Democracy, growth & corruption in various political systems

Corruption finds expression in capitalist as well as socialist polities, in democracies and military dictatorships

Political scholarship continues to wrestle with questions concerning the relationship between a political system, economic growth and corruption. Western, liberal, democratic, capitalist economies are taken as yardsticks for evaluating the Chinese experiment . Its connotations in and for other LDCs are also subjects of close attention.

This finds articulation in a number of connected directions. If economic progress is predicated upon plural, party-based democracy, how to explain the unprecedented economic growth achieved in less than sixty years in what is regarded as a less than open China? Can economic growth be sustainable over the long run in an authoritarian China? How has the Eastern giant ensured creativity and innovation in an apparently closed system? How was Deng Zhao Ping’s 1970’s shift to openness possible within a statist system? What role have merit, excellence in education and research, adaptive innovation, within the perimeters of social order and peace, played in China’s modernisation, a Confucianism adapted to change? How is change mainstreamed along with the paramount need for stability and order and how have social tendencies towards undue financial gains or corruption been subdued or regulated in two variant political and social structures? In exploring these issues, other countries aspiring for economic progress may find suitable directions aligned to their own circumstances.

How has China tackled the issue of corruption that all societies have experienced in their pre- democratic, feudal, patron-client stages? Nearly all developing countries in their post-colonial stages of development are afflicted with corruption. Yet high incidence of corruption has not stopped many states achieving commendable economic growth.

Certain political theorists have averred that corruption has been institutionalised in China partly leading to progress. But there were massive investments in education, health, infrastructure and housing. A strict internal legal regulation has curbed but not eliminated the problem. Huge social investments have led to phenomenal increase in economic productivity and a resilient, trained and educated workforce. The ready acceptance of advanced technology has resulted in raising nearly 650 million people out of abject poverty and attaining an economic growth averaging 8-9 per cent per annum on a trot over nearly three decades, unprecedented in world history. Today China stands on the cusp of history.

Avarice and corruption are part of human nature which religions, morality and laws have not been able to eradicate. It finds expression in both capitalist as well as socialist polities, in democracies and military dictatorships.

How have the West and China dealt with corruption. In USA, inordinately large campaign funding by the corporate sector refuses to be curtailed resulting in government recompensation in the form of policy and tax favours and relaxations. The CEOs of corporate America are recipients of inordinately high salaries, huge bonuses accruing to business leaders, along with lucrative stock options. While rule of law and rigid anti-graft laws have checked corruption among the multitudes, such subterfuges are some of the ways that malfeasance has become symptomatic as a distinct feature of capitalism.

Most of the sensourers of graft on getting an opportunity or becoming part of the elite never shy from immersing their hands in the till. Most often anti-corruption, along with religiosity and nationalism, become the handmaiden agenda of populist aspirants.

Inbuilt within capitalism is the element of embedded corruption. Capitalism accentuates the tendency towards corruption since it extols pursuit of self-interest, euphemistically labeled as ‘altruistic selfishness’, postulating that each seeking one’s greed results in the greatest good of the greatest number (Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations). Capitalism is thus intrinsically predatory, accumulative and acquisitive. Over the course of evolution democracy and rule of law smoothens the rough edges, internalising and legitimising corruption.

In China democracy and prosperity are the two predominant overall goals of the system as in USA, the West and LDCs.

Without multiparty system it is scrupulous observance of merit, rules of social compatibility, reform and adaptability that has produced in China one of the most vibrantly competent governance and party structures. State functionaries intercross and interchange, during their tenures, between party cadres and professionalism in industry, commerce and trade.

Induction into government and party is based upon strict merit and performance which ensures equality of opportunity. Free education up to the highest levels based upon merit is sacrosanct.

As a government civil servant or party functionary rises in rank from village to town or city levels or from the production floor to managing of vast state enterprises, the personnel are granted incentives by being recipients of a percentage of the incremental growth that they are able to achieve in their respective areas of operation. No member of the Standing Committee of the CCP rises to that level without having run a region, province, city or canton.

Thus although very strict anti-corruption laws and penalties are in the field, the temptation for corruption is reduced by offering commissions or shares in productivity to managers or town or city leaders.

Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Japan tackled the problem of corruption more or less the same way. Massive social investments, rule of law, upholding the merit and principle were some of the methods to curb corruption. The pays of civil servant and judges were kept on a par with the corporate executives so as to reduce predilections towards corruption.

Corruption or the tendency to get rich the easy way or by twisting the rules or misuse of authority is endemic worldwide. It can’t be wished away by mere sloganeering or attempts to hide or divert attention from lack of performance in social and economic growth. It needs systematic legal, social, economic and democratic planning and vision coupled with merit based, sustained accountable civilian supremacy rather than autocratic brouhaha.

By focusing on corruption alone the deprived are given the anodyne that their miseries are the result not of incompetent and inept unaccountable governance but stolen wealth. Such a crusade-like campaign tries to swindle the deprived from asking for education, health facilities and fruitful employment. Instead of more democracy rather than less becoming the remedy for corruption, anti-corruption policies become instruments of repression of opposition and dissent and political engineering aimed at personal aggrandisement rather than improving living conditions of the masses. In the end, less democracy, more autocracy and less economic development are the necessary result.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2023.

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