Routledge Handbook of Corruption in Asia by Ting Gong & Ian Scott

Routledge Handbook of Corruption in Asia by Ting Gong & Ian Scott

Author:Ting Gong & Ian Scott [Gong, Ting & Scott, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138860162
Google: sQP8sgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 26518988
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-02T00:00:00+00:00


Civil society: hopes versus realities

If any concept has been a staple of anti-corruption thought over the past generation, it is the potential strength of civil society. Strong civil societies are often found in relatively well-governed countries. If, however, Lessig (2013) and others are correct that much of what we might call corruption in those countries is legal and enjoys the protection of strong institutions, we might wonder just how much civil society is actually doing to check corruption. Similarly, we might ask whether a strong civil society is a cause of moderate corruption, or whether limited corruption and a strong civil society are both outcomes of deeper democratising changes (Johnston 2014). Many high hopes and no small amount of romance revolve around mass movements in other societies; the “people power” movements that helped topple Ferdinand Marcos and, 15 years later, Joseph Estrada, in the Philippines are well-known and help fuel arguments that similar movements can curtail corruption in other settings (Beyerle 2014). Such movements, however, are not the same thing as a strong civil society nor is overturning a corrupt ruler the same thing as lasting reform (for a more hopeful assessment, see Chenoweth and Stephan 2011). An even bigger problem, in specific cases, is whether civil society is real or more of a wish. We observe a certain level of democracy, or the existence of a middle class, or the appearance of individuals and groups critical of the government of the day, and assume or hope that the sort of civil society we envision is present or emerging. But autonomous, sustained civil society action is all too rare in high-corruption settings and even more difficult to jump-start from without.

For those reasons, Mitu Sengupta’s contribution is of particular importance. India poses the most difficult and momentous test of reform thinking about civil society. It is a democracy of nearly 70 years’ standing and one that has survived despite episodes of severe stress. At the same time, democracy has not been able to contain corruption; in some ways, in fact, mass electoral democracy has intensified corrupt connections and the power of money (Sun and Johnston 2009). Has civil society failed India in some sense, or are such expectations misplaced and ill-informed?

Sengupta reminds us that the emergence of a strong civil society is a tall order. Some challenges are practical: poverty, the sheer scale of Indian society, poor performance by official institutions, parties with top-down patterns of influence, the power of local and regional political potentates and the collective action problems confronting civil society everywhere are enduring difficulties. Another problem is conceptual: when we expect or hope that “civil society” as an abstract entity will move against corruption, we are in effect assigning it a life of its own, where instead we must remember that civil society is at best an aggregation of the actions, interests, expectations and values of millions of individuals and small groups, none of which is necessarily acting in “civic” or altruistic ways. For example, the anti-corruption movement



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