Corruption and the Secret of Law: An Introduction

Anders, Gerhard; Nuijten, Monique

doi:10.4324/9781315259208-1

Cited by 15 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…Danielle Tan has recently made similar observations about Laos PDR. She argues that the government-facilitated proliferation of foreign investments in Laos represents a 139 Anders and Nuijten 2007. new kind of state building, rather than being a sign of state erosion or weakness. 140 This implies that while state sovereignties are increasingly fractured and porous in contemporary Southeast Asia, incumbent extractive regimes appear to be highly capable of making good use of this, by adapting and blurring state formation, often through processes that utilize illicit finance.…”

Section: How Loopholes In Sovereignty Give Rise To New Modes Of Extramentioning

confidence: 97%

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Cambodia's Unofficial Regime of Extraction: Illicit Logging in the Shadow of Transnational Governance and Investment

Milne

2015

Critical Asian Studies

104

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Cambodia has recently demonstrated one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. While scholars have long explored the drivers of tropical forest loss, the case of Cambodia offers particular insights into the role of the state where transnational governance and regional integration are increasingly the norm. Given the significant role logging rents play in Cambodia's post-conflict state formation, this article explores the contemporary regime and its ongoing codependent relationship with forested land. Insights are distilled from comparative analysis of illicit logging in two ethnographic case studies. Both involve foreign investments by state-owned companies -a Chinese-backed hydropower dam and Vietnameseowned rubber concessions -and both are nestled in prominent conservation landscapes that are managed with international donor support. Together, the cases reveal how Cambodia's current timber extraction regime works through the use and abuse of legal mechanisms associated with forest conservation and foreign investment projects, and the mobilization of elite alliances that log both for private gain and in service of the ruling party's interests. By implication, the government's remarkable facilitation of transnational projects for conservation and development must be reappraised and ultimately seen as constitutive of a predatory and extractive regime that continues to rely heavily upon illicit logging revenues.

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Section: How Loopholes In Sovereignty Give Rise To New Modes Of Extramentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Before exploring these problems empirically, I provide a brief account of state formation in Cambodia and the role of natural resources in this process. 23 Heyman and Smart 1999;Anders and Nuijten 2007;Aspinall andvan Klinken 2011. 24 Gellert 2010.…”

Section: The Political Ecology Of State Formationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cambodia's Unofficial Regime of Extraction: Illicit Logging in the Shadow of Transnational Governance and Investment

Milne

2015

Critical Asian Studies

104

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“…Traditionally, economists and political scientists have dominated the literature in this field (Anders & Nuijten, 2007), often in unison with multilateral agencies like the World Bank, based on an understanding that corruption is linked to "underdevelopment" and should be addressed by international organizations and anticorruption agencies. These have tended to take the view that corruption is embedded in the local culture (Gledhill, 2004, p. 155), from a "developed" North perspective versus the "underdeveloped" South.…”

Section: Corruption Neopatrionalism and The Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Grand corruption in Mexico: The convenient disappearance of an agrarian community

Hagene

2019

ERLACS

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This article offers an exemplary case of grand corruption in Mexico, narrating the story of how a series of actors and institutions at all levels collaborated to obtain favours, while dispossessing an agrarian community of its property rights, and replacing its elected Commissariat with a person of their choice, paying him the equivalent of US$3 million. This manoeuvre gave right of way to President Peña Nieto's interurban train, at the risk of ruining the community's water supply. The study argues that we should distinguish the concept of grand from that of petty corruption. It sees neopatrimonialism as a subtype of grand corruption, describing complex networks of actors across several institutions and levels, which operate the corrupt practices, with agency at all levels. President López Obrador won the 2018 election on a promise to fight corruption. This study illustrates the difficulties he will encounter trying to realize this promise, while suggesting that combatting impunity would constitute a promising start.

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“…As suggested by the World Bank's definition of corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain,” much of what drives the global crusade to eradicate it through “good governance” is an unquestioned assumption that public office and the private sphere are distinct. This distinction, which Max Weber famously considered the hallmark of rational‐legal bureaucratic order, underlies not just anticorruption efforts but also the entire postcolonial modernization paradigm that preceded good governance as a development ideology (Anders and Nuijten , 10; Weber ). Early anthropological engagements with corruption or illegality tended to replicate a dualism between a Weberian bureaucratic rationality and what anthropologists might call local “moral economies” (Scott ), often based on Maussian gift exchange (Mauss ).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For example, anthropologists have broadened conceptions of what corruption is (Blundo and Olivier de Sardan ) and problematized the distinction between public and private that earlier accounts rested on (Anjaria ; Gal ). They have argued that the state is often complicit in illegal practices (Herzfeld ; Parry ) and that the law enables corruption rather than diminishing it (Anders and Nuijten ; Pardo ). In contrast to assumptions that underlie global discourses of good governance, in which corruption figures primarily as a feature of the Global South, some scholars have demonstrated the prevalence of corruption in the Global North (MacLennan ; Shore ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Between the ethical and the right thing: How (not) to be corrupt in Indonesian bureaucracy in an age of good governance

Tidey

2016

American Ethnologist

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Is it possible to be corrupt yet ethical? Or good but unethical? In one of Indonesia's most corrupt towns, the answers to these questions are far from clear for young elite civil servants, who must navigate the moral‐ethical landscape of post‐Suharto bureaucracy. For them, anticorruption efforts heighten uncertainty regarding what corruption is and facilitate slippage between various constructions of ethical selfhood. The uncertainty arises at the intersection of local moral economies, national ideologies of state building, the particular global morality of anticorruption, and a conception of the good that inspires neoliberal ideas on governance. Finding themselves at this intersection, young civil servants can find no unambiguous contrast between being “good” and “corrupt.” [corruption, anticorruption, good governance, civil service, morality, ethics, Indonesia] Apakah mungkin seseorang yang melakukan praktek korupsi akan tetapi pada saat yang bersamaan menjadi seseorang yang etis? Atau sebaliknya; apakah mungkin menjadi seseorang yang baik akan tetapi juga tidak etis? Di suatu kota yang paling korup di Indonesia, jawaban terhadap pertanyaan di atas sangatlah tidak jelas dan sulit untuk diterangkan bagi elit Pegawai Negeri Sipil (PNS) muda, yang harus menavigasi tatanan moral dan etika dalam tubuh birokrasi pasca kekuasaan Soeharto. Bagi mereka, upaya gerakan antikorupsi justru meningkatkan ketidakjelasan tentang apa itu korupsi dan mempermudah tergelincir di antara beragam konstruksi dan makna etika. Ketidakjelasan itu timbul pada saat terjadi persinggungan antara ekonomi moral lokal, ideologi nasional tentang pembentukan negara, nilai moralitas antikorupsi global dan konsepsi tentang kebaikan, yang menginspirasi ide‐ide neoliberalisme tentang pemerintahan. Bagi PNS yang berada di tengah‐tengah persimpangan ini, mereka menemukan ketiadaan batas yang jelas antar menjadi “baik” dan “korup”. [korupsi, anti korupsi, good governance, Pamong Praja, moralitas, etika, Indonesia]

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Corruption and the Secret of Law: An Introduction

Cited by 15 publications

References 1 publication

Cambodia's Unofficial Regime of Extraction: Illicit Logging in the Shadow of Transnational Governance and Investment

Cambodia's Unofficial Regime of Extraction: Illicit Logging in the Shadow of Transnational Governance and Investment

Grand corruption in Mexico: The convenient disappearance of an agrarian community

Between the ethical and the right thing: How (not) to be corrupt in Indonesian bureaucracy in an age of good governance

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