Corruption questioned
Corruption is frequently referred to as if it were scientifically proved most critical negative factor for stagnated development in less developed world.
However, I cannot simply accept this assertion.
I should have to admit that corrupt behaviour of politicians and public servants has adverse effects on development in developing countries. Nonetheless, only complete elimination of corruption does not seem to bring about even more efficient and effective development.
On what ground has corruption come to the fore in the arguments on inefficiency and ineffectiveness of development?
It could have been substantiated by tracing back the history of development cooperation. As a simple matter of fact, several hundred million people are still living on their income of less than $ 1 per day despite the enormous resources having been spent on development cooperation. In the course of investigating causes of the failure of development cooperation, while admitting necessity of reform on the side of donor countries concerning the ways they extend assistance, capacity of aid-receiving countries has come to attract donors’ attention. The capacity in this context refers to various aspects relevant to national development from human resources to organisational capacity to institutional aspects. Corruption has been discussed in relation to institutional capacity or more specifically to governance of developing countries. It is said that efforts at economic development can best bear promised fruits under the condition that market is functioning governed by consistent and transparent rule of law, and that nation states shall just assure participants in the market of such conditions. Corruption is seen as serious opposing force to that ideal situation by encouraging abuse of resources directed by arbitrary decision-makings of politicians, senior management of public service, or those who have advantages in accessing public resources. What has been discussed to date concerning corruption and its negative impacts on development would theoretically and empirically be true. However, I feel uneasy about those arguments as if something more critical had been overlooked. What is it?
This, I think, is lack of consideration for mechanisms in which money is flowing to be transformed into goods and services which can make anything (normally expected to be positive change) happen on the ground.
Mechanisms here refer to simply who use the money to produce goods and services appropriate in terms of beneficiaries’ needs and clients’ requirements.
Once we start thinking of those who are supposed to use the money, it must be unavoidable for us to be concerned about their capacity.
Such concerns especially of clients (in other words, the Government) should not be confined only to quality of the goods and services but also to effectiveness of re-distribution of resources on the side of clients (not those who use the money).
Nevertheless, what has been happening in developing countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa?
In comparison to the Asian and Latin American countries, we are to find that scale and scope of economies in Sub-Sahara African countries are apparently smaller than those of counterparts in other regions.
In other words, at least the number of companies or individual entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa is extremely lower than that in other regions, and quality of them too may be inferior to their counterparts.
Therefore, it is quite important that we investigate the reasons why it is like that.
In my view, this seems to originate in development conceptualised by planners primarily exogenous to development on the ground.
Taking into account of the experiences in their colonial past, the concept of nation state and governance structure attached to it appear relatively new to people of Sub-Sahara African countries.
I am assuming that considering the exploitative nature of colonial governments, the critical role of nation state, that is, re-distributing resources to their respective nationals in sufficiently fair and accountable manner does not seem to properly be understood by the leaders. Rather, legitimacy of imposing taxes seems to consciously or unconsciously be abused.
My assumption is as follows:
If at all the role of re-distribution is properly understood as one of the most critical roles of the leaders, they would have paid even more attention to the quality of those who use public money. Otherwise, no one can assure that collected money is spent prudently enough to bring about tangible improvement of the nationals, but it has to end up with being wasted.
This is considered to be implied by incapability of the Sub-Sahara African aid-receiving countries to spend money in time in accordance with planned objectives.
However, it must be noted that only with efficient and effective government money cannot be used properly, but there must be competent users of that money.
Looking at the quality of general public in those countries, I cannot but being surprised at the situation where people exposed to even very basic level of business practices are virtually non-existent.
This is a matter of human resource development, but not that of school education.
To enhance human resource development in this respect, I would rather put an emphasis on how to increase opportunities for them to acquire hands-on experiences of running business.
With sufficiently developed general public and pressures backed by logical strengths, it may be possible to see the situation in which government could be reminded their roles to serve for the benefit of them; thus, as a consequence for the benefit of entire country.
posted by chiniengo @ 5:56 PM
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