The shocking and tragic shopping mall fire in Kemerovo, Russia, where some 64 people died, has all the earmarks of systemic corruption – shoddy design, shoddy construction, and accommodating local officials. The incident reeks of payoffs and personal gain at the expense of public safety.
It’s a very old story, but it’s also an example of a much bigger story – a culture of corruption that begins at the top. When political leaders are themselves corrupt, they provide a model for everyone else in their society and create a culture of permissiveness, not to mention a signal that corrupt behaviors will not be punished. Corruption can then become a kind of social cancer.
It’s an age-old problem. Plato wrote about it. So did Machiavelli, and John Locke, and many modern-day authors as well. Unfortunately, there are all too many contemporary examples – among them Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Nigeria, China, and, of course, Russia. Sarah Chayes, who spent ten years as an aid worker and entrepreneur in post- 9/11 Afghanistan, saw systemic corruption first hand and wrote a passionate book on the subject called Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (Norton 2015). As Chayes notes, at its worst, the corruption can run so deep that a country’s government comes to resemble a criminal gang. Chayes calls it a “kleptocracy”.
Even in the United States, there are many subtle forms of corruption at work – our revolving door government, the corrosive influence of big money in politics, gerrymandering, tax evasion, and lax enforcement of white collar crimes, to name a few. As Chayes points out, in the more extreme cases, systemic corruption can ultimately lead to violent protests, puritanical political movements like the Taliban, or even a violent revolution. “Extremism is born of desperation,” Chayes concludes.
What is especially alarming about the present world-wide epidemic of corruption is that corrupt regimes these days can spread the disease to other countries. Thus, Russian money has been used to buy politicians in other countries – with Donald Trump himself as a likely example – and significantly influence their policies. A suspected example is Brexit – the British referendum on leaving the European Union.
The best antidote to corruption is a culture of integrity that starts at the top (and is demanded by the electorate in democratic countries), along with vigorous enforcement of the rule of law. In our own country, there are also a number of obvious (but politically challenging) structural reforms that could be made. They include restrictions to curb the revolving door, restoring restraints on campaign financing and making it more transparent, replacing the gerrymandering of election districts by the party in power with independent re-districting commissions, policing the social media, cracking down on tax evasion, and more vigorously enforcing the many laws that already exist to penalize corruption.
Corruption will never be completely cured, but it can be arrested and put into remission. All it takes, as Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said, is “eternal vigilance.”