Emil Bolongaita (M.A. Peace Studies ’89, Ph.D. Government ’96) is Deputy Chief of Party of the Rule of Law Effectiveness (ROLE) Program of the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Philippines. This article is excerpted from the Kroc Institute’s first Distinguished Alumni Lecture, “The Enemy Within,” which he delivered on September 9, 2004. The full version is available as a Kroc Occasional Paper, available on-line under “publications” at http://kroc.nd.edu.

Corruption is one of the biggest — and most underestimated — challenges to the success of post-conflict agendas.

Post-conflict environments present extraordinary opportunities and low punitive risks for corrupt activity. The opportunities and scope for corruption are enhanced because post-conflict countries often attract or justify relatively high levels of aid. In some cases, the amounts are extraordinary, such as the billions allocated by bilateral and multilateral donors to Iraq and Afghanistan for development assistance.

Opportunities for corruption are limited if there are institutions and mechanisms that foster transparency and accountability. Unsurprisingly, post-conflict countries are weak in both respects. Media and civil society, whose activities demand transparency, are often just as weak as before the conflict, if not weaker. The police, the prosecutors, and the judiciary — all ideally agents of accountability — are also feeble. In fact, they may already be part of the problem. Because corruption is such a low-risk and high-reward activity under such conditions, it may be only a matter of time before it corrodes the fledgling foundations of peace settlements, and contributes to their collapse.

The impacts of corruption
The impact of corruption, particularly as it relates to development agendas, is at least four-fold.

First, preconceptions or perceptions of corruption diminish enthusiasm for donor support, resulting in less aid than donors would otherwise provide. Such reduced support handicaps the ability of institutions to deliver the policies and programs envisioned in peace agreements that, in many cases, are burdened by heightened popular expectations. Such high expectations, when dashed, fuel the resumption of grievance that can lead to a renewal of conflict.

Second, aid committed to post-conflict governments is diminished by corruption. What donors release is not what is actually disbursed by corrupt agencies. Corruption in the utilization of donor funds, as well as domestic government revenues, hampers the implementation of post-conflict policies and programs. The poor implementation, in turn, provides negative feedback to donors and investors, who become less sanguine about continued, much less increased, aid and investment.

The impact of aid is further constrained by the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness that corruption encourages. Corruption, in fact, fosters poor service. If services were already efficient, “speed money” would not be needed. Poor households and small businesses are naturally hit the hardest, as they are the least able to afford the bribes.

Third, corruption fuels a vicious cycle of public sector debt and mass poverty. At the extreme, this debt has been called “criminal debt” because the loans were purportedly provided with knowledge that they would be stolen and the public that never received them would have to repay them. A tragedy of corruption in post-conflict settings, thus, is that citizens are repeatedly victimized. Their government borrows funds to make up for what officials stole from the public purse. The loans in turn are raided for corrupt purposes. The citizens who did not benefit from the borrowed funds are taxed for repayments

Fourth, corruption itself contributes to conflict. Violence reflects the collapse of governance, and corruption is a major cause of the breakdown. At the extreme, it contributes to genocide, as in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where corruption manifested itself through tribalistic nepotism. A review of the post-conflict countries that have benefited from the World Bank's Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction program will show that these are among the most corrupt countries.

Transparency International’s 2004 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is also revealing. Fifteen of its lowest-ranked 32 countries are listed in the World Bank’s database of post-conflict countries and eight are countries created out of the former Soviet Union. Most of the rest are in or have been in some form of recent internal conflict.

Three tasks in controlling corruption
In controlling corruption in post-conflict countries, the first task is to ensure that corruption is recognized as a serious risk to the efficiency and effectiveness of policies and programs. This proposition may seem self-evident, but a cursory look at peace agreements worldwide reveals that “corruption” is not an identified issue. In fact, the term “corruption” or its less offensive corollary term “accountability” is not mentioned in the documents. An exception is the 2001 Bougainville peace agreement between the government of Papua New Guinea and the Bougainville Peace Congress. Although it does not mention the word corruption, the agreement does expressly talk about issues of accountability. This suggests that negotiators and signatories are probably more comfortable talking about accountability than corruption, although the former is part of the solution for the latter. Similarly, the literature on post-conflict and peacebuilding strategies and approaches is regrettably silent on the issue of corruption.

The second task is to develop the appropriate anticorruption measures that will make a meaningful impact. Because corruption has not been identified as an issue in peace agreements, there are generally no anticorruption alternatives being proposed for consideration by post-conflict authorities. Only when the problem is raised by international actors or domestic popular protests does it receive notice, as in the case of the aftermath of the Dayton Peace Agreement. Even raising the issue ex post facto is something that needs to be followed by appropriate anticorruption options. If the experience of other countries pursuing anticorruption reforms is any indication, it is crucial not to worsen the problem with the cure. For example, the anticorruption agency approach taken by many conflict-ridden countries has arguably resulted in the creation of one more corrupt, if not the most corrupt, agency.

The third task is to ensure that relevant anticorruption measures are decided upon and executed effectively. Practically all governments will say that they have an anticorruption policy; no government will be caught saying it has none. Even the most corrupt governments will have some anticorruption program. Therein lies a problem: the fact that anticorruption approaches being taken by afflicted governments are either not appropriate or are not being implemented effectively. Post-conflict governments are faced with incentives to take the path of least resistance. Thus, it is likely that only innocuous policies will be adopted. Even if the government is determined to make an impact, it is saddled with a weak or compromised bureaucracy that cannot or will not implement anticorruption initiatives.

Conclusion
Corruption needs to be discussed before, during and after peace negotiations. It should be a component in any peace agreement that seeks to establish or renew governance structures. It is important to design policies and programs that would be applicable to the realities of poor governance and high capture conditions of post-conflict countries. The goals must focus on making corruption a high-risk and low-reward activity. Policies and programs that provide a mix of incentives and disincentives must be in place to recognize and reward meritorious performance and punish corrupt behavior swiftly and severely. In this regard, the initiatives must not stem from or rely on executive agencies, which are more or less captured by corrupt interests, but on non-executive bodies, civil society, and the private sector.

In sum, post-conflict work at its core is about building good governance institutions that facilitate sustainable and equitable development. Controlling corruption and the deepening of accountability are central to the task, particularly in post-conflict countries marked by poor governance and high capture conditions. It is perhaps the most necessary of all governance tasks because it underpins the proper functioning of institutions. It is a task that ex-Philippine rebel leader Nur Misuari once described as “harder than war.”

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