Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Scanned with CamScanner Does Democracy Check Corruption? Insights from China and India Author(s): Yan Sun and Michael Johnston Source: Comparative Politics, Vol. 42, No. 1 (October 2009), pp. 1-19 Published by: Comparative Politics, Ph.D. Programs in Political Science, City University of New York Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27822289 Accessed: 14-03-2019 22:42 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27822289?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. 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Insights from China and India Yan Sun and Michael Johnston Democracy is widely expected to restrain corruption.1 Democratic institutions and pol itics make it more likely that corruption will be discovered and publicized, allow cit izens and political oppositions to make an issue of corruption, and facilitate recourse ranging from public hearings to voting the scoundrels out. Other claimed advantages of democracy include horizontal accountability via independent judiciaries and various checks and balances; a free press; social attitudes and sanctions, the latter often imple mented through private associations, supporting legal rules; and widespread commit ment to the rule of law.2 Indeed, global corruption rankings show a visible, if imperfect, tendency for democracies to cluster at the "less corrupt" end of the rankings while un democratic societies dominate the other extreme. But to the extent that such rankings make sense?a debatable matter?is it really democracy that accounts for the differences? Democracy is not only institutions and practices but also an outcome, reflecting deeper influences that also shape corruption; to analyze societies in terms of whatever democratic aspects they seem to lack might be to miss forces that actually are at work. Do comparisons confound democracy with affluence, strong civil societies, and other developments? If so, poor democracies might have few advantages, and specific points of vulnerability, in dealing with corruption.3 One test of such propositions is to examine a poor democracy's corruption prob lems. The case in question should be well established, with democratic institutions that have had time to work their effects,4 and should be compared with one or more un democratic states of similar social scale. We should consider not only the overall gravity of corruption but also differences in kind. Economic underdevelopment should be ex amined not just as a contextual factor, but rather in terms of opportunities and institu tions that influence corruption and democracy alike.5 This article compares two challenging but appropriate cases: India, a large but poor democracy, and China, a large undemocratic state. The similarities between the two coun tries include their vast populations and territories and undeniable political, economic, and cultural importance; severe "principal-agent" problems arising from their size; particular istic cultures that can buttress nepotism and personalism; the legacies of centralized economies; and now economic liberalization and rapid growth. Both economic centrali zation and overall levels of development affect corruption in complex and reciprocal 1 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Comparative Politics October 2009 ways. China had the more centralized economy for many years but began liberalization first, proceeded with it faster, and is now the wealthier country. India's economy was quite centralized in its own right, at least until 1992, and less integrated with the world.6 Does democratic India have any clear advantage in corruption control? Democracy by itself does not lead to significantly less, or more, corruption. India seems to do neither strikingly better nor worse in corruption terms than China, either recently or over time. Rather, the corruption-checking benefits of democracy depend critically upon eco nomic development. A developed economy provides resources and key institutions pro tecting legitimate activities and delineating permissible ways of pursuing and using wealth. Further, a developed economy offers alternatives to corrupt exploitation. India's case suggests that a poor democracy, lacking those features of development, may be vulnerable to disruptive and exploitative styles of corruption that are difficult to check or uproot. These findings are not only of theoretical interest with respect to corruption and democracy; they call for a reassessment of widely accepted ideas about corruption control and liberalizing reforms. "Democracy" here refers to institutions and processes through which those who govern can be held accountable to citizens?chief among them, regular competitive elections, structural guarantees of rights, and the rule of law. By this standard India has been a democracy for most of the past sixty years, while China has not. At the same time, India has increasingly lapsed into "illiberal democracy": an elected polity where liberties and rule of law are secure in theory but violated in practice, as a result of religious intolerance, massive corruption, and a disregard for the rule of law. China, economically liberalizing but politically authoritarian, is a "liberalizing autocracy."7 "Corruption" is defined here in terms of indigenous official and scholarly ideas. Authoritative Indian and Chinese sources both emphasize the core idea of "the misuse of public office for private gains,"8 ideas also found in Nye's formal definition, the one most widely used in the English language literature.9 While boundaries between the public and the private may have been well defined in India's British-inspired system and China's former centralized command, economic liberalization and political decen tralization have set them in flux, introducing contrasts and gray areas we can neither ignore nor gloss over through definitions. Thus, to realistically reflect what is seen as corruption in practice we rely on indigenous reports, outside analyses that draw upon them, and well-regarded studies of those countries in the secondary literature. Democracies, Economies, and Corruption: Questions of Balance Huntington has drawn attention to issues of balance among political and economic pro cesses, telling us much about how a given democracy functions?or fails to do so.10 While democracy, steered by accountability to popular preferences, theoretically should restrain corruption, on a day-to-day level effective democracy depends upon a balance among many factors: liberty and order, elite autonomy and accountability, politics and markets, and self-interest versus the rights of others, to name some dimensions. Political 2 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston and economic participation must be both protected and restrained by sound, legitimate institutions. Open politics and economies can help sustain each other, but there must be limits as to how, and how far, each may intrude upon the other. Control of corruption involves not the simple presence or absence of democracy, but rather a variety of ques tions about the ways wealth and power are sought, used, and exchanged, and about the framework of institutions?state, political, and social?within which those processes take place. Accountability cannot be created simply by putting elections and other in stitutional hardware in place. It can also be difficult to sustain. In practice most democ racies have institutional shortcomings and social expectations of varying intensity that make corruption control more difficult.11 Thus, despite the apparent synergy between lively, competitive politics and econo mies in most established democracies, matters can be quite different for a poor democ racy. Underdevelopment is not just an absence of affluence; it also reflects a scarcity of legitimate alternatives for gain, and pervasive vulnerability to exploitation. Equally important, if less noted, is the weakness of key economic institutions?property rights, bank ing, contract enforcement mechanisms, orderly taxation, and more. Micro-coordination through informal social linkages can fill some gaps; still, many things taken for granted in advanced economies?including information, orderly procedures, contract enforcement, and the ability to safeguard gains?are lacking in poor societies regardless of regime types. All too often they become commodities marketed by venal officials.12 Contrasting Imbalances In 1996 one of us used those issues of balance to compare corruption cross-nationally, not in extent but rather in variations in kind.13 One dimension was the balance between the accessibility and autonomy ojpolitical elites?whether or not politicians are vulner able to interest group pressures. In well-institutionalized democracies, private interests have significant political influence but officials can still formulate and implement poli cies authoritatively. But where accessibility significantly exceeds autonomy, officials are vulnerable to private demands. Where elite autonomy exceeds accessibility, account ability is weak and officials exploit private interests. The second dimension was the balance between political and economic opportunities?whether it is relatively easier to win power or to get rich. Huntington argues that where political opportunities are more abundant than those for accumulating wealth, individuals are likely to abuse power in search of wealth. Where economic opportunities exceed the political, how ever, people tend to use wealth to seek power.14 The key issue in either case is the relative balance of opportunities, not whether wealth or power are easily attained in some absolute sense. The first scenario is frequent in modernizing societies, while the second is more common in mature democracies. Where neither citizens nor officials dominate, and where political and economic opportunities are in balance, corruption can be restrained and alternatives to it are plentiful. But if elite autonomy and accessibility, and/or power and wealth, are out 3 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Comparative Politics October 2009 of balance, several distinctive corruption scenarios result. In what we call Type 1 cases, elite accessibility exceeds autonomy, and economic opportunities exceed polit ical ones. Here interest groups?particularly business interests?are strong, and polit ical elites vulnerable. The result is the use of money, legally (via political contributions) and otherwise (bribes), to seek influence over political elites. In Type 2 cases, entrenched elites manipulate political access (a scarce and therefore valuable commodity) for eco nomic gains (rent seeking). Relatively extensive economic opportunities create numerous bidders for access, but elites control the extent and direction of rent seeking. In Type 3 cases, elite accessibility, numerous political opportunities and economic scarcities com bine to produce insecure elites. Vulnerable to pressure, relying on patronage to solidify their power, yet unsure of long-term power, elites amass gains as quickly as possible.15 Corruption in such settings is often unstable and rapacious. In Type 4 cases, well entrenched elites control political competition and material rewards through a monopoly over patronage, leading to machine-style corruption.16 Table 1 elaborates on this analysis, placing the four varieties of corruption into the context of different regime types: (1) interest group bidding in mature democracies; (2) centralized corruption (joint monopoly) marked by collusion among multiple businesses interests and government figures, with the latter dominating the former; (3) fragmented patronage leading to decentralized, disruptive corruption in weak democracies; and (4) a bi-gemony of political elites and economic oligarchs sharing rent extraction?not a sit uation in which business and government figures collude in pursuit of specific goals, but rather a bilateral monopoly over patronage enabling them jointly to dominate whole societies in autocratic fashion. Types 2 and 3 are at issue for India and China. Both feature extensive rent seeking, but with a key difference in the structure of extraction: China, a liberalizing autocracy, experiences joint monopolies in its corrupt processes, while democratic India contends Table 1 Systemic Imbalances and Corruption Political versus Economic opportunity Corruption Pattern Economic greater than political opportunity State versus Society Strength Elite more accessible than autonomous 1. Decentralized elite/ interest group bidding Liberal democracies Elite more autonomous than accessible 2. Joint monopoly/ competitive bidding Developmental states; liberalizing autocracies; China Political greater than economic opportunity 3. Fragmented patronage/ decentralized corruption Illiberal Democracies; India 4. Bi-gemony/ monopolistic corruption Illiberal autocracies 4 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston with independent monopolies. Shleifer and Vishny illustrate that distinction and its implications by an analogy to toll gates along a road. Each toll collector is a monopolist able to allow or deny passage. But while joint monopolists might cooperate in charg ing moderate tolls to maintain a profitable traffic flow, independent monopolists? restrained by neither competition nor collusion?will tend to charge tolls so high as to drive traffic onto other routes, spoiling business for all. China's joint-monopoly situ ation imposes constraints on corruption that India lacks.17 Our theoretical and empirical distinctions?between kinds of imbalances and pat terns of corruption?find support in leading studies of corruption. In Kang's analysis of South Korea and the Philippines, relatively balanced competition between political and economic elites in South Korea was the reason why corruption there did not spiral out of control as it did in the Philippines.18 Hutchcroft categorizes capitalist systems based on the relative strengths of state and society and the motivational logic of elites. In his view, the developmental states in East Asia that practice "statist capitalism" are more production oriented than the "bureaucratic capitalism" or "booty capitalism" of patrimo nial administrative or oligarchic states in South East Asia.19 Rose-Ackerman distin guishes among competitive, bilateral monopolies and kleptocracy models of corruption by asking whether a range of officials and private interests participate, a ruler and a few private interests jointly dominate, or a ruler monopolizes, a country's corruption. She finds the latter two models the most disruptive, economically and administratively.20 India, China, and Corruption in Asia How corrupt are China and India? Available evidence suggests no distinctly superior performance by either. Consider Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI) which, given criticisms on grounds of validity, precision, and variability, we regard only as suggestive of broad contrasts, not as a definitive measure.21 To judge by the CPI, most Asian states have significant corruption. China and India, while not the worst cases, are not perceived favorably in terms of corruption control either. Democratic India has actually fared somewhat worse over the years. Do such figures, based in most years primarily on surveys of foreign business executives, realistically reflect domestic corruption? On balance they likely do better in China, where the presence and variety of foreign executives are much greater than in India. Diaspora executives, who oversee the bulk of China's FDI, are often from surrounding regions and familiar with informal practices in Chinese cultural settings. They are thus vulnerable to and adept at illicit exchanges with Chinese officials, and at the same time have extensive experiences by which to judge the extent and signifi cance of such activities.22 In India's case, the offshore sector is still limited to a few industrial enclaves and less exposed to the informal practices of the larger society, thus creating a more amenable?yet less typical?business environment for diaspora and foreign executives.23 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 5 Comparative Politics October 2009 Table 2 Scores of Asian States on TI CPI, 1997-2008 Country and abbreviation Singapore Hong Kong Japan Taiwan South Korea Malaysia China Thailand India Sri Lanka TI CPI 2008 9.2 8.1 7.3 5.7 5.6 5.1 3.6 3.5 3.4 1997-2008 average* 9.21 7.96 6.88 5.62 4.55 5.05 3.36 3.33 2.95 3.27 Country and abbreviation Mongolia Vietnam Nepal Indonesia Pakistan Philippines Bangladesh Laos Cambodia TI CPI 2008 3.0 2.7 2.7 2.6 2.5 2.3 2.1 2.0 1.8 Myanmar 1997-2008 average* 2.96 2.57 2.60 2.11 2.38 2.76 1.53 2.45 2.05 1.62 Note: For Pakistan, average is for 1995-99 and 2001-2008; for Bangladesh, 2001-2008; for Sri Lanka and Myanmar, 2003-2008; for Mongolia and Nepal, 2004-2008; for Laos and Cambodia, 2005-2008. Source: Transparency International Corruption Perception Indices, 1995-2008, http://www.transparency.org/policy research/surveys_indices/cpi, accessed on July 7, 2009. Does a lower level of development account for India's somewhat poorer scores? In sections below, connections between economic underdevelopment and problems of cor ruption control are emphasized. But possible connections exist at the perceptual level too. Extensive corruption is by now widely associated with development problems. Might those asked to judge India fall back on the notions that corruption hurts development, India is less developed, and therefore it must be more corrupt? We do not know. Still, even after six decades of nearly continuous democracy, India is not seen as successful in terms of corruption control. This assessment is reinforced when one looks at democracy's anticorruption re cord in Asia. Japan and Taiwan, to a lesser extent, are relatively well regarded, but Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and intermittently democratic Pakistan do not score well. Three of the five top-ranked governments in Table 2?Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia?have never been full democracies; a fourth, Taiwan, became democratic only recently. The only long-standing democracy in that top group, Japan, is distinguished by a tradition of modified one-party politics. The simple correlation between the mean TI scores in Table 2 and the index of authoritarian versus demo cratic government in the 2007 Polity dataset, on which India scores 9 and China -7, is an unimpressive +.241 (N=19, p=.16).24 Undemocratic societies tend to receive low CPI scores, as Table 2 also suggests, but the more democratic countries' scores range from the lowest to the highest in the group. Looking at democratization trends does not improve matters. Change in Polity scores between 1990 and 2007?an arbitrary interval but suggestive of cumulative democratic trends?correlates at only +.033 (N=19, p=.446) with CPI averages. Democratic change (denoted by positive values) does not by itself point to significant gains in perceived corruption control. 6 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston Perceptions and causality are slippery things, but in a time when the promotion of democratic good governance is high on the international agenda, these results should be of considerable concern. Many anticorruption strategies rely heavily on democratic ideas, such as a strong civil society, free press, independent judiciaries, and so forth. But if the democracy/good governance connection does not work, or if democracy in a setting of low economic development has marked corruption vulnerabilities, then hopes of reform through democratization may be premature or even harmful. Economic Scarcity and Corruption What do those ideas suggest about democratic India and authoritarian China? That poverty makes corruption control more difficult is a commonplace observation, but we have yet to explore in detail what economic underdevelopment does to democracy's ability to maintain accountability, restrain rent seeking, and check official self-dealing in private markets. Statistically, affluence is a far better predictor of CPI scores than the democracy measures discussed above. CPI averages correlate at +.93 (N=20, p = .000) with GDP per capita for 2007. That relationship does not just rediscover democracy under another name: while the range of poorer, high-corruption Asian societies includes several authoritarian regimes, such as Myanmar and Vietnam, it also features countries at least intermittently democratic, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, and sustained democracies, such as India and Thailand. By contrast, two of the most affluent societies in the region, Hong Kong and Singapore, both with strong anti-corruption records, are not democracies. Affluence is likely both a contributing cause and a result of effective corruption control. But economic development is complex, requiring sound institutions of its own?institutions that might reinforce democratic processes and create alterna tives to corruption while fostering affluence. Economic development might affect the corruption/democracy relationship in several ways. One is a "make ends meet" argument, as Palmier observes in his study of South Asia: "Poor pay is a powerful pressure towards corrupt gains, if only to make ends meet....Public servants not paid enough to fulfill their usual obligations are only too likely to take advantage of whatever opportunities may arise for unauthorized gains."25 One study of corruption in the Philippines is appropriately titled, "What Are We in Power For?"26 Sachs proposes that corruption in poor countries be measured against their poverty levels?a "relative corruption" idea he applies to Africa.27 These connections can become systemic, as poverty encourages corruption which in turn makes for underdevelopment.28 Another linkage, You and Khagram argue, is that income in equality increases corruption because the rich have greater motivation and opportunities to engage in graft in order to advance their privileges and interests, while the poor are more vulnerable to extortion. They find that while authoritarian countries may have greater corruption on average, the effect of inequality on corruption is greater in democracies.29 In some societies, Ghana for example, an official of a certain rank is expected by many people to have a house, a car, and other possessions commensurate with that This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 7 Comparative Politics October 2009 status, and may also be obliged to help people "back home."30 Ironically, to the extent that democracy gives individuals of modest status access to officiai roles?a good thing in most respects?incentives to corruption may thus grow. Corruption, moreover, widens the inequality between those with access to power and those without, turning that access into a marketable commodity,31 while leaving those low in the stratification system with few alternatives for attaining their goals.32 Empirical studies of India confirm the central role of these economic incentives. Years ago Myrdal wrote of "the low real wages of officials, especially those at the lower and middle levels" as encouraging pervasive corruption.33 The Indian Govern ment's Third Pay Commission (1970-1973) concluded that while higher salaries would not guarantee integrity, "it can be confidently stated that the payment of a salary which does not satisfy the minimum reasonable needs of a government servant is a direct invitation to corruption."34 Wade places "acute scarcities" atop his list of causes for India's bureaucratic graft.35 Palmier ranks poverty among three top causes for India's corruption, the other two being ample opportunities for abuse and ineffective policing. Quah both demonstrates the value of high official salaries in Singapore and shows that across a range of Asian countries India's official pay scales are the lowest.36 Pavarala, interviewing elites in the 1990s, found that a majority of bureaucrats, industrialists, and judges blame economic deprivation for political and bureaucratic corruption, especially at lower levels.37 Schenk points to the uniquely corrosive nature of India's poverty: "the embedding of scarcity in a system of morally based inequality and in a set of tight dependency relations" both perpetuating and sanctioning patrimonial relations.38 Economic scarcities rooted in China's central planning did create incentives for bu reaucratic abuse in the Spartan era of Mao Zedong. But corruption was relatively insig nificant compared with the reform era.39 In this later period, both structural factors and, in more developed areas, illicit market-style connections between officials and business have encouraged abuses.40 Still, poverty remains a leading source of corruption in poor regions by perpetuating a lack of economic alternatives.41 There the issue revolves more around the state's coffers and everyone's dependence upon them: perpetrators prey on public funds and on official posts as sources of black income. In poor rural regions, the sale of office has become the most serious source of corruption in recent years. The appointment of ill-qualified office buyers and the diversion of development funds help create a vicious cycle of underdevelopment and corruption with both nondevelopmental and antidevelopmental consequences.42 Systemic Influences on Corruption Material deprivation likely inhibits corruption control anywhere, but systemic aspects of underdevelopment may well be particularly harmful in a democracy. In Table 1 China is categorized as a Type 2 "developmental state" or "liberalizing autocracy," where corruption tends toward competitive bidding among joint monopolies integrating both official and economic interests. India fell into Type 3, "illiberal democracy," with more 8 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston fragmented patronage and decentralized corruption. What does that difference mean in specific terms? First, China offers more economic opportunities than political ones, while India provides more political opportunities than economic ones. China liberalized its econ omy earlier and more extensively, creating a larger and more vibrant nonstate and non agricultural sector. Waves of Chinese officials have quit their posts to "jump into the sea of business." Those remaining seek shares and other forms of participation in busi ness ventures.43 India's liberalization, in addition to its later start, has met internal bar riers in the form of strong unions, lower classes resisting privatization, and large agrarian regions little affected by liberalization. In contrast to the plethora of Chinese township and village enterprises (TVEs), FDI-invested firms, and other nonstate enter prises, India's private enterprises are mostly owned by a small clique of upper classes and castes.44 India's famed IT and other offshoring industries employ a tiny fraction of its labor force, with a huge contribution to overall growth but limited spillover effects in the entire economy.45 India's myriad government institutions, electoral processes, and political parties? each at federal, state, and local levels?provide many more political opportunities than China's one-party state, even when the structural deterioration of the Chinese Com munist Party (CCP) is taken into account. Moreover, the Indian bureaucracy draws its members at various levels from many classes and castes. Elections offer political advancement to rural elites, transforming the social base of the political elite from upper and upper-middle class, mostly urban backgrounds during the pre-independence and early post-independence days to more rural backgrounds recently. Such openness does not always support accountability. Big landlords constitute 50-60 percent of the members of state parliaments and bring their feudal mores of favor exchanging with them.46 As in rural China, a constant and open "market for public office" exists among bureaucrats and politicians eying the posts and promotions avail able at set prices.47 Though local officials go to considerable lengths to maintain boundaries between themselves and the citizenry, access is marketed by middlemen and touts (some of the au courant now calling themselves "consultants") who have a stake in making sure people continue to view government as remote and unrespon sive.48 The 2007 Global Integrity Report shows that the most corrupt areas in India were government accountability (sixty-five out of one hundred points), civil service regulations (sixty-six points), and oversight and regulation (sixty-nine points).49 In China far fewer desirable political opportunities exist than economic ones. Elec tions open up political paths at the local level only. Access to higher positions depends on steady promotion and real or manipulated performance evaluations, and therefore upon cultivation of patrons. State offices and managerial posts in state firms are still desirable, but for wealth rather than power. Less substantive party positions, mean while, have become unattractive.50 The party has difficulty recruiting and retaining talented people for positions such as branch party secretary in urban settings because those posts compete with far more lucrative jobs in the expanding economy. Most nonstate businesses do not have enough willing party members to form party branches 9 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Comparative Politics October 2009 or to conduct regular activities because party identification has become irrelevant to professional advancement. The market for public office is found more in poor and inland regions where economic alternatives are scarce.51 India differs from China, too, in terms of elite accessibility versus autonomy?the second dimension of Table 1. India's economic problems encourage patronage; acces sibility of elites by private interests makes such practices fragmented. Scholarship on clientelism identifies causal connections between democracy and corruption by suggest ing that voters seek extrabureaucratic material benefits from political patrons.52 The lat ter, who seek power amid weak institutions, intense political competition, and scarce economic opportunities, use patronage to maintain power. They build personal follow ings, not broad-based parties, yet find them hard to control and expensive to maintain; followers, for whom loyalty depends on benefits that may be a matter of survival, shift quickly among competing patrons. Thus, efforts by Indian politicians to create broad organizational support often fail because "the ordinary voter has an extremely narrow view of public responsibility and is not willing to give time and effort without the promise of immediate material reward."53 Wade finds the Indian electorate "primarily swayed by material and particu laristic inducements" with "people vot[ing] for whom they think can give them the most favor...." Institutional weakness makes it difficult for policy-oriented parties to "deliver" in the first place; the expectations and material needs of the electorate make it even more difficult for such parties to survive.54 Thus governments purchase short-term backing, or engineer defections in parliament, through payoffs. Money can even recruit "muscle," that is, through violent or criminal groups that extort contributions, scare off opponents, and intimidate voters.55 The result is what Fareed Zakaria calls a "bandit democracy": "Every year elections are rigged, ballot boxes are stuffed. The winning party packs the bureaucracy?sometimes even the courts?with its cronies and bribes opposition legislators to defect to its ranks. The tragedy for the millions of new lower-caste voters is that their representatives, for whom they dutifully vote en masse, have looted the public coffers and become immensely rich and powerful while mouthing slogans about the oppression of their people."56 Democracy under such conditions?far from unique to India?does not so much fail to check corruption as encourage distinctive varieties of it, while rewarding expectations that undermine reform. China's centralized and noncompetitive structures, by contrast, tend to produce joint-monopoly corruption. China has devolved many powers to local levels, yet deci sion making within each level remains in the hands of the chief executive of a state agency or public enterprise. The result is localized centralization: local chief executives become the main locus of favor exchanges, especially in less developed and inland regions and at lower levels where monitoring is weakest. Such local joint monopolies over both power and material favors amount to "local predatory states" in the worst cases.57 At the same time, joint monopoly corruption may be less disruptive for devel opment.58 Two efficiency effects can exist, relative to a fragmented patronage system: 10 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston at one end, bidders for government favors, rather than squandering resources on multi ple agencies or agents, need bribe only the principal power holders. At the other, middle and lower-level officials do not need personal followings in an authoritarian system. They therefore control who gets access and benefits, and on what terms. The likely out come is not necessarily more or less corruption, but rather corruption that is more pre dictable. Predictable corruption can be factored into plans by firms and citizens. While it is in no way beneficial, evidence suggests that the more unpredictable a given level of corruption becomes the more harmful it is in economic terms.59 Chinese corruption does not just consist of illicit public-private transactions. It can also involve theft directly from public coffers. Many projects and some key sectors remain in state hands, becoming ready targets for bureaucratic predators through pri vatization programs, land allocation, developmental assistance, relocation funds, infra structure projects, aaministrative funding, banking, transportation, etc. Local monopolies can often operate more or less unchecked. Such activities not only disrupt development but also reinforce the nexus of power and material gain underlying joint monopolies.60 Another contrast lies in access to policymaking by private interests. Indian politi cians depend on campaign financing from the business world both to fund elections and tighten their grip on constituencies.61 Changing technologies intensify that dependence: in the old days when parties operated as political machines, mobilization through public sector patronage might have been sufficient, but now reliance upon television com mercials and pollsters makes contributions more important. Campaign contributions, a former Central Vigilance Commissioner of India writes, "greatly affect the motivations and actions of the politicians who benefit from them."62 The degree to which campaign finance corrupts depends, of course, more upon the nature of the institutional regime regulating it than upon the existence of democracy itself. Before economic liberalization, business contributed out of "its dependence on government for licenses and permits to establish and operate its businesses and also for patronage and protection," exercising influence both through formal lobbying and informal, decentralized contacts with state agencies and political parties. The result was huge returns by way of fiscal and industrial policies.63 Liberalization has cut regulation at higher levels, but not at all levels; in fact, it has expanded corruption by marrying economic liberalization to electoral politics. India's cliques of tycoons and contractors have new opportunities to influence decisions at the highest levels, including policy on divestiture of government investments, preferred buyouts of state assets, provision of subsidized finance, selective termination of government monopolies in service sectors, investment in new public projects, and other lucrative deals.64 The combination of weak institutions, insecure elites, and economic scarcity makes a poor democracy all the more vulnerable to corruption through campaign finance. In China fundraising is not an issue for elites, or an access opportunity for business groups, at higher levels. Much corruption occurs mainly in implementation phases at local levels after central decisions have been made, although it is also on the rise at policymaking levels. It has become common for localities to have offices in the capital to lobby central ministries for projects and financing; industrial groups also seek and 11 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Comparative Politics October 2009 win national policy advantages.65 Whereas in India every politician and political party needs to raise campaign funds (and most will pocket some personally as well), in China it is the bureaucrat who accepts kickbacks. In India business groups seek patronage from national politicians through contributions, but in China it is still impossible to reach Politb?ro members, top state executives, or national legislators that way. In China a dif ferent process has been on the rise?corruption carried out collectively by a public agency.66 For example, a state agency, rather than an individual official, might accept a kickback from funding recipients; usually the spoils are shared within the agency, while individual culpability is avoided.67 Convergence in Corruption So far we have asked why India's democracy is ineffective at checking corruption, while China controls (as opposed to reducing) it in a variety of ways. Some factors, however, pro duce comparable levels of corruption regardless of the presence or absence of democracy. Consider, for example, relationships between politicians and bureaucrats. In the wrangling between political and administrative figures, a democracy should have advan tages. Periodic elections should keep politicians in check, who should in turn watch over bureaucrats. India's tradition of sharp formal distinctions between politicians who for mulate policies and bureaucrats who implement them should be an added advantage. Nonetheless, since imperial times the Indian bureaucracy has been a major locus of po litical power in its own right. The problem is collusion between bureaucrats and poli ticians. Wade's earlier observation still rings true today. Indian politicians compel the bureaucracy to acquiesce in their nefarious activities by controlling appointments to "cushy jobs."68 Bureaucrats, in turn, seek political backing "to escape unwanted places and unpopular posts" as well as to share spoils. A quid pro quo relationship thus exists. Politicians supply opportunities and protection while bureaucrats dispense official fa vors and patronage.69 Economic liberalization has reoriented but not fundamentally weakened such connections. Instead of the myriad regulatory controls at the discretion of bureaucrats, favor dispensing now manifests through "arbitrary award of contracts, sanctioning of deals and investment projects without competitive bidding and transpar ency. The 'license permit raj' has been replaced by the 'tender raj'."70 China has sought to separate party and state functions in local governments and public firms. Rather than ending the overconcentration of power, however, they have produced confusion.71 Supposedly, party organizations and officials have given up rou tine administrative and managerial functions but retain control over key personnel mat ters and oversight. But formal party oversight has become ineffective in most cases, while party-bureaucracy collusion continues. One problem is that party officials are usually not decision makers in managerial functions, where substantive power lies and illicit deals occur. Another is that the appointment of personnel below top ranks now falls within the prerogatives of the administrative/managerial strata, as do routine decision powers. Yet another is that party posts are no longer desired by the best and 12 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston brightest professionals, as noted earlier. In small state firms where party officials are internally appointed, they may even face dismissal by managers. Their posts are often taken over by managerial personnel, encouraging collusion while rendering oversight impossible. In less developed and rural regions, collusion between party officials and administrative chiefs is similar to that in India. The former engage in "sale of office" and protection, the latter in "buying of office" and the distribution of favors. Local "corruption networks" draw layers of officials and private bribers into clusters. The last decade has seen a surge of "cluster cases" in China, especially in poor areas.72 In the end India's weak state, with its mix of elite accessibility, political opportu nities, and economic scarcity, has simply produced distinctive types of corruption?not less of it?when compared to China's stronger state, elite autonomy, scarce political opportunities, and greater economic opportunities. These overall contrasts help us under stand why a poor democracy has not outperformed a developmental autocracy in terms of corruption control. Economic underdevelopment, it seems, undermines democracy's anticorruption properties not just through material scarcity, but also because it is both effect and cause of weaknesses of key economic institutions and guarantees. Those factors encourage corruption that is extensive, fragmented, and therefore disruptive in form. Does corruption undermine the legitimacy of governments, in the Indian case, or of the basic regime in either society? If so, we might expect it to be checked via democratic (India) or liberalizing (China) reactions against official abuse. But such effects are weak at best in both cases. In India anti-incumbency sentiments can run high, yet when the electorate ousts one corrupt government it has no option but to bring in another. The futility of voting the scoundrels out highlights again the importance of structural and institutional factors in the Indian system. As one finance bureaucrat observes, "corruption does not adversely affect the legitimacy of particular governments [because] there does not seem to be any difference from one party to the other. Whoever comes to power indulges in corruption, people feel. There is a total apathy towards the political system among the public. The general opinion is that there is no difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."73 Not surprisingly, the public has little trust in government generally, and the net impact of corruption on legitimacy of particular parties is inconsequential.74 A highly fractured society such as India's also weakens "rational public opinion" as group identities, edu cational disparities, and other socioeconomic contrasts influence political awareness.75 Still another factor neutralizing India's democratic processes is the cooptation of opposition groups into collusive networks of political and bureaucratic corruption. Like ruling parties, opposition leaders too depend on private contributions.76 They are readily available for defection at a price and easily persuaded to look the other way on corruption matters. The judiciary, though independent, has lost effectiveness as an instrument against corruption since the Nehru era; decisions to prosecute rest with the executive branch, which authorizes few cases to proceed. Long delays, ma nipulation of processes, and dubious judicial appointments make it all the more diffi cult for media and citizen critics to demand accountability.77 Political leaders have little 13 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Comparative Politics October 2009 reason to blow the whistle, effective legal action is unlikely, and independent revela tions have little effect. In China the monopoly of the CCP means it takes the major blame for the corrup tion of its rank and file. The CCP regime may tolerate few domestic critics, but it still suffers when frequent comparisons are made against the relatively clean and egalitarian Mao era on the one hand, and mature liberal democracies on the other. The former comparison undermines the contemporary CCP's credibility from the left while the lat ter chips away from the right. Farmers and downsized workers of state enterprises have expressed pent-up frustration through riots; surveys reflect their deplorable transfor mation from the core social base of the CCP to the prime victims of inequality and cor ruption since the 1990s.78 Land grabs by rural officials have become common, while in state enterprises mismanagement and insider privatization lead to bankruptcies and the loss of jobs.79 Critics abroad, and some intellectuals at home, point to the CCP monopoly as the root cause of corruption. Compounding the liabilities for the CCP is public awareness of corruption, despite a dearth of transparent politics. Word of mouth is a potent channel of communication in a communal culture. Corruption stories are reinforced by first-hand experience with state agencies, most of which charge excessive fees for routine services. Both the party and the media publicize details of major corruption cases once they are exposed.80 The media, with the CCP's blessing, increasingly report abuses by local cadres.81 The judiciary?politically dependent but increasingly compromised by commercial inter ests?is another major liability for the party. Criticizing corruption is not equated with at tacking the party and remains morally and historically legitimate in Chinese society. Chinese people, after all, staged the famous Tiananmen protests against corruption long before the colorful revolutions of post-Soviet republics.82 Nevertheless, regime legitimacy has not been critically undermined by corruption in post-Mao China.83 As in India, one reason is sheer pervasiveness. Corruption has become mostly materially based, more accessible, and less exclusive than in the early years of economic reform, and is ironically less divisive. Contemporary corruption, moreover, is no longer seen as directly caused by central policies, but more as errant behavior by local officials. In fact, when local protesters complain about localized injustices, they are more likely to demand that central policies be upheld and not distorted, not that they be changed. Another key reason may be that the top national leadership remains clean and visibly devoted to national development. The "princeling party"?children of top leaders including Deng Xiaoping and CCP head Zhao Ziyang? was tarnished during the "official profiteering" of the 1980s and became a main com plaint of Tiananmen protesters. But the leaders themselves were credibly clean and will ing to ban family members from doing business. The children of many top leaders remain prominent, but the success of many other ordinary individuals has defused a politically explosive issue. Below the top leadership, a handful of provincial governors and party secretaries, several deputy central ministers, and an increasing number of deputy provin cial governors have been brought down by scandal. But the effect of such exposures on regime legitimacy is mixed, undermining the party's credibility yet serving, via periodic 14 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston crackdowns, to remind all concerned of the limits of wanton transgressions. For different reasons, neither one-party China nor democratic India appears likely to experience sweeping political change as a consequence of corruption. Conclusion Democracy in a poor, developing country has not clearly proven more successful at tackling corruption than an authoritarian developmental state. This finding contributes to our understanding about the variability of democracy and how regime types interact with the dynamics of corruption in developing settings. More important, it indicates the limits of democratic corruption control. In India accessible elites and economic pressures growing out of scarcity sustain corruption and weaken accountability, in political and bureaucratic arenas at all levels. Closed politics and autonomous elites, along with vigorous economic growth, may shield the top levels of China's regime from the worst corrupting pressures, shifting the emphasis to political and bureaucratic processes at lower levels. It is tempting to ponder the implications of these findings for an age in which democracy is widely promoted as improving governance, controlling corruption, and promoting development. Third wave democratization since the 1970s, economic liber alization since the 1980s, and revolutions in the former socialist world since the early 1990s all have led to a simultaneous, if halting and uneven, proliferation of markets and democracies. Clearly democracy as a set of values has immense inherent appeal. But as an instrumental strategy for good governance its record is decidedly mixed in developing and transitional countries. Economic liberalization and democratization seem to encourage the opening up not only of official processes, but also of corrupt ones.84 The combination may "set the world on fire"?or unleash a "Godfather" decade or two.85 We do not know whether corruption will continue to breed illiberal democra cies, and vice versa, in developing regions. Liberal autocracies, on the other hand, often fare no worse in terms of controlling corruption, and have effectively achieved developmental goals. Zakaria's observation is sobering: [OJver the past fifty years almost every success story in the developing world has taken place under a liberal authoritarian regime.... It is difficult to think of a Third World de mocracy that has achieved sustained growth rates....Those that have gone down the path of reform are quickly stymied by the need to maintain subsidies for politically powerful groups....[F]or all its democratic glories, [India] has slipped further and further behind on almost every measure of human development: life expectancy, infant mortality, health, literacy, and education.... Surely it is time to ask whether democracies such as India, so lauded by Western intellectuals, are working for their people.86 Thus for liberalizing China and for other developing economies too, the governance reform priority may be to build the "liberal" part of liberal democracy: rule of law, constitutionalism, protection of property and other rights, separation of powers, and This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 15 Comparative Politics October 2009 media openness. But given widening social inequalities under economic liberalization, hurried moves to open up politics and elite accessibility may enhance the influence of the already privileged nouveaux riches, contributing to further corruption in newer forms. To the extent that such trends limit political access for less powerful groups, they may simply create new forms of tyranny, ironically fueled by democratic and market liberalization. As India shows, economic underdevelopment is a dilemma of institutional weakness as well as of massive poverty, turning the very openness of democracy into a liability in accountability terms. A poor and unregulated democracy, it seems, can undermine liberty and the rule of law while prolonging the cycle of underdevelopment and corruption. A final thought has to do with sequencing of reforms. Cross-sectional comparisons suggest that economic growth is a better platform for democracy than democracy is for growth.87 That idea dates back at least as far as the modernization theories of the 1960s, but the connections are complex. One reason democracies do not do markedly better at growth is that many have mature economies given to moderate expansion, while un democratic societies include development states as well as economically dysfunctional kleptocracies. For corruption control and for governance more broadly, success is more likely if an economic base is built first, with democracy following more gradually. That is a recommendation friends of democracy might find difficult to make, but one that we believe is supported by the cases under consideration here. The difficulty, of course, is that events have a way of forcing our hand. The transi tions of the past generation suggest that political change is often sharp, discontinuous, and dramatic (if, unfortunately, likely to stall out later on), while economic reform is slower, uneven, and impeded by the rapid decompression of politics and government. Few would stand in the way of citizens for whom long-denied freedoms have finally arrived. Still, development is as much a process of establishing key institutions and or derly economic arenas, as of "freeing" people to enrich themselves. How wealth is cre ated, and the distributions that result, matter immensely. A government, democratic or otherwise, that delivers a significantly better life to citizens while staying out of the political clutches of an affluent few can earn credibility. In that sense, basic social ser vices, a regulatory framework, and the taxes required to sustain both should not be seen as a drag on the economy or as luxuries to be deferred. They are, instead, the price of credible governance?indeed, necessities if democratization is not to become an invita tion for economic interests to turn politics into an auction. NOTES 1. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990). 2. Andreas Schedler, Larry J. Diamond, and Marc Plattner, The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999). 3. Ashutosh Varshney, "Why Haven't Poor Democracies Eliminated Poverty?" in India and the Politics of Developing Countries, ed. Ashutosh Varshney (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004). 16 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston 4. John Gerring and Strom Thacker, A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 5. Gunnar Myrdal, "Corruption as a Hindrance to Modernization in South Asia," in Political Corruption: A Handbook, ed. Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Michael Johnston, and Victor T. Le Vine (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1989), 265-79. 6. Daniel Treisman suggests that economic development and integration into the global economy help check corruption. Treisman, "The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-National Study," Journal of Public Economics, 76 (June 2000): 399-457. 7. Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 81-87, 106-13, 251-52. 8. Nagarajan Vittal, "Corruption and the State: India, Technology, and Transparency," Harvard International Review, 23 (Fall 2001): 20; and Yan Sun, "The Politics of Conceptualizing Corruption in Reform China," Crime, Law and Social Change, 35 (April 2001): 245-70. 9. Joseph Nye, "Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis," American Political Science Review, 61 (June 1967): 417. 10. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968): 59-71. 11. Michael Johnston, Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power, and Democracy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chaps. 1-3, 8. 12. Jens Chr. Andvig, "Corruption and Fast Change," World Development, 34 (February 2006): 328-40; Jyoti Khanna and Michael Johnston, "India's Middlemen: Connecting by Corrupting?" Crime, Law, and Social Change, 48 (December 2007): 151-68. 13. Michael Johnston, "Public Officials, Private Interests and Sustainable Democracy: When Politics and Corruption Meet," in Corruption and the Global Economy, ed. Kimberly Ann Elliott (Washington, DC: Institute of International Economics, 1997): 68-73. 14. Huntington, Political Order, 59-71. 15. On elite insecurity and voracious corruption, see James C. Scott, Comparative Political Corruption (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 80-84. 16. Johnston, "Public Officials, Private Interests," 70-73. 17. Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny, "Corruption," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108 (August 1993): 599. 18. David Kang, Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 19. Paul Hutchcroft, "Booty Capitalism in the Philippines," in Business and Government in Industrializing Asia, ed. Andrew Maclntyre (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 221. 20. Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences and Reform (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1999), chap. 7. 21. The CPI is defended by its creator in Johann Graf Lambsdorff, "Measuring Corruption?The Validity and Precision of Subjective Indicators," in Measuring Corruption, ed. Charles Sampford, Arthur Shacklock, Carmel Connors, and Fredrik Gaining (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), chap. 5. 22. On Taiwanese and Hong Kong businesspeople in China's corruption, see Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 105-6. 23. Interviews with Chinese IT executives in Silicon Valley, CA, by Sun. 24. Scatterplots and data for this relationship, and for those between CPI averages and democratization trends and affluence respectively, available at http://people.colgate.edu/ mjohnston/Sun-Johnston%20plots data.htm. Data Sources: Transparency International Corruption Perception Indices, 1995-2008, http://www. transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi (accessed on July 7,2009); Polity IV Project 1800-2007, http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm (accessed on July 7, 2009); GDP per capita calculated from World Bank data, http://web.worldbank.Org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0?contentMDK: 20399244-menuPK: 1504474~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html (accessed on July 7, 2009); figures for Taiwan and Myanmar are 2007 IMF estimates: http://financialdatalink. sharepointsite.net/default.aspx (accessed on July 7, 2009). 25. Leslie Palmier, The Control of Bureaucratic Corruption: Case Studies in Asia (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1985), 271. 26. J. V. Abueva, "What Are We in Power For? The Sociology of Graft and Corruption," Philippine Sociological Review, 18 (July-October 1970): 203-8. 27. Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005). 17 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Comparative Politics October 2009 28. Shahid M. Alam, "Anatomy of Corruption: An Approach to the Political Economy of Under development," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 48 (October 1989): 441-56; and Peter Ward, ed., Corruption, Development and Inequality (New York and London: Routledge, 1989). 29. Jong-sung You and Sanjeev Khagram, "A Comparative Study of Inequality and Corruption," American Sociological Review, 70 (February 2005): 136-57. 30. Interviews with Ghanaian MPs and party officials, Accra and Tamale, by Johnston, July 2006. 31. Khanna and Johnston, "India's Middlemen," 155-61. 32. Colin Leys, "What is the Problem with Corruption?" Journal of Modern African Studies, 3 (August 1965): 215-30; and S. K. Das, Public Office, Private Interest: Bureaucracy and Corruption in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 110. 33. Myrdal, "Corruption as Hindrance," 414-15. 34. Cited in Das, Public Office, 105. 35. Robert Wade, "The Market for Public Office: Why the Indian State is not Better at Development," World Development, 13 (April 1985): 486. 36. Jon S. T. Quah, Curbing Corruption in Asia: A Comparative Study of Six Countries (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2003): 58-77. 37. Vinod Pavarala, Interpreting Corruption: Elite Perspectives in India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996), 110-11. 38. Hans Schenk, "Corruption...What Corruption? Notes on Bribery and Dependency in Urban India," in Ward, Corruption, 110-23. 39. Julie Kwong, The Political Economy of Corruption in China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997); and Alan Liu, "The Politics of Corruption in the People's Republic of China," American Political Science Review, 11 (September 1983): 602-21. 40. Most notably, Minxin Pei, "Corruption Threatens China's Future," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Brief 55 (October 2007); Pei, Trapped Transition: Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Sun, Corruption and Market; and Melanie Manion, Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Hong Kong and China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 41. For divergent levels and types of corruption in post-Mao China, see especially Sun, Corruption and Market, chap. 4. See also, Yu Jianrong, "Social Conflict in Rural China," China Security, 3 (Spring 2007): 2-17; Xinhua, "China's Procuratorate to Put Rural Officials under Corruption Spotlight," People's Daily Online, May 9, 2008. 42. Ibid. On selling offices in China's poor regions, see Sun, "Cadre Recruitment and Corruption: What Goes Wrong?" Crime, Law and Social Change, 49 (February 2008): 61-79; and Jiangnan Zhu, "Why Are Offices for Sale in China? A Case Study of the Office-selling Chain in Helongjiang Province," (FED Working Papers Series, FE 2007132, 2007). 43. Ting Gong, "Forms and Characteristics of China's Corruption in the 1990s: Change with Continuity," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 30 (September 1997): 277-88; and Gong, "New Trends in China's Corruption: Change Amidst Continuity," in China s Deep Reform: Domestic Politics in Transition, ed. Lowell Dittmer and Guoli Liu (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 451-69. 44. Vinod Pavarala estimates upper-caste ownership of local enterprises in Andhra Pradesh at nearly 80 percent; Pavarala, Interpreting Corruption, 33. 45. Stephen Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2001), 105. 46. Pavarala, Interpreting Corruption, 100. 47. Robert Wade, "The System of Administrative and Political Corruption: Canal Irrigation in South India," Journal of Development Studies, 18 (April 1982): 287-328. 48. Khanna and Johnston, "India's Middlemen," passim. 49. Ritu Sarin, Global Integrity Report: India (Washington, DC: Global Integrity, 2007), 1-119. 50. This discussion is based on surveys and investigations by various organizational departments of the Chinese Communist Party at central and local levels, collected in Li Huibin and Xue Xiaoyuan, eds., Investigative Reports on China: Changing Socioeconomic Relations and the Building of the Party (Beijing: Social Science Documents Press, 2003). 51. Sun, Corruption and Market, 145-47; and Pei, Trapped Transition, 145-46. 52. Oskar Kurer, "Why Do Voters Support Corrupt Politicians?" in The Political Economy of Corruption, ed. Arvind K. Jain (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 68. 53. Cited in Ibid., 68-69. 54. Wade, "Market for Public Office," 479, 486-87. 18 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Yan Sun and Michael Johnston 55. Robert Hardgrave and Stanley Kochanek, India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation (New York: Wadsworth, 1999), chap. 7. 56. Zakaria, Future of Freedom, 109; see also Johnston, "Public Officials, Private Interests," 73. 57. Pei, Trapped Transition, chap. 4. 58. Shleifer and Vishny, "Corruption," 599; Andrew Wedeman, "Looters, Rent-scrapers, and Dividend collectors: Corruption and Growth in Zaire, South Korea, and the Philippines," Journal of Developing Areas, 31 (Summer 1997): 457-78. 59. J. Edgardo Campos, Donald Lien, and Sanjay Pradhan, "The Impact of Corruption on Investment: Predictability Matters," World Development, 27 (June 1999): 1059-67. 60. On transaction and nontransaction types of corruption in China, see Sun, Corruption and Market, chaps. 2, 3. 61. Bhure Lai, Corruption: Functional Anarchy in Governance (New Delhi: Siddharth Publications, 2002), 144. 62. 63. 64. 65. Vittal, Corruption and the State, 22. Pavarala, Interpreting Corruption, 31; and Lai, Functional Anarchy, 144. Vittal, Corruption and the State, 38-39. Scott Kennedy, The Business of Lobbying in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 66. Ting Gong, "Dangerous Collusion: Corruption as a Collective Venture in Contemporary China," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 35 (March 2002): 85-103. 67. Ibid. Also, Xiaobo Lu, "Booty Socialism, Bureau-preneurs, and the State in Transition: Organizational Corruption in China," Comparative Politics, 32 (April 2000), 273-94; and Sun, Corruption and Market, chaps. 3, 4. 68. Wade, "Administrative and Political Corruption," 286-321; "Market for Public Office," 467-89. 69. P.C. Alexander, The Perils of Democracy (Bombay: Somaiya Publications, 1995). 70. Lai, Functional Anarchy, 184-91. 71. This discussion is based on surveys carried out by the Communist Party's personnel department in various localities, reported in Li and Xue, Investigative Reports. 72. Principal-agent problems entailed by separation of party and state, and local corruption networks, are documented in Sun, Corruption and Market, chaps. 5 and 4, respectively. See also Pei, chap. 4. 73. From an Indian Administrative Service officer in the Finance Ministry, cited in Pavarala, Interpreting Corruption, 151; see also Transparency International India, India Corruption Study 2005 to Improve Governance (New Delhi: Centre for Media Studies, 2005). 74. Pavarala, Interpreting Corruption, 151. 75. Lai, Functional Anarchy, 145-46; and Pavarala, Interpreting Corruption, 151-52. 76. Das, Public Office, 194; and Lai, Functional Anarchy, 144-45. 77. Das, Public Office, 174-75, 192-95; and Zakaria, Future of Freedom, 109-10. 78. Li and Xue, Investigative Reports. 79. Chen Feng, "Subsistence Crisis, Managerial Corruption and Labor Protests in China," The China Journal, 44 (July 2000): 41-63. 80. See the list of national and local periodicals related to corruption in Sun, Corruption and Market, 219-22. 81. "The CCP Issues Document to Promote the Media's Oversight Power," Qiao Bao, April 20, 2005. 82. Yan Sun, "The Chinese Protests of 1989: The Issue of Corruption," Asian Survey, 31 (August 1991): 762-82. 83. This paragraph draws upon Sun, "Corruption, Growth and Reform," Current History, 104 (September 2005): 262. 84. For example, Kurt Weyland, "The Politics of Corruption in Latin America," Journal of Democracy, 9 (April 1998): 108-21; and Alan Doig and Robin Theobald, eds., Corruption and Democratization (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 37-63. 85. Amy Chua, The World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Anchor Books, 2004); and P. J. O'Rourke, "The Godfather Decade: An Encounter with Post-Soviet Corruption," Foreign Policy, 121 (November/December 2000): 74-80. 86. Zakaria, Future of Freedom, 251-52. 87. See, for example, Jos? Tavares and Romain Wacziarg, "How Democracy Affects Growth", European Economic Review, 45 (August 2001): 1341-78. 19 This content downloaded from 132.174.250.68 on Thu, 14 Mar 2019 22:42:13 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms (Forthcoming 2001). ACivil Society and Social Capital: A Primer,@ by Bob Edwards and Michael W. Foley, in Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective, Bob Edwards, Michael W. Foley, and Mario Diani, Eds. University Press of New England Series on Civil Society. Civil Society and Social Capital: A Primer Bob Edwards, East Carolina University Michael W. Foley, The Catholic University of America INTRODUCTION Recent debate about the role of civil society in democratic governance around the world and the "decline of social capital" in the United States has raised a variety of theoretical and empirical questions about the character of contemporary societies and the social and institutional bases for sound and dynamic democracies. This debate has reached a wide audience in North America and Europe not limited to academia. The predominant refrain in the debate, following Alexis de Tocqueville's 160 year old analysis of democracy in America, attaches tremendous significance to the role of voluntary associations in society. Participation in such groups is said to produce social capital, sometimes linked to high levels of social trust. Social capital in turn is conceived as a crucial national resource for promoting collective action for the common good. The concept of social capital has gained increasing popularity among political sociologists and political scientists since being introduced by Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman in the 1980s. i Robert Putnam's work on Italy (1993) and his provocative claim that social capital is somehow in decline in the United States (1995a, 1995b) stimulated a flurry of research and writing, including efforts to apply the notion of social capital in disciplines as disparate as criminology, epidemiology and economics, not to mention sociology and political science. The World Bank has recently institutionalized the concept in its evaluation criteria by requiring social capital assessments for current and future projects. In the United States, major foundations like Ford and the Pew Charitable Trusts have implemented social capital related funding criteria. While the concepts of civil society and social capital have raised important questions about the dynamics of social life, the sources of citizen involvement in political life, and the role of trust in facilitating social action, both notions have proven difficult to define and apply in a coherent manner. At the same time, and as a result of their very success, these terms have been stretched conceptually, at the risk of hampering, rather than facilitating, our understanding of the social and political processes they were meant to illuminate. Without pretending to definitively resolve these concerns, this volume is intended to help clarify the issues at stake and illustrate the rich empirical work that has followed on the debate. THE MANY CIVIL SOCIETIES 1 The notion of civil society owes its birth to the influential formulation of Scottish Enlightenment figure Adam Ferguson (1995). In Ferguson=s usage Acivil society@ represented the realm of Acivilization@ and rising standards of living based on specialization or the Adivision of labor.@ While a civil society thus offered all the advantages of modernity, it also risked social division, as the diverse interests of the individuals who made it up and their devotion to the pleasures and refinements of civilization threw into doubt their willingness to unite in common cause in defense of their liberties. As they became more Acivilized,@ Ferguson worried, people were becoming less decidedly Acitizens@. The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1945) took up these same questions, likewise seeking to reconcile the increasing division of labor and diversity of interests of modern society with the republican ideal of a unified citizenry. Civil society is thus juxtaposed to the state, but Hegel, at least, finds the solution to the problems posed by Ferguson in a modern and enlightened state. For the early twentieth century Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci (1971), by contrast, the conflict at the heart of civil society provides the arena in which subordinate classes may contest the dominance of the ruling class crystallized in the state. Consciously or unconsciously, twentieth century variants of the notion of civil society take up this Gramscian understanding, utilizing the notion less as an analytical tool than a polemical one and posing Acivil society@ as an alternative to the existing political and economic order. Whether as "society against the state" in the Polish and Latin American conceptions of the 1970s, or as a sphere of social autonomy and democratization from below among the German Greens and the French "Second Left"during the same era, the concept served to juxtapose a sphere of voluntary, purposive association to the forces of chaos, oppression or atomization of the time. Competing concepts of civil society thus almost invariably bear the marks of the political struggles within which they were born. Considerable overlap in the sorts of social actors identified as central to "civil society" among these conceptions gives the notion an air of universality -- suggesting that if only we could come to agreement about just who and what is included under its umbrella, we could achieve a comprehensive theory of state-society relations. Yet, the real purchase of the notion of civil society today is polemical and normative and tied closely to the debates which currently shape it.ii In each of the cases mentioned above, "civil society" crystallized projects of social autonomy over against the dominant power(s) of that time and place. In the Poland of the 1970s, civil society was more a wish than a reality until the explosive growth of the Solidarity movement in 1980-81. Prior to Solidarity's emergence the context of political opportunities in Eastern Europe under the Brezhnev Doctrine constrained the possibilities for action and convinced thinkers like Adam Michnik and Vaclav Havel that only by carving out spheres of authentic and autonomous action in Acivil society@ could dissidents construct a third way between reform of the Communist regime from above and open revolt from below. After 1981 2 events in Poland outstripped theory, and what started as simply an assertion of social autonomy in the face of Communist power quickly became a highly charged and dangerous (if ultimately successful) political movement (Pelczynski 1988). Latin American conceptualizations reflected both the struggle against the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s and a widespread conviction that conventional party politics had failed these societies. Latin American activists and thinkers thus framed civil society not only as "society against a repressive state" but as society in place of the parties (Garreton, 1989; Fals Borda, 1992). The leftist orientation of many anti-government activists led to an identification of civil society with the so-called the "popular sector" -- including a wide variety of lower-class and leftist groupings under this umbrella, but generally excluding even those sectors of the business and professional classes who eventually joined in the opposition. In Western Europe during the 1970's and 1980s proponents of civil society developed their thinking against the backdrop of the neo-corporatist arrangements that had incorporated organized labor and business into institutionalized patterns of governance, but afforded little access for other constituencies. Civil society was conceptualized in opposition to the status quo of this neo-corporatist political settlement. By establishing "action spaces" within civil society in which to create new social and cultural organizations and institutions, representatives of environmentalist, feminist and peace movements (among others) sought to embody alternative ways of achieving collective goods and a conceptualization of democracy at least implicitly critical of traditional forms of representation (Melucci 1989; Dalton and Keuchler 1990; Edwards 1995, Ch. 2). Similar notions, without explicit appeal to the term Acivil society,@ made inroads in the United States beginning with the Anew-left@ of the 1960s (Brienes 1982), continuing with advocates of local citizen organizing (Boyte 1980), and being applied more generally to an array of historical and contemporary social movements (Evans and Boyte 1986). Explicit usages of the term Acivil society@ in the U.S. context often appeared imported, with each school of thought tending to emphasize those aspects of the concept that best suited their particular ideological or theoretical purposes.iii The apparent crisis of the "welfare state" in the 1970's contributed to a search for a new paradigm in the United States, as elsewhere, but the initial results were neo-liberal remedies based on slapdash deregulation and the confidence that open, market economies would eventually "lift all boats."iv Academic and think tank economists, central banks and international lending institutions led by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and U.S. government agencies from Reagan through Clinton promoted economic liberalization and the unfettered play of market forces as the most efficient means of providing public goods. The uneasy fit between these prescriptions and the notion of civil society, with its implicit critique of purely market-driven approaches, is evident in the World Bank's tardy attempt to incorporate the organizations of civil society into discussions of economic restructuring and state reform in the developing world. And what the Bank usually 3 meant by Acivil society@ was more often the new professionalized service and advocacy groups (ANGOs@) than unions, community organizations, or the traditional non-profit sector. The eventual emergence of the term Acivil society@ in the United States, similarly, often seemed to reflect a tardy effort to appropriate the energies of groups deemed both appropriately Acivic minded@ and capable of replacing governmental efforts with private charity B not those likely to demand that government do more, better, of what it had once promised to do. As an analytical concept, the contemporary notion of civil society, and the sectoral models to which it is attached, thus suffers from acute definitional fuzziness. At least two related factors underlie this lack of clarity. First and most important, the definitional confusion stems from variations across the "many civil societies" that have been the implicit empirical basis for the varying conceptualizations of the term thanks to its origins in specific polemical and normative contexts. At the same time, paradoxically, the notion's precision suffers from the sheer historical and even transnational sweep of its application and the consequent temptation, despite the variation referred to above, to treat civil society and the Asectors@ (Astate@ and Amarket@) to which it is juxtaposed as ideal types (Foley and Edwards, 1996; Edwards and Foley 1998). Despite this lack of clarity, the notion of civil society has the merit of calling attention to neglected dimensions of modern societies. While largely conceived in response to the perceived failures of the twentieth century state, the rediscovery of civil society B whether in the U.S. or abroad, by the left or the right B also springs from a rejection of the dominant economism of modern social thought. In this respect every variant of the civil society argument critiques the ways that predominant economic models, whether Marxist or neo-classical, unduly limit the kinds of social organization that "count" to those that fit clearly within either "the market" or "the state." By directing analytical attention toward forms of social organization, collective actors, and forms of action excluded by prevailing economistic perspectives, such efforts have considerable heuristic value. However, when pushed too far all such sectoral models lead quickly into efforts to specify the definitional boundaries between sectors and debates over which groups fit what sector and to what extent. Such efforts yield largely descriptive accounts or appeal to arbitrary classification schemes and come at the expense of empirical enquiry into how the related social processes actually work. Given the diversity of perspectives and conceptions associated with the notion of civil society, it would be difficult to claim that the concept represents a distinctive "paradigm" for social scientific inquiry. The polemical and normative turn of many of these conceptions, moreover, means that often we are dealing more with what Seligman calls an "ethically obtainable ideal" of civil society (1992, p. 26) than with an analytical concept capable of guiding empirical enquiry by grounding a coherent body of testable hypotheses. The best-known version of these conceptions in the U.S. setting, for instance, that of neo-Tocquevilleans like Robert 4 Putnam, and the one most apparent in the essays that follow, is notably silent on some of the key attributes of civil society under other conceptions. Nevertheless, it is important to situate that understanding in the larger tradition, if only to provoke consideration of alternative conceptualizations more capable of addressing the evident lacunae in contemporary American accounts. The essays that make up this volume take up various of the claims of the civil society argument, particularly those tied to the concept of "social capital." "Civil society" plays three broad roles in these various accounts. Foremost in recent debate is the neo-Tocquevillean emphasis on its socialization function: the associations of civil society are thought to play a major role, if not the major role, in building citizenship skills and attitudes crucial for motivating citizens to use these skills. Many proponents would add, however, that civil society carries out a wide variety of public and quasi-public functions. The associations of civil society aid efforts or directly act to heal the sick, counsel the afflicted, support the penniless, educate both young and old, foster and disseminate culture, and generally provide many of the necessities and adornments of a modern society. It does this best, some argue, when left to itself; but others insist that it could not or would not do it as well or as extensively, without the encouragement and support of government. The wide literature on the Athird sector@ or Avoluntary sector@ focuses on precisely those organizations that tend to take on such quasi-public functions (see for example, Salamon 1995; Van Til 1988; Wuthnow, 1991). A distinctive tradition, more in tune with the European and Latin American uses of the notion of civil society stresses the representative or contestatory functions of social organizations outside the state. Civil society gives identity and voice to the distinct interests and diverse points of view characteristic of a modern society; it stimulates public debate and presses government for action on a thousand and one matters of public interest. Because of the special circumstances in which the notion of civil society emerged for Eastern European and Latin American writers, many of these stress the oppositional character of this role, seeing in civil society a bulwark against the state wherever state purposes seem to threaten the plurality and autonomy that civil society is thought to enshrine. Those approaches which lay stress on the public and quasi-public functions which civil society plays often take for granted its ability to produce "civic engagement" and public spiritedness. Others, including many of the neo-Tocquevilleans, recognizing the conflictive and divisive tendencies of certain sorts of groups, privilege only those groups thought to produce such virtuous attitudes and behavior. But, more importantly, and whether from the left or the right, proponents of a vigorous civil society point to the ability of civil society to realize public ends autonomous from state power and direction. Whether the emphasis is on "the voluntary spirit" or "social autonomy," the idea is that private initiative and organization enjoys certain advantages over state action and can obviate some of the worst abuses and failures of state 5 power. The implicit criticism of prevailing representative institutions is rarely articulated. At the same time, there is considerable disagreement over the role of private enterprise in such activities. While the European left sees civil society as every bit as much an antidote to corporate power as to the over-reaching state of the twentieth century, American conservatives propose to stimulate the privatization of public functions and the active engagement of business within civil society. Liberal voices (and most of the empirical research) emphasize the continuing role of the state in stimulating, supporting and funding private initiatives.5 Neo-Tocquevillean liberals and conservative proponents of civil society tend to ignore or actively exclude from consideration those sorts of organizations and activities associated with advocacy and political action, considering them divisive or simply beside the point. Both the oppositionist conception of civil society developed in Eastern Europe and Latin America and the European-inspired conceptions associated with the "new pluralism" (Keane 1988a, 1988b), on the other hand, put particular stress on the representative, contestatory or political function of civil society. Civil society organizes itself not just to perform vital public functions autonomous of the state (and corporate power) but to defend social autonomy and promote policy change and, in the extreme, regime change. In this view, whether a politicized civil society is considered a substitute for the party system or a complement to it, it is charged with giving expression to societal identities and representing societies' interests and points of view. Again, there is considerable difference between those conceptions which imagine civil society united against the state and those which stress the irreducible pluralism of modern civil societies; but both approaches endorse a politically activated, even combative, civil society. Political activity, moreover, is here conceived of as group action more than individual level electoral participation or "civic engagement," and there is consequently no necessary bias against socially homogenous groups based in class, occupational, ethnic, religious or other social distinctions, as there is in the neo-Tocquevillean and conservative versions. Robert Putnam's original formulation, in Making Democracy Work, identified a strong civil society with high levels of "civic engagement," suggesting a correspondence between structural features of society B the density of face-to-face associations cutting across social cleavages more than anything else B and a certain kind of political or "civic" culture (1993). This approach, which clearly reflects a view of associations as primarily socializing agents, has been particularly attractive to writers in the civic republican tradition, who argue that the health of democracy depends crucially on certain moral commitments among the citizenry and that these have their roots in traditions of community-mindedness and public-spiritedness that are endangered in an individualist and consumerist culture. This "civic culture" argument has deep roots in American political science. "Generalized social trust" (trust in people in general), trust in government and public officials, tolerance, and optimism are all seen, in many versions of the argument, as integral components of social capital 6 directly linked to its beneficial impact on participation and civic engagement and democracy in general (Brehm and Rahn 1997; Muller and Seligson 1994; Stolle and Rochon, this volume). This list of ingredients, however, along with a common preference for broadly "inclusive" groups, stems from the empirical democratic theory of the 1950s, whose explicit fear was that an effervescent and contentious civil society would undermine democracy in the face of the "threat of Communism." The theory of the "civic culture" epitomized by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's five-nation comparative study of the same name (1963) argued that the participatory impulse had to be tempered by a large dose of what Almond and Verba called "subject orientation," i.e., a willingness to be led and to abide by the decisions of the authorities. Bred of the Cold War and a profound mistrust of popular mobilization outside the most narrow channels of then conventional political behavior, the theory highlighted virtues such as generalized social trust and trust in government as key ingredients in "stable democracies," with the emphasis decidedly on stability. While Putnam=s work betrays elements of this older approach, he has been more inclined to argue that associational life (Aa vigorous civil society,@ in contemporary parlance) itself has a significant impact on political culture, and thus civic engagement, via its impact on Asocial capital@ and not the other way around. THEORIES OF SOCIAL CAPITAL Three relatively distinct tributaries of social capital theorizing are evident in recent literature (Wall, Ferrazzi, and Schryer 1998). That associated with the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1986) stresses unequal access to resources via the possession of more or less durable relationships. Where Bourdieu builds his notion of social capital on essentially Durkheimian micro-foundations, James Coleman (1988, 1993) incorporates a similar understanding of social capital into a theory grounded in rational choice theory. Where Bourdieu=s macro-sociology owes its greatest debt to Marx, Coleman remains within the functionalist tradition of Durkheim and Parsons. Work by political scientists and others following the lead of Robert Putnam (1993, 1995a, 1995b, 1996), finally, presents a vision of social capital more congruent with the Weberian assumptions of the political culture argument in American political science, in which exogenously generated attitudes and norms such as trust and reciprocity stand alongside social networks as ingredients enabling a society to undertake collective action.6 Bourdieu and Coleman=s conceptions of social capital take the analogy with financial capital seriously, seeing it as instrumental in the flow of goods and services to individuals and groups. Putnam, by contrast, has popularized a notion of social capital which ties it to the production of collective goods such as Acivic engagement@ or a spirit of cooperation available to a community or nation at large. Bourdieu defines social capital as Athe aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition B or in other words, to membership in a 7 group B which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a >credential= which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word@ (1986: 248-9). For Bourdieu, social capital is one of three forms of capital (economic, cultural and social) which, taken together, Aexplain the structure and dynamics of differentiated societies@ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:119). Differential access to capital, not individual utility maximizing behavior, shapes both economic and social worlds in Bourdieu=s sociology. Similarly, the fundamental structures that produce and reproduce access to social capital are not, for Bourdieu, selfregulating markets but networks of connections, which themselves are Athe product of an endless effort at institution.@ Bourdieu=s emphasis on Ainstitution rites,@ Athe alchemy of consecration@ and gift giving at the heart of the transformation of Acontingent relations, such as those of neighborhood, the workplace, or even kinship, into relationships that are at once necessary and elective, implying durable obligations subjectively felt@ (Bourdieu 1986:249-50), underlines the Durkheimian roots of this conception. If the mechanisms for the construction of social capital in Bourdieu=s account may appear elusive to some readers, his understanding of how we might measure and weigh social capital has a clarity and coherence not found in Coleman and Putnam. For Bourdieu, Athe volume of the social capital possessed by a given agent ... depends on the size of the network of connections he can effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital (economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those to whom he is connected@ (249). Perhaps the most influential formulation of the concept of social capital, nevertheless, is that of sociologist James Coleman. Coleman defines social capital as Aa variety of entities having two characteristics in common: They all consist of some aspect of a social structure, and they facilitate certain actions of individuals who are within the structure.... Unlike other forms of capital, social capital inheres in the structure of relations between persons and among persons. It is lodged neither in individuals nor in physical implements of production@ (Coleman, 1990:302). The forms of social capital identified in Coleman=s most extended treatment of the subject include Aobligations and expectations,@ Ainformation potential,@ Anorms and effective sanctions@ (grouped together because, as Coleman notes, norms are a Apowerful, but sometimes fragile, form of social capital@), Aauthority relations,@ Aappropriable social organization,@ and Aintentional organization@ B understood as Adirect investment in social capital@ (Coleman, 1990:306-313). Coleman has been criticized by some commentators for the relative incoherence of this laundry list (Portes 1998). The relationships that Coleman draws attention to, moreover, are conceived of in instrumental terms, as elements in the rational calculations of self-interested agents, and not, as in Bourdieu, as constitutive of individual identities and strategies. As Charles Tilly remarks, A...Coleman feinted repeatedly toward relational accounts of norms, commitments, and similar phenomena but pulled his punches as they approached the target. Although his 8 verbal accounts mentioned many agents, monitors, and authorities who influenced individual actions, his mathematical formulations tellingly portrayed a single actor=s computations rather than interactions among persons@ (1998:19). Nevertheless, like Bourdieu, Coleman highlights the sense in which concrete social relationships can give individuals access to crucial resources not otherwise available despite ample endowments of human or financial capital. He underlines the limited fungibility of social capital: Aa given form of social capital that is valuable in facilitating certain actions may be useless or even harmful for others@ (1990:302). Moreover, he insists that social capital is embedded in relations, not borne by individuals wherever they might go. Finally, he insists that such subjective attributes as trust, expectations and norms are endogenous to specific social relations. Indeed, the Atrust@ that figures prominently in Coleman=s account is not the Ageneralized social trust@ of the political science literature, but a feature of the specific context in which specified individuals or classes of individuals can be trusted. Thus, social capital is conceived as Asocial-structural resources@available only in and through relationships and social structures. Robert Putnam=s initial interpretation, in Making Democracy Work (1993) and ABowling Alone@ (1995), gave a distinctively Weberian and Tocquevillean reading, consonant with a long tradition in American political science, to Coleman=s concept. Putnam defined social capital as A...features of social life--networks, norms, and trust--that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives.@ (1995:664-665). For Putnam, associations, particularly those featuring face-to-face, horizontal relations among individuals, generate trust, norms of reciprocity, and a capacity for civic engagement which are essential to the functioning of a modern democracy. In the absence of a strong associational life, citizens would lack the skills and inclinations necessary to work together on economic and political projects. Neither informal networks nor large, national level membership groups could substitute for the powerful effects thought to emanate from the face-to-face associations characteristic, Putnam argued, of vibrant democracies (Putnam 1993, 1995a). A handful of aggregate indicators, readily available in existing survey data sets, thus come to stand in for Coleman=s (and Bourdieu=s) contextspecific notion of social capital: Ageneralized social trust,@ membership in organizations, and norms such as reciprocity, cooperation and tolerance. Putnam=s argument has been attacked for neglecting the Adark@ side of social capital (Portes and Landolt 1996), avoiding politics and political structure (Foley and Edwards 1996, 1997; Tarrow 1996), and under-emphasizing the role of large-scale economic changes in undermining civic engagement in the United States and elsewhere (Skocpol, 1996). At the same time, his conceptual framework has been criticized for incoherence, in particular for failing to specify under what conditions face-to-face interaction can be thought to generate the desirable civic traits of the argument (Foley and Edwards 1998; Edwards and Foley 1998). Jackman and 9 Miller=s careful re-analysis of Putnam=s Italian data, moreover, undermines the notion th...
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