against Kleptocracy’, p. 2. 42 Verville, ‘The Fight against Kleptocracy’. 43 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 8. 44 Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy. Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa, London: Zed Books, 2001. 45 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, pp. 1, 5, 9 – 10. 46 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Assessment, p. 3. 47 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 14. 48 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 14. 49 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 19. 30 50 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 19. 51 USAID, Foreign Aid, pp. 7, 9, 46. 52 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 20. 53 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Assessment, p. 29. 54 USAID, Promoting Transparency, p. 11. 55 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 11. 56 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 21, 25, 26; USAID, USAID Anticorruption Assessment, p. 19. 57 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Assessment, 19. 58 USAID, USAID Policy Framework, p. 3. 59 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, p. 14. 60 USAID, USAID Anticorruption Strategy, pp. 6 – 7. 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. 31 32