Can TIMN — a potentially grand theory of social evolution —
explain a condition so mundane and counter-evolutionary as corruption? Yes it
can; and its ability to do so is a natural logical result of TIMN’s structure —
primarily because TIMN is built atop the nature of the T (tribal) form. As that
form goes, so goes much of the rest of a society's evolution.
Many theorists and commentators today — from Right to Left —
keep emphasizing economic factors and conditions as explanations for what is
going on. TIMN does not deny their importance; but it does imply, even insist,
that conditions etc. at the socio-tribal level may be more determinative than
is commonly recognized. Analyses of corruption help confirm this.
My prior post was about Sarah Chayes’ initial efforts,
starting years ago, to use network analysis to illuminate systemic corruption.
This post focuses on her most recent case study. Once again, my goal is to show
that TIMN is (equally? better?) suited to explaining corruption
CHAYES' CASE STUDY OF HONDURAN CORRUPTION NETWORKS
Chayes has done a series of country studies using the
network-analysis framework she and CEIP laid out in 2014. Her latest study —
“When Corruption Is the Operating System: The Case of Honduras” (2017) —
provides the best application yet.
• First, Chayes provides an articulate reiteration of the
theme she has pursued or years — that systemic corruption is more a function of
networks than of individuals:
“In some five dozen countries
worldwide, corruption can no longer be understood as merely the iniquitous
doings of individuals. Rather, it is the operating system of sophisticated
networks that cross sectoral and national boundaries’ in their drive to
maximize returns for their members. Honduras offers a prime example of such
intertwined, or “integrated,” transnational kleptocratic networks.”
“It is no longer possible to think
of corruption as just the iniquitous doings of individuals, be they
street-level bribe payers, government officials, or business executives. In the
five dozen or so countries of which Honduras is emblematic, corruption is the
operating system of sophisticated networks that link together public and private
sectors and out-and-out criminals — including killers — and whose main
objective is maximizing returns for network members. Corruption is built into
the functioning of such countries’ institutions. And, like the criminal
organizations that are threaded through their fabrics, the networks cross
international boundaries. Exchanging favors and establishing beachheads with
partners and service-providers around the globe, they might best be considered
transnational kleptocratic networks.”
• Chayes then finds that networked corruption in Honduras —
much like elsewhere — is structured around “three interlocking spheres” of
kleptocrats: a private, a public, and a criminal sphere or sector. As she puts it,
“The principle is to examine in
turn the public, private, and criminal sectors, as well as outside people and
institutions [enablers] that are interacting with the political economy of a
given country, for signs that they are colluding in the illegitimate capture of
wealth on behalf of network members — that they are, in effect, looting the
commons.”
These are not separate or separable sectors, for they are
crisscrossed by kinship, friendship, and and other collusive connections that
serve to network all together. As she sees it,
“The novelty of this framing is its
focus on the interpenetration of the three sectors. A ranking government
official may have a brother who provides legal services to a drug cartel, or be
married to the CEO of a company that depends on public contracts or permits.
Individuals may cycle in and out of business and government. is flexible
interweaving of the strands of kleptocratic networks is what makes them so
resilient. So it is worth exploring the different ways that interpenetration is
manifested. Are individuals wearing two hats, for example, playing a role in
the public and the private sectors simultaneously and thus serving as a node
linking the networks? Are key leaders in one sector represented in others by a
nephew or a confidante? Or does an exchange of favors constitute the main form
of interaction between one sector and another?”
As Chayes shows, examples of “all three categories of
intersection are abundant” within Honduras’s kleptocratic sectors, as are
network ties that stretch transnationally.
• While Chayes discusses details about corruption networks
in all three sectors — public, private, and criminal — what caught my TIMNista
eye is her observation that traditional old families of “shared Levantine
origins” dominate the private-sector networks. For me, this verifies that much
corruption is traditionally rooted in clannish T-based actors.
Yet, important as these Levantine circles are, Honduras’
business world is far larger than them. It contains many business actors who
are not part of the corruption networks:
“The individuals or families
referred to here as private-sector members of Honduras’s kleptocratic network
by no means control the nation’s entire economy. Plenty of businesses exist
outside the network: the small restaurants that line the roads and city
streets, small-scale manufacturing for local or regional consumption,
agriculture — even much coffee cultivation, processing, and export — do not
fall within the networks’ purview.”
Indeed, the kleptocratic private-sector networks, as well as
the public- and criminal-sector ones, are quite selective in what they
pursue:
“Kleptocratic networks focus on
those economic activities that are most likely to generate and concentrate
exponential returns in relatively few hands, especially by way of government
favoritism, or that are most likely to attract significant international
financing. In Honduras as elsewhere, banking, energy and natural resources,
export agriculture (licit or illicit), and large-scale construction are prime
targets of network predation.”
• In analyzing relations among the three corruption
networks, Chayes is careful to clarify that, while each operates quite
separately and distinctly, all “are bound together by a kind of elite bargain”,
whereby “different revenue streams tend to accrue to different elements of the
network.”
Accordingly, the corrupt private-sector networks span
banking, energy, palm oil, construction, fast food, and various other business
enterprises. The kleptocratic political networks are found in Congress, the judiciary,
the police, prisons, and varied regulatory commissions and agencies. The
criminal networks occupy narcotics trafficking and smuggling, human
trafficking, gangs and other armed groups. Her study provides details about
these and other network elements, as well as about internal and external
enablers. These “enablers” are crucial because “kleptocratic governing systems”
require that “agencies displaying independence or representing a potential
threat to network interests are intentionally hamstrung or short-circuited.”
• Historically, network collusions existed mostly between
the public- and private sector components. However, “In the past decade or so,
both the elite public- and private-sector circles have been establishing
increasingly close connections with the out-and-out criminal networks that run
the narcotics trade as well as other types of smuggling, such as trafficking in
people.”
• From a comparative viewpoint, Chayes observes that
Honduras’s corruption networks, particularly in the private sector, are
generally more fractious and autonomous than those prevailing in more highly
structured, clan-dominated societies elsewhere:
“The networks that have been
ushered into control of the Honduran political economy by this process are
perhaps less unitary than those of such highly structured kleptocracies as
Azerbaijan, or Cambodia, or Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisia. In those
countries, the private sector is or was almost entirely dominated by
subordinate members of the ruler’s clan. In today’s Honduras, by contrast, the
public, private, and criminal sectors, while closely intertwined, are quite
fractious and retain at least some autonomy.”
TIMN’S APPLICABILITY TO ANALYZING SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION
My contention from a TIMN perspective is that corruption is
largely a function of how the T/tribal form evolves in a society. Corruption is
most likely to take hold in societies where dark sides of the T form,
broadly-defined, are tenaciously strong, and the TIMN forms as a whole are not
properly separated and shielded from each other. The stronger that dark T-type
forces and actors are in a society, and the more they can subvert that
society’s other TIMN forms and sectors of activity, then the more prone that
society will be to systemic corruption. Indeed, many societies that are
systemically corrupt — e.g., Iraq, Mexico, and Russia, not to mention myriad
other societies that remain historically unable to resist corruption — are
societies where T-type actors can willfully penetrate +I (government, military),
+M (business), and newer +N (networked
civil society?) sectors for predatory purposes. Analysts of corruption should
look for explanations not just in a society’s government, business, or
civil-society sectors, but rather, and I’d say above all, in what TIMN treats
as its “tribal” (for want of a better term) sectors and practices.
That’s the TIMN contention I’ve wondered about for years.
That’s the contention I fielded in my first post in this three-part series. And
that’s what I’d say is now borne out by my look at Chayes’ study of systemic
corruption in Honduras.
To confirm this, I’d say only two criteria need to be met.
The first is that the purveyors of systemic corruption pertain primarily to
TIMN’s T form, far more than to any other TIMN form. Chayes’ study provides
ample evidence that systemic corruption in Honduras revolves around blood and
fictive kinship networks that are based on family, clan, gang, buddy, and
similar personal solidarity ties. Some may result in what look like modern professional
organizations, yet their internal cultures remain quite tribal and they remain
embedded parts of Honduras’s “kleptocratic corruption networks”. In sum, they
do indeed pertain far more to TIMN’s T form than to its +I, +M. or +N forms of
organization and behavior.
The second criterion is that these purveyors of systemic
corruption are so strong and so committed to the T form that they work to
prevent every other TIMN form from developing properly. They don’t want clean,
professional, independent, government agencies or business enterprises to
develop, possibly to deny and displace their influence. To this end, they have
numerous network nodes embedded throughout the government and business worlds.
Chayes’ study of Honduras provides extensive evidence for this second TIMN
criterion.
Overall, then, Chayes’ approach is excellent. Plus, her
approach can be extended to make points that TIMN makes — e.g., systemic
corruption hinders liberal democracy from taking hold. But I hasten to add that
TIMN, besides allowing for similar network analyses of corruption, has a
distinct advantage: its evolutionary orientation. TIMN automatically perceives
that systemic corruption is associated with the earliest form of organization —
the tribal form — and that the enduring strength of the dark sides of this form
leads to distortions and and delays in the proper development of the later +I,
+M, and +N forms. Among other matters, this explains the failure of countries
like Honduras to become liberal democracies, despite U.S. policy and strategy
efforts to the contrary.
PLACING HOPE IN ACTIVIST CIVIL-SOCIETY NETWORKS
In discussing how to counter Honduras’s kleptocratic
networks, Chayes points to the growing efforts of activist civil-society NGOs
in various issue areas. They presently operate mostly on their own, apart from
each other. She proposes they begin to form into their own “positive
networks". Thus, according to Chayes,
“The foregoing picture is dark. But
Honduras is also a place where members of the research team were struck and
inspired by the countervailing models they found, whose precepts and practices
held promise for confronting challenges extending far beyond the country’s
borders. For an analysis like this to be most effective, it must include a
similarly careful examination of constructive networks and individuals. Some of
the grassroots organizations we visited were actively building networks with
allies both inside and outside Honduras, by way of frequent visits and meetings
to pursue common agenda items. But often those constructive actors are just
individuals, lacking the resilient network structure that characterizes their
kleptocratic counterparts. Part of the task of reinforcing them would be to
study what it might look like for them to be more effectively woven together in
such a hostile context.”
I'm pleased to see Chayes say this, not only because it's a
good hopeful idea, but also because it resembles our old RAND work on
"social netwar" in the information age, echoing our 1997 maxim that
"It takes networks to fight networks." It also fits with TIMN’s claim
that +N forms are on the rise, and that they will restructure societies and
alter the course of social evolution. The kleptocratic corruption networks she
analyzes are, from a TIMN viewpoint, relics of the malingering strength of the
T or tribal form and their enduring ability to subvert and deform the +I state
and +M market forms. Hopefully, civil society can give rise to NGO networks
that start to push and pull Honduran society in +N directions, while limiting
and confining the roles of T-type kleptocrats vis à vis the +I and +M sectors.
Yet this will prove a daunting challenge, given what these
civil-society actors are up against. As Chayes stated during a podcast
discussion about her new book, Thieves of the State: Why Corruption Threatens
Global Security (2016), “We’re not looking at a government that’s failing
because of corruption … rather, we’re looking at a criminal enterprise
succeeding because it’s masquerading as a government.”
To read for yourself, go here:
http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/05/30/when-corruption-is-operating-system-case-of-honduras-pub-69999
[I posted an earlier write-up of this post on my Facebook
page, on Aug 24.]
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