a candidate for relegation? corruption, governance approaches and the (re)construction of post-war...

public administration and development

Public Admin. Dev. 29, 374–386 (2009)

Published online 12 October 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.543

A CANDIDATE FOR RELEGATION? CORRUPTION, GOVERNANCEAPPROACHES AND THE (RE)CONSTRUCTION OF POST-WAR STATES

ALAN DOIG1* AND MARTIN TISNE2

1University of Teesside, UK2TIRI, UK

SUMMARY

The article discusses the place of anti-corruption in the post-war donor agendas. It uses examples from a set of country reports todemonstrate the divergence between the rhetoric and reality of donor-led initiatives, and the delivery of reform through thegovernance approach of which addressing corruption has been a part. It suggests that dealing with corruption has often beendiluted or downplayed within the wider approach. Within the debate to revise that approach, corruption may be relegated furtherdown the agenda. While recognising the complexity of the post-war reform process, and the demands from the multiple tasks andvolume of funding being addressed by a range of domestic and external actors, the article suggests that failure to addresscorruption within any new approach in favour of what are considered more pressing reform issues may well cause problems forthe future. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

key words— post-war states; donors; corruption; governance

INTRODUCTION

The failings of a pre-war state – as well as the cause of the fighting – invariably carry over into the emergence of the

post-war state. At the same time, to deliver the tasks necessary for the reconstruction (or, on occasion, the

construction) of the state, address the weaknesses of the emergent state, and promote the development objectives

that underpin multilateral and bilateral donors’ involvement, a comprehensive and rapid reform response has been

sought. Since reconstruction is perceived to face multiple macro issues (including safety and security,

democratisation and inclusion, post-war recovery and reconstruction programmes, the economy, and access to

justice and the rule of law), the question of the capacity of the state and its institutions, as well as the role of donors,

has led to approaches that look beyond the state acting alone. This is because, given the range of issues, the state is

considered as unlikely to have the capacity or coherence to act as the sole or only vehicle for reform, since each

issue is seen as ‘inextricably interrelated with each of the others . . ., the boundaries among these sets of functions

are often porous and the ability to deal with one often requires strengthening other government capacities as well.

Some problems cut across several or all sets of functions that governments must perform during the period of post-

conflict reconstruction . . . failure to attend to one set of problems often impact negatively on a government’s ability

to deal effectively with others’ (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and United Nations

Development Programme, 2007, p. 15).

How to incorporate or integrate the various initiatives and engage as many internal and external actors as

possible, donors have used a governance approach. While subject to definitional discussion, this has generally been

seen in terms of a broad approach that seeks to expand the ‘capacity of government, the private sector, and civil

society organisations to exercise political, economic, and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs’

(United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and United Nations Development Programme, 2007,

*Correspondence to: A. Doig, University of Teesside, Teesside Business School, Middlesborough TS1 3BA, United Kingdom.E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

CORRUPTION-A CANDIDATE FOR RELEGATION? 375

p. 14). The inclusiveness of the approach has been considered as the most effective way of supporting and guiding a

country’s development and reforms:

Scholars and practitioners have identified numerous drivers of state fragility and intrastate conflict; for

example, authoritarian and abusive rule, poverty and economic stagnation, exclusion or oppression of ethnic/

religious minorities, unequal access to services and jobs, and weak capacity to manage political contestation

and adjudication of disputes. Many of these drivers concern the relations between the state and society, and

thus are connected to the quality of governance. Without better governance, the potential for ongoing or

recurring state fragility and intrastate conflict remains high . . . efforts to restore or create good governance,

however, have adopted a relatively standardized and ambitious template that focuses on democratization and

elections, legislative strengthening, combating corruption, formal government structures, civil society

participation, and the institutional architecture of the state (Brinkerhoff, 2009, p. 3).

Addressing corruption has been a core component of this approach. How successful addressing corruption has

been in practice in the current reform process, however, is often very different from the conceptual and policy

expectations. The delivery of the governance approach by donors has often been constrained and compromised by a

number of issues, including pragmatic peace process negotiations and the range and volume of post-war reform

process initiatives.

The qualified success and progress of the reform process has raised questions about the nature of and limits to a

comprehensive governance approach. It has been argued that a more focussed and sequenced variant should be

developed (of which the ‘good enough governance’ approach is the latest iteration). This could also have

implications for how and where corruption may be addressed if the wider reform agenda becomes revised or refined

within a ‘good enough governance’ approach. This article looks at the policy and practitioner issues involved in

addressing corruption within the current approach by drawing on data from two sets of post-war country studies,1

and argues that the practice suggests that failure to address corruption within any new approach in favour of what

are considered more pressing reform issues may well cause similar problems for the future to those caused by the

current governance approach.

In terms of the article’s approach, it departs from the common usage in the literature, which refers to ‘post

conflict’ reconstruction and uses ‘post-war’ reconstruction instead:

‘Almost 50 countries emerged from and experienced large-scale violence in the past 15 years alone. After a lull,

several of these countries have seen recurrent violence on a significant scale. The key variable for these countries is

not whether a conflict has been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and that the country in that sense is ‘‘post-

conflict’’. The key question is whether the conflict is manifested through large-scale violence or has been

transformed into a non-violent political form that allows for a significant reconstruction process to begin. Moreover,

it is not conflicts per se, which are part and parcel of political life, but their manifestation in large-scale violence that

leads to the need for significant reconstruction of both physical infrastructure and public institutions. The two are

not synonymous. This large-scale violence can take the form of genocides, civil wars, international wars, and anti-

colonial wars of liberation’ (Galtung, 2005, p. 2).

This large-scale violence is characterised in this study under the shorthand of ‘war’.

1The article is based on a number of post-war country studies undertaken between 2004 and 2007 for TIRI, an anti-corruption NGO, with analysisand further work undertaken between 2007 and 2008. The first set of reports addressed reconstruction issues (RS) while the second set addressedthe reconstruction of a National Integrity System (RNIS) to address corruption (the NIS is discussed in Note Section). The RNIS reportsundertook a much wider analysis of the reconstruction of the state, the role of donors and how corruption was addressed in terms of theemergence or development of those areas or institutions, known as ‘pillars’ in the NIS framework, which are involved, directly or indirectly, withcorruption.The RNIS reports are drafted by in-country researchers to a uniform but not prescriptive template that sought to set out the conflictcontext, the state of the post-war state, the reconstruction/donor process, where corruption is placed in terms of the donors’ agendas and howcorruption is being addressed in practice. The countries involved were: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Palestine, East Timor, Lebanon,Mozambique, Bosnia and Kosovo. While not looking at the NIS itself, this article draws on the information about corruption in the post-war reform process. As far as possible the examples drawn from the studies are representative, intended to illustrate the themes and issues in thisarticle from a country perspective. The selection of the examples is the responsibility of the authors.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. 29, 374–386 (2009)

DOI: 10.1002/pad

376 A. DOIG AND M. TISNE

POST-WAR STATES: CONTEXTS AND CHOICES, DONORS, AND THE GOVERNANCE APPROACH

Many of the conflicts were internally generated, exacerbated by external factors, with discussions on causes usually

polarising around ‘the greed versus grievance dichotomy, juxtaposing ‘‘loot-seeking’’ with ‘‘justice-seeking’’

rebellions, and, more generally, the significance of economic versus socio-political drivers of civil war’ (Ballentine

and Nitzschke, 2003, p. 2). The range of causes may be ‘explained by atypically severe grievances, such as high

inequality, a lack of political rights, or ethnic and religious divisions in society. Alternatively, it might be explained

by atypical opportunities for building a rebel organisation. Opportunity may be determined by access to finance,

such as the scope for extortion of natural resources, and for donations from a diaspora population’ (Collier and

Hoeffler, 2001). Collectively the point to be made is that the causes of conflict are often integral to the country

concerned; they do not end or disappear with peace agreements. Rather, they become factors in the peace process in

that those negotiating the agreements, especially for the external actors seeking a basis for an end to the fighting

acceptable to all sides. The latter often have to bring in those who have the continuing capacity to draw upon the

causes for future hostilities (and who are willing to participate because they see advantage to trade involvement in

conflict for involvement in the post-war reform process for various partisan, sectional or self-interested reasons).

Of course ‘the basic point of peacebuilding, both before and after war, is to create, or recreate, structures and

capacities that will enable internal conflict to be resolved before violence breaks out. Every society has conflict

between individuals and groups – political, economic, legal, social: the point is not to eliminate but to contain and

channel it, by developing institutional structures and processes capable of relieving each of these pressure points as

they arise’ (Evans, 2003). On the one hand, this requires external actors, in negotiating peace, to know who to

include, and why: ‘without understanding something about how state-society relations have evolved, how war may

have changed things, or who has power and how power works, any generic peacebuilding strategy is likely to be a

poor fit’ (Call and Cousens, 2008, p. 14).

On the other, country-specific awareness usually includes accepting the realities of inclusion, which brings to the

table some looking to exploit the post-war process: ‘bargaining parties generally seek to maximise their political,

economic, and security interests well into the future. This leads to problems regarding the designing of the rules of

political relations, because the short-term security concerns of the bargaining parties may be at odds with the long-

term institution-building needs of the society’ (Rothchild, 2003, p. 118). This in turn sets boundaries and

constraints on the work of those multilateral and bilateral donors, and a number of international NGOs, involved in

post-peace agreement reform not only in terms of their goals, but also with whom they may have to work to achieve

them: ‘there are often no domestic structures that can run the transitional government, at least in the initial phases.

Therefore, the interim governments that now occur in the context of post-war transitions tend to be initiated and

often managed by external actors’ (Guttieri and Piombi, 2007, p. 12).

What has made the implementation of such a framework even more problematic has been, first, the timing and

breadth of the post-peace agreement reform process, often as a consequence of the peace agreement, and

subsequently driven by a concern to maintain progress away from the conflict contexts. Second, those external

actors involved in the multifaceted reform process have also come with a relatively prescriptive framework to put in

place, grounded in ‘standard liberal democratic practices and norms – representative and responsible government,

the rule of law, and the absence of corruption’ with an emphasis that appears to favour or encourage ‘a neoliberal

faith in the superiority of market economies and in the importance of introducing market mechanisms into the

public sector’ (Bevir, 2004, p. 2; see also Harrison, 2005 and, for examples of similar practitioner perspectives, see

DFID, 1997, p. 30, and the Australian Agency for International Development, 2000, p. 3).

Some have argued that the ‘the idea of transforming war-shattered states into stable market democracies is

basically sound’ but ‘pushing this process too quickly can have damaging and destabilising effects’ (Paris, 2004, p.

ix) while others warn of the consequences of ‘attempts to push governments that have minimal capacity to embark

on ambitious programmes of institutional reform . . .’ (Ottaway, 2003, p. 265). Nevertheless, the predominant

approach has been reform or reconstruction should be rapid, inclusive and comprehensive: ‘post-conflict nation

building requires programmes to create a strong state quickly and in such fashion as to strengthen the capability of

the governing regime not only to provide security, eliminate violent conflict and find ways to reconcile conflicting


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ethnic or religious factions, but also to protect human rights, generate economic opportunities, provide basic

services, control corruption, respond effectively to emergencies and combat poverty and inequality’ (Rondinelli

and Montgomery, 2005, p. 19).

Further, the general consensus has been that this should be undertaken within the context of broad governance

approach: ‘the role of state failure as cause and consequence of conflict and civil war has highlighted the

importance of governance in establishing peace, pursuing state reconstruction and avoiding conflict in the first

place’ (Brinkerhoff, 2005, p. 3). Here the reform agenda ‘should be established by moving sequentially from values

and principles, to goals and objectives, to doctrine and strategies, to policies and plans and then to structures,

institutions and resources. All relevant local actors should be involved in this process: government, parliament, the

security forces and civil and political society. The government should lead, although it is likely to need to

supplement its capacity with inputs from both local civil society and the international community’ (Ball, 2005, p.

35). The overall approach has also been reflected by donors, with the Canadian International Development Agency

(CIDA) promoting a broad approach that ‘includes a wide range of activities to foster rights, democracy and

governance, and a wide range of partners’ (CIDA, 1996, p. 4) and the UK Department for International

Development (DFID) arguing that ‘good governance is not just about government. It is also about political parties,

parliament, the judiciary, the media, and civil society. It is about how citizens, leaders and public institutions relate

to each other in order to make change happen’ (DFID, 2006, pp. 22, 8).

THE COUNTRY STUDIES

Country context and conflict resolution

How the rhetoric and assumptions concerning the speed, inclusivity and breadth of the governance approach, the

role of donors, and the role of domestic actors, have played out in practice may be reviewed through the country studies.

In the first instance, the impact of fighting, and the nature of the peace agreements do reflect the issues that have been

identified. All countries in the RS and RNIS reports suffered from the devastation of the country’s infrastructure,

economy and institutions where the role of external actors both in terms of negotiating peace and leading post-war

reconstruction has been crucial. In a number of cases, the war left a number of countries without sustainable tax bases,

without a functioning public service, without a skilled workforce, and without indigenous industry:

During the period 1980-88 Mozambique suffered a loss in transit traffic revenues of approximately US$ 1.4

bn, a similar loss in export trade revenues, and a loss in domestic agricultural production to an estimated US$

1.25 bn . . .Much of the country’s basic infrastructure — roads, bridges, railways, sugar mills, rural shops and

much else—lay in ruins (Mozambique RNIS).

In addition, the economy was essentially brought to the point of total collapse. The precise extent of the

physical damage is difficult to obtain, and estimates have been wide ranging, from as low as 15 billion to as

much as 100 billion US Dollars. Ultimately the rapid decline in the level of industrial production over the

course of the three years of war, which had by 1995 dwindled to less than 5% of the level recorded in 1990

provides for a telling story (BiH RNIS).

In all countries, there was significant external actor involvement in working toward ending the fighting and devising

and implementing the peace process, although not all those agencies involved in ending the fighting were then involved

in delivering post-war reform. Peace was often brokered externally in ways that have left donors to work with the

consequences of any agreement. While the agreement often sought to give the impression of a clean break, it did not

mean that the sources of conflict were fully resolved, or that potential post-war issues were resolved, or that all those

involved were there either for the benefit of the country or to participate in the reform process for the public good:

The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is set forth in Annex 4 of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), a

document which was signed in Dayton (USA) in order to end the 1992-95 war in the country and form basis for


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post-war nation-building and reconciliation between the warring parties. DPA effectively defines BiH as a

state of three constituent peoples – Bosniaks (Muslims), Serbs and Croats . . .much of the power in the

immediate aftermath of the war continued to rest in the hands of the three ethnic based parties, namely the

Bosniak SDA, Croat HDZ and Serb SDS . . .These power dynamics were not given much attention in the early

post-war period as the donor community was mostly concerned by the task of managing a 60,000 strong and

NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) in order to keep peace in the country (Bosnia RNIS).

The United Nations established the United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET)

with the main task to prepare East Timor for independence and rebuild the country from the ashes. As a result,

East Timor inherited a bureaucracy that was established by the UNTAET. Many civil servants recruited into

the bureaucracy were former Indonesian civil servants, who were exposed to the rampant corruption during

that period (East Timor RNIS).

Under the language of the Bonn Agreement a more ambitious perspective was reflected. Key international

actors acted more in line with a minimalist – actors say pragmatic – perspective aimed at safeguarding short-

term stability and limiting the influence of conservative Islamists. Many subjects directly related to the post-

war situation were either ignored or deliberately set aside . . .’ (Afghanistan RS).

Indeed the stabilisation and reconciliation process often accommodated conflict legacies to secure agreement in

a way that perpetuated aspects of the conflict, or actors involved in the conflict, with implications for post-war

reconstruction in terms of underlying power, regional and ethnic issues:

The three parties pretty much exercised direct control over all the branches of government and hence, given

that most of the enterprises were still state owned, much of Bosnia’s economic life. The fact that much of the

wealth and power rested in the hands of HDZ, SDA and SDS and their cronies was not perceived to pose a

serious obstacle for creating a viable state. The prevailing consensus among the international community was

that holding democratic elections would drive them out power and bring in more benign political forces (BiH

RNIS).

The overlap between the dominant ruling party (Frelimo) and the state machinery blurs the boundary between

the state and the party and, therefore, it obstructs the institutional modelling aiming at enhancing the

accountability mechanism; this pattern perpetuates the state of overspread impunity in the public realm and,

more important, it let the state machinery (judiciary) exposed and prone to hijack and/or capture by political

elites willing to become the ‘new rich’ (Mozambique RS).

In the early post-war years, there was a gradual restoration of state sovereignty, but one that maintained the

political privileges of the militias. The constituencies built by the warlords were considered important for the

peace-building process. Thus, all warlords were granted general amnesty from war crimes and many took their

place as part of the post-war leadership (Lebanon RNIS).

One consequence has been that some successful actors in the conflict become involved in setting the post-war

political rules once in office, with implications for the governance frameworks or the development agendas

espoused by the external actors. The latter in turn have on occasion been prepared to overlook such behaviour in

order to secure some semblance of a post-war state or to maintain their relationships with the new political

leaderships:

Relations between these political elites have been tinged with rivalries and conflicts that threaten to derail the

democratic process. The most obvious evidence of this conflict involves the writing of East Timor’s

constitution. During the process of drafting the constitution, there was a tussle between the ruling party,

FRETILIN (which won the Constituent Assembly election in 2001 organised by the UN) and the opposition


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over the distribution of institutional power between the president, the parliament, and the government. The

opposition wanted power to be distributed equally between the presidential office, the parliament and the

government in order to create a system of ‘checks and balances’. However, FRETILIN leaders wanted most

power to be given to the parliament and the government. Because FRETILIN dominates the parliament with

55 of 88 seats, it won the ‘struggle’ by limiting the power of the president in the constitution (East Timor

RNIS).

Immediately after the civil war, the donors’ central preoccupation was skewed towards ensuring a minimum of

political and macro-economic stability; corruption was not identified as a major problem. To some extent,

corruption was accepted as an accommodating instrument to the local elite, facilitation of development in a

context where ideological differences were no longer a problem (Mozambique RNIS).

In sum, the post-war reform process is likely to be affected by a number of context and legacy issues – the

comprehensive degradation of the state, its ministries and infrastructure; the (often pragmatic) need to arrive at a

peace agreement; the likely continuing existence of a number of issues that underlay the causes or continuation of

conflict; the translation of the ‘winning side’ into governments and political parties; and the pragmatic inclusion of

those potentially destabilising elements to provide further legitimacy to the post-war reconstruction. These have

had a significant effect on donor practice in terms of the realities of the implementation of a broad governance

approach within the context of conflict resolution.

Donor policies, funding and focus

One noticeable feature from the reports was the size of the donor presence and the scale of the influx of funds and

agencies at the onset of the initiation of the reform process:

The period between November 2001 and April 2002 will probably be remembered as one of confusion, during

which access to donor funds and agency visibility were among the strongest driving forces in the deployment

of aid. There was a rush of hundreds of agencies in the country, some of which had no previous experience of

Afghanistan (Afghanistan RS).

From 1993–1997 the PNA was overwhelmed with funding, international attention and high hopes for building

a sustainable peace process. The PNA organizations were very weak and could not manage the amounts of

funding they received. Different ministries were fundraising separately, there was no unified treasury system

or clear development plans (Palestine RS).

Mozambique is one of the continent’s largest recipients of aid, garnering $58 per inhabitant, more than double

the sub-Saharan African average of $26. From about US$ 360 mn in 1985 it increased to US$ 1.1 bn between

1990 and to about US$ 700 mn in 1997, remaining at a relatively similar level until 2004 ($735 mn), coming

from over 20 donors. The aid intensity ranges between 14–19% of GDP. Approximately 40% of donor

financial assistance is Budget Support, accounting for less than a fifth of budget receipts and about one third of

the total aid and the remainder is project support. At present, about 30 bilateral and about 25 multilateral

donors are operating in the country (Mozambique RNIS).

Moreover, the need for an institution building agenda was further clouded by the challenge of having to

implement a more than US$5 billion aid package in order to rebuild much of the devastated infrastructure and

allow for large-scale refugee return within a short period of time (Bosnia RNIS).

Given the scale of devastation and deprivation that was present in most of the countries involved, it may be unfair

to expect coordination, prioritisation and sustainability in all that donors sought to undertake, individually and

collectively. Nevertheless, the speed of engagement and the spectrum of donor involvement, and the disbursement


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of such a level of funding, would often appear not to be driven by a coherent and integrated country-specific design

and delivery framework:

Donors do not generally endeavour to integrate a long-term perspective into their aid policies. They are

increasingly under pressure to show immediate and tangible results, a pressure that tends to inhibit the

adoption of long-term strategies. With this knowledge, the GoSL has failed to seize a window of opportunity to

move Sierra Leone forward (Sierra Leone RS).

The foreign assistance for development, which was more than substantial in BiH, has proved to have had little

cost-effective value. It seems that the weaknesses of the concept of development assistance in BiH were far

more present in this country than in other countries, first of all on account of the underestimating of local

capacities and, consequently, neglecting sustainability as a goal of that assistance (BiH RS).

The consequence of the scale and volume of donor intervention as well as an absence of a country-specific

delivery framework was exacerbated by where the donors focused funding, how the funds were (or were not) routed

through the state structure and the nature of the institutional development within an intended governance

framework:

Most of the budget went to infrastructure and social affairs. Social affairs in this regard include education and

health sectors. Agriculture, in the economic sector, got no more than 10% of the combined budget in the first

two years of reconstruction . . . In the pre-destruction period, the agriculture sector contributed around 30% to

the GDP and no less than 80% of East Timorese derive their livelihoods from this sector (East Timor RS).

There were major problems in donor coordination especially in the area of capacity building where donors

funded large numbers of experts under many different technical assistance (TA) arrangements. During the

early to mid-1990s, it was estimated that as much as one third of donor resources was spent on TA; supposedly

for capacity development, but in many cases with little discernible impact, much less a structured platform

upon which Mozambique could further develop its own capacities (Mozambique RNIS).

Also well-funded were ‘trendy’ themes among donors, such as democracy, human rights and gender issues. By

contrast, there was little direct support for the productive sectors of the economy, from agriculture to industrial

development. Donors were particularly slow to recognize the importance of private-sector strengthening

(Palestine RNIS).

In terms of part of the governance approach, one feature was a reliance on populating the governmental

landscape with the procedures and institutions a democratising country would be expected to be working toward,

from Ombudsmen to anti-corruption agencies, in an effort both to reduce the time of the developmental process and

also to avoid governments delaying their establishment. The approach, however, lacked an overall substantive state

formation and capacity approach:

overall, the state institutions have themselves evolved over the past four years, including today 27 ministries, 5

independent commissions, 4 independent agencies (such as National Security Council and Anti Corruption

Body), offices of the Attorney General and Chief Justice, and 6 other government bodies (such as National

Directorate of Security and Central Bank). Yet, no minimal and effective state was built (Afghanistan RS).

In the aftermath of the war the state machinery was weak – almost collapsing in terms of its ability to deliver its

basic functions. Public action was very fragmented, with several international NGOs and donors bypassing the

government and targeting the people at the district level directly; there were hundreds of projects out of the

government control; single ministries had various projects with donors which exacerbated the government’s

fragmentation . . . (it has been) argued that the aid reduced the state apparatus in Mozambique into pieces; the


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machinery of government was always criticized by donors for its lack of control over, or even information on,

a high proportion of public spending. The legislative never participated in the executive-donors relations; it’s

by-passed (Mozambique RNIS).

At the same time, the breadth of the governance approach was not matched by realities of trying to deliver other

components of the approach in a sequenced, systematic and balanced way. For example, organising and including

civil society was difficult to deliver in practice, as was the willingness of those in power to engage with them.

Similarly, donors’ pressure for an early symbolic general election to emphasise the start of the democratic process –

where the right to vote is associated with a new beginning, driven by citizen participation and party policies – failed

to ensure the causal relationship between elections and improvements for the general public: ‘sustaining democracy

or a successful democratic transition requires that democratic regimes be capable of fulfilling the people’s

expectations. Failure to do so can derail the transition and bring about a serious questioning of the necessity of

political change’ (Nzongola-Ntalaja, 1997, p. 19):

The survival of most NGOs is likely to continue to be conditioned upon a continuing inflow of aid money.

Moreover very few organizations have managed to mobilize citizen support for their activities. This however

is understandable to a degree given that the NGO institutionalization process has been driven, by and large, by

the expectations and demands of the donor community (BiH RNIS).

Since the beginning of the reconstruction process, civil society was not fully integrated as a part of the political

discussion and did not wholly take part in the fundamental strategic decisions for the future development of

Afghanistan (Afghanistan RNIS).

Most activists feel that the climate in post-war Kosovo has not been conducive for lobbying on wider social

and political issues, because the overwhelming political focus has been on final status negotiations, at the

expense of other important matters such as institutional efficiency and accountability. Moreover, the polarised

political climate also makes it hard for NGOs to engage in objective, non-sectarian work (Kosovo RNIS).

In addition to the ‘swift economic’ reforms international community has also been extensively engaged in the

process of ‘instant democratization’. To illustrate, one needs just mention that Bosnia has had four elections in

the span of six years (1996–2002). However, bearing in mind that one of the most important reasons behind

such a democratization process was to boot the three ethnic parties out of power one can imagine the extent of

incentives on the part of these political parties to make hard political decisions and see the reform process

quickly through in light of such circumstances. Moreover, 2-year election cycle would leave even the most

courageous of economic reformers very little space for consensus building, an essential part of any democratic

nation ‘wannabe’ (BiH RNIS).

The reform process has also become self destructive since the parliamentary elections in January 2006. The

elections were supposed to foster the reform process and create a viable political system. However, the way the

international community has handled the results of these elections threatens to cause total collapse, not only to

the reform agenda, but also to the PNA itself (Palestine RNIS).

In terms of the broad governance approach, and addressing corruption as part of that approach, these issues have

had two consequences; firstly the speed, inclusivity and breadth of the post-war process created pressure to resolve

issues and initiate reforms. Within this addressing corruption was not only compromised by the consequences of the

process of setting up some form of government as part of the peace negotiations but, as one of the more intractable

issues to be addressed, often took second place to more pressing, more resolvable (and potentially more important)

issues. There may be two sets of perspectives at work here; one relating to institution building or rebuilding and the

rate of reconstruction, and the second relating to the development of an appropriate governance framework.


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Whether or not within conflicting reform demands, donor preferences or the underlying conflict causes or legacies

are still in play, one issue is that donors were either focussed on other issues and components, or were constrained

by prior decisions, that allowed the potential for, and the involvement of domestic actors in, corruption during the

reform process as well as their promotion (or absence of promotion) of anti-corruption policies.

The place of corruption

Within this context, addressing corruption as a specific issue, albeit always considered a core component of any

governance approach, appears to have come low down the governance agenda in practice, despite evidence that

corruption was present during the war, and after, and emerging as an integral feature of the democratisation process.

Indeed, it is noticeable that prioritising corruption was not always an early donor intervention, and not always

accorded a significant role:

One of the main lessons to be learnt from the Palestinian case is that a willingness to achieve political

settlement of the conflict should not undermine indicators of integrity. The international community closing an

eye to some corrupt practices within the PNA and hoping that political leaders would conclude a political deal

was not a good strategy. The increased unrest and lack of trust weakened Fateh as a governing party (Palestine

RNIS).

Donor countries have been trying to propose effective methods to combat corruption, but the previous

government was not responsive to these initiatives leaving the donors countries unable to provide full support

to the government and civil society to fight corruption. The change of the new government brought a new hope

for fighting corruption as mentioned above, but due to political crisis most donors are still paying more

attention on how to resolve the crisis (East Timor RNIS).

If the early post-war governments included those predisposed, if not to corruption, then at the least the use of

state resources to maintain tenure of office, and if the democratisation process, and the energising and inclusion of

civil society, has not provided an effective means of public accountability in the same time period, and where

external actors have not addressed corruption, then domestic actors are unlikely to behave differently:

it must be noted that efforts to combat corruption in Bosnia to date have barely managed to exit the realm of

paper reforms and it remains to be seen what the latest effort will produce. Just to illustrate briefly, the issue of

establishing anti-corruption agency has been on the government’s agenda for the past six years and yet no

concrete steps have been made to date to address the issue insofar as addressing the problem does not mean

only mentioning it in policy documents which never get implemented (BiH RNIS).

the record of the government in developing an effective anti-corruption agency has been poor indeed. It took

two years from the adoption of the Anti-Corruption Law to establish the Anti-Corruption Agency, and even

now the latter is poorly staffed and resourced. Indeed, even members of the Anti-Corruption Council itself

believe that this body has only formal powers and will not deliver anything tangible in practice [Kosovo

RNIS].

Even where there is a functioning anti-corruption agency, its work has been hampered because wider control and

accountability frameworks have also not been effectively developed by the donors or domestic governments, even

though these too would be considered core components of a governance approach, particularly where a strong

Executive has emerged:

. . . the Kosovo NIS is incomplete also in the sense that the dysfunctionality of some of its most crucial pillars

continuously undermines the effectiveness of otherwise successful pillars. The failure of the judiciary has to be

singled out here because of the knock-on effect it has on the other institutions. For example, the Office of the

Auditor General fulfils its role exactly as required by the law, i.e. audits the accounts of public institutions and


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makes them public. Similarly, the media are covered with articles providing evidence of various types of

misconduct or mismanagement in public institutions. However, it remains the responsibility of the Office of

the Public Prosecutor to follow-up on these leads and to raise criminal proceedings when necessary. When this

is not done, not only is the professional integrity and the worth of the OAG and the media put in question –

since they are perceived as being merely ‘talking shops’ – but the public’s respect for the entire NIS is

undermined [Kosovo RNIS].

The central role of the Executive in the Afghan NIS has a disturbance effect on all the pillars. By its capacity to

intervene at the national and in most cases be influential at the local level and in all state institutions, the

Executive contributes the most to the distortion of the integrity system [Afghanistan RNIS].

The practical barriers have to do with the way the state has been controlled by the ruling party. The overlap

between party and state is still very strong. This undermines the introduction of accountability practices. For

instance, the judiciary is highly criticized for poor performance, highlighting that, when judicial cases involve

high figures of the ruling party, the judiciary does not function based on the law, but is influenced by the

political class. The fact that the Central Office for Combat of Corruption has not yet investigated judged and

convicted any case of grand corruption could be one of the examples of the vulnerability of justice to political

interference (Mozambique RNIS).

Insofar as commentators and donors are considering whether the broad governance approach needs revising

because it has not worked as they would have wished (although not always solely as a consequence of their own

weaknesses), however, the question then arises of where might corruption come within a revised approach. Further,

will corruption, as some commentators warn, be relegated rather than promoted in any revised approach in the post-

war process: ‘fragile states pose different challenges for addressing corruption than normal development contexts.

Development partners therefore struggle to find effective strategies for addressing corruption. As a consequence

corruption is rarely addressed in aid programs, or one hope to do so at a ‘‘later stage’’, in order to get a deal signed,

to ‘‘get the job done’’, to retain a good relationship with the government. Sometimes the problem is avoided simply

because it is so difficult or uncomfortable for all parties’ (Mathisen, 2007, p. 1).

LOCATING CORRUPTION WITHIN GOOD ENOUGH GOVERNANCE

The issues raised from the country studies reflect many of the issues raised in the debate on the future of the

governance approach and the proposals for a much more limited, strategic and sequenced approach:

among the long list of things that ‘must be done’ to encourage development and reduce poverty, there is little

guidance about what’s essential and what’s not, what should come first and what should follow, what is

feasible and what is not. If more attention is given to sorting out these kinds of issues, the end point of the

good governance imperative might be recast as ‘good enough governance’, that is, a condition of minimally

acceptable government performance and civil society engagement that does not significantly hinder economic

and political development and that permits poverty reduction initiatives to go forward (Grindle, 2002, p. 2).

This approach is now also on donors’ agendas: ‘good enough’ governance is about effective states fulfilling

certain basic functions, including protecting people from harm and providing an economic framework to enable

people to support themselves (DFID, 2005, p. 20). Streamlining governance, using a good enough governance

approach ‘to target fewer, more useful, and more feasible interventions’ (Grindle, 2007, p. 571) may seek to curtail

the simultaneous scale of activity and thus the volume of funding but not the overall breadth: ‘a sustainable

transition to peace and restoration of governance requires that what begins as a process originated by outsiders

becomes owned by country actors with the political will to carry reconstruction and reforms forward on their

initiative . . . Part of the good enough governance equation involves seeing the state not necessarily as the ‘‘prime


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mover’’ in pursuing change, but as deeply embedded in the social fabric of a country and subject to societal

influences and pressures’ (Brinkerhoff, 2009, p. 21).

If this approach is a variant that stretches out the governance approach, albeit in terms of priority, sequence and

timing, it still raises the question of where corruption, as a component of governance, is to be located. The danger

with the approach is that corruption becomes one of the issues to be moved down the timescale and prioritisation of

any agenda through, for example postponing reforms or accepting the need to work with corrupt or potentially

corrupt governments to get move the wider reform agenda forward. Thus ‘governance reforms are interrelated, as

are, for example better public expenditure management and efforts to fight corruption, or more professional public

administrations and decentralisation. Governance reforms also take time – perhaps decades – to be put in place and

to produce results. Often they are expensive. It is worth questioning whether governments that are weak financially,

politically, institutionally, and in human resource terms can pursue several such reforms at the same time’ (Grindle,

2002, p. 6). DFID suggests that good enough governance may ‘involve practices that would not exist in an ideal

government – corruption may be rife, staff may lack necessary skills, and capacity may be chronically weak and

under-funded’ (DFID, 2005, p. 20).

The problem with the governance, or even the good enough governance approach, is that it still leaves the

potential for corruption to become embedded in the reform process, albeit pared down, and better timetabled. In

terms of any adaptation of the governance approach, therefore, consideration should be given to ensuring that the

lessons from the country studies are recognised both in terms of where corruption and of where the wider means of

accountability should be on any governance or good enough governance agenda:

The neglect of the need to incorporate integrity measures into the reform process in the early stages of the

reconstruction process has led to a series of complications taking quite a toll on the effectiveness and efficiency

of recovery in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A key lesson that emerges therefore is that integrity measures need to

be effectively prioritised as an integral part of the reform process from the very start of the post-war

reconstruction (BiH RNIS).

The sequence of reforms in reconstruction has not been designed to attend to the transparency and integrity

phenomenon. In fact there has never been a previously established sequence in this matter. The anti-corruption

activities have been developing along with the advance of the process of democratization. But what came first?

. . .Through the democratization process, some pillars of integrity were established in the first years of the

democratic regime, but it can not be said that it worked properly . . .Therefore, it is difficult to say that the

sequence of pillars had been a success. There was a success in terms of macroeconomic and political stability;

but there was blind attraction for Mozambique from the donors’ side that undermined the possibility of a

substantial improvement in the accountability and integrity processes (Mozambique RNIS).

CONCLUSION

It is clear that the ‘good enough’ approach recognises the failures of the comprehensive approach but will still be

faced by the same issues, specifically the potential for self-interest by domestic actors in participating in any peace

agreements and any post-war governments. Clearly, if not involved in this process, post-war reform donors, as

noted above, may be limited in who they work with, and under what conditions and timeframes. At the same time,

donors will still have to address the volume of funding, range of initiatives and spectrum of those to be included in

the reform process.

Nevertheless, if corruption was a problematic issue under the peace agreement process, and during the post-war

reform process, as part of the implementation of the broad governance approach, then there is potential for it to be

more so in a good enough governance approach. In adapting this approach, it is argued that failure to address

corruption in favour of what are considered more pressing reform issues may well cause problems for the future.


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The good enough governance approach will still need to address state formation and the role of the state from the

outset:

where state institutions are weak, it is likely that donors will share the goal of strengthening them. However,

attempting to carry out a large number of activities at once, thus spreading limited human, financial and

institutional capital over a range of tasks simultaneously, will lead to failure. Consequently, a process of

mapping out all the current activities, limiting the number of interventions, prioritising and making a logical

sequence to take account of existing institutional capability, as well as mobilising additional capacity should

be the starting point (Mathisen, 2007, p. 11).

Further, a good enough governance approach may well place more focus and responsibility on new

governments, as some commentators have already argued: ‘aid has in many places undermined the state . . . the aid

system must orient itself around the task of building effective, functioning states’ (Ghani and Lockhart, 2008, p.

107, 111; see also Jenkins and Plowden, 2006). This means that, from the outset – and donors may want to push

harder to be engaged in the pre-reform process peace agreement negotiations – constructing or reconstructing the

state must involve issues of corruption and accountability: ‘if the institutions are so important in shaping political

outcomes then the design of those institutions themselves are crucial. And it is a task which is carried out by the

elites . . .This is the process of establishing the rules of the game, of crafting the political system, and this is crucial

in determining whether the new system will have a democratic shape or not’ (Gill, 2000, p. 237). In turn this means

ensuring that the question of the relevance and significance of addressing corruption should therefore be considered

for promotion rather than relegation in the development of any future good enough governance approach agendas.

The consequences, as a number of the country studies have indicated, are that, as in the case Lebanon, the

‘institutionalisation of corruption in the post-war era has crippled Lebanon’s ability to financially recover from

conflict, and has created a loss of confidence by the public. This in turn has further intensified dependence on the

sect and has seen a return to the pre-modern feudalist loyalties and behaviour’ (Lebanon RS).

NOTE

The National Integrity System (NIS) approach was developed by Jeremy Pope to understand the weaknesses of

state institutions and the failings of previous reform initiatives by asking about corruption from a number of

perspectives: the causes of corruption; the relationships of the Executive to other state institutions; key areas where

corruption occurs or where democratisation is constrained; those institutions or areas with a role to play in

promoting reform and democratisation, and for dealing with corruption; progress with government strategy and

donor anti-corruption initiatives; and the relative strengths and weaknesses of these institutions or areas on an

individual and collective basis to ensure their own capacity to be free from corruption (‘corruption-proofing’) as

well as to promote a more integrated approach to dealing with corruption.

The Reconstruction NIS (RNIS) takes the approach further by using it to assess post-war countries as they

rebuild the state and move toward democratisation. The RNIS provides a framework through which to assess the

impact and legacies of conflict, the multiple political and institutional issues, and the role of donors, not only

generally in terms of reconstruction, anti-corruption development, and priorities but also in terms of the often

complex and continuing issues of power, corruption and democratisation.

The RNIS country studies worked to a common template, requiring a country overview and corruption profile,

supported by evidence of patterns, levels and causes of corruption. This approach requires discussions of the steps taken

by institutions and key areas – usually the executive; legislature; elections/political party funding; audit; judiciary; civil

service; police and prosecutors; public procurement; ombudsman; investigative/watchdog agencies; media; civil

society; regional and local government – to prevent corruption as well as information on the effectiveness of such steps

and the relations between institutions, and on issues such as political penetration of institutions, legacies from previous

regimes, the role of donors in supporting and cooperating on the reform process in general and anti-corruption in

particular, and the politicisation of donor-friendly reforms such as decentralisation and democratisation.


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