Electoral politics and corruption

Following Panamagate, many are arguing that the current drive for accountability should also target military generals and judges. Well-intentioned as this demand might be, simply associating corruption with high-profile public figures is problematic. It caricatures public officials as swindlers and ordinary citizens as victims. At this critical juncture, we need an honest dialogue about incentives for political corruption and the complicity of ordinary citizens in the latter.

For a moment, let’s forget about the complex saga of offshore companies and missing money trails. Let’s simply define corruption as the use of public office for private gain. Now let’s focus on electoral politics. Voters want things — jobs, monthly ration, assistance in navigating the legal system, etc, — and they will vote for whoever can credibly commit to providing these things. Thus, politicians do not mobilise voters on the basis of policy-oriented appeals. They typically employ a network of brokers — bureaucrats, clan leaders and ethnic elders — to offer particularistic goods and services to voters in exchange for their votes. In a weakly institutionalised party system, such as the one in Pakistan, it is easy for locally rooted politicians to misuse public funds to buy off voters, keep brokers loyal and ‘neutralise’ the opposition. Thus, corruption takes many forms in this process: vote buying, bias in awarding contracts, bribery and embezzlement of development funds.



The possibility of military intervention also motivates politicians to abuse public office. The threat of an electoral cycle being disrupted by a coup is always present. Historically, the average voter — devoid of any party loyalty or ideological commitment — has not protested military takeovers. Thus, elected representatives, insecure about their political survival, are likely to prepare for the possibility of an adverse future by securing themselves in the short run — for instance, by stashing away millions from the public exchequer for a rainy day. In this case, a ‘rainy day’ is equivalent to being forced into exile or thrown into jail.

The rise of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has given hope that the ‘system’ is changing in Pakistan. But it might be too soon to get overly optimistic. In her book Politician’s Dilemma, political scientist Barbara Geddes writes about the rise of the National Democratic Union party in the 1950s and 1960s in Brazil. Led by sincere leaders, the party exposed political corruption and rhetorically expressed its commitment to political reform. But alas, the exigencies of the electoral game eventually got the better of the party, and it was forced to enter into coalitions with parties entrenched in patronage networks. The party’s leaders had to admit that they were tired of ‘glorious defeats’. Similarly, the PTI, determined to prevent another glorious defeat, has been welcoming ‘electables’ who have defected from other parties.

Any genuine anti-corruption campaign must acknowledge that abuse of authority and misuse of public resources is at the heart of politician-voter linkages in Pakistan. While targeting corrupt leaders at the top has symbolic value, it won’t go very far in curbing everyday corrupt practices.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2017.

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