Corruption:
Corruption affects the poorest, in rich or poor nations, although all elements of society are affected in some way, as corruption undermines political development, democracy, economic development, the environment and Health of people.
Across the world, the perception of corruption in public places is very high.
But corruption is not only found in governments; It can penetrate through society.
The issue of corruption is very interrelated with other issues. At the global level, the international economic system (influenced by the Washington Consensus), which has shaped the current form of globalization in recent decades, requires more scrutiny, as it has also created conditions for corruption to flourish and exacerbate Conditions of people around the world who already have little opinion about their own destiny. At the national level, effective participation and representation of people in society may be undermined by corruption, while at the local level, corruption can make everyday lives more painful for all those affected.
However, it is difficult to measure or compare the impact of corruption on poverty against the effects of law-based inequalities such as unequal trade agreements, structural adjustment policies, so-called free trade agreements, etc. It is easier to see corruption. It is more difficult to see these more formal, even legal forms of corruption. It is easy to assume that these are not even issues because they are part of the laws and institutions that govern national and international communities and many of us will be accustomed to it, is how it works, so to speak. These deeper aspects are discussed elsewhere in the section of this website on trade, economics, and related issues.
However, that is not to belittle the issue of corruption, since its impacts are huge as well.
Rich countries involved in corruption abroad
When asked why poor countries are poor, it is very common to hear, especially in the richest countries perceived to have minimal corruption (at least in the country) that other countries are poor because of corruption. However, corruption is not limited to Third World despots. Rich countries have also been involved in corrupt practices around the world.
As Professor Robert Neild of Trinity College of Cambridge University writes in Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution (London: Anthem Press, 2002), Rich countries and their agencies ... have commonly been and are complicit in corruption abroad, encouraging it by their actions rather than hinder it .... (P.209). The specific problems that stand out are:
The impact of corruption in the Cold War (support for dictatorships, destabilization of democracies, financing of the opposition, etc.);
Companies in rich countries bribing rulers and officials in developing countries to obtain export contracts, particularly in the arms trade and construction (even justifying it by suggesting bribery is common in those countries, so they need to do so to to compete) ;
The corrupting effects of the purchase by rich countries and their international corporations of concessions in Third World countries to exploit natural deposits of oil, copper, gold, diamonds and the like. Payments made to rulers often violate local (and Western) rules, keeping corrupt rulers in power, who also embezzle a large amount of money.
The drug trade. Neild suggests that international law and national laws in rich countries that prohibit drugs can serve to produce an irresistible scarcity value for producers, smugglers and traders. Governments and civil society in the Third World are often undermined, sometimes destroyed by the violence and corruption that accompanies drug trafficking. This is probably the most important way in which rich country policies promote corruption and violence. However, the effect on the Third World seems hardly to enter into the discussion of alternative drug policies in rich countries. Legalization of drugs, a system of imposition and regulation, comparable to that applied to tobacco and alcohol, could do more to reduce corruption in the world than any other measure that.
