About corruption

Recently, Alexei Navalny wrote a text stating that corruption should be declared a priority global problem. On the one hand, everything is correct - more or less any problem can be reduced to an inefficient use of resources. Why are they spent inefficiently? Because they are stolen. However, at the same time, one can see the whole complexity of talking about corruption as a separate problem:

"After the collapse of the USSR and the end of the global ideological confrontation, it was corruption in its classical definition - the use of an official position for personal gain - that BECAME the universal non-ideological basis for prosperity in the world of an authoritarian international"

The word "became" sounds interesting. And what happened before that? The authorities in the USSR did not use the provisions for personal gain? What are government dachas and member carriers (quite official)? Or a comprehensive blat system (already unofficial)? In fact, power was used for personal gain almost always. That's what she, in fact, and power. It's just that at different moments in the history of the elite they explained it differently - "we are the descendants of the sun god" or "we are on guard of national interests." The ideal term for such a self-serving system of government was coined by economists Douglas North and co - "natural states" (in the sense that they dominated most of history).

Today, we conceive of corruption as an aberration only because we are accustomed to a different ideal - "the state as a hired manager." However, such states appeared relatively recently, the last couple of centuries. North and Co. call it the "open access order" (in the sense that more or less everyone has access to legal and economic institutions there, not just elites). Why this happened is a tricky question. However, it cannot be said that the elites with their appetites in Europe suddenly took over or disappeared somewhere or suddenly became "good". Rather, it turned out that in Europe there was a parity of elite groups, which resulted in the emergence of systems of checks and balances, consisting of different parties, branches of government, center-regions, etc. Over time, this has also been overgrown with a layer of oversight NGOs and the like. As a result, people provide mutual curbing of appetites, leaving that same natural corruption at an acceptable level.

Thus, there is no separate "problem of corruption". There is one big "power problem". Western countries managed to solve this problem after a long evolution of legal institutions. However, these legal institutions work within Western countries - they do not care what money comes "from outside", from Putin's oligarchs or African cannibals. Navalny proposes to fight this through the tightening of international anti-corruption legislation. But here the question arises: why? Why should Western countries cut off the flow of corrupt money? Why should they sacrifice anything at all so that Vasya from distant Russia has less corruption and fair trials? Navalny speaks as if this is a matter of course in the interests of Western societies, but this is not at all obvious.

However, one can try to answer this question: many books have been written about the complexities of the spread of Western legal institutions, but surprisingly little is said about the reverse processes. In the global world, the practices of the "natural state" may well take revenge. There is such an old term - "colonial boomerang" - when states, having got the hang of beating natives across the sea with sticks, transfer such practices to their own citizens. By analogy, one can speak of a "corruption boomerang" - Western officials/politicians, having stolen from international aid programs and the reconstruction of Afghanistan, will invariably want to do the same at home. Navalny writes about how Putin is buying up Western politicians, but they themselves are not averse to returning to a "natural" state. Therefore, it is beneficial for the Western voter to fight international corruption - not in order to save some kind of Russia, but in order not to turn into Russia itself.

Mihail Pojarsky 2021-08-26