How to Fight Corruption
What do we know about anti-corruption campaigns? Which ones have worked?
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I completely agree that reduce the size of government and increase transparency will reduce corruption. But disagree with ombudsman, special courts or auditories and such. In Latin America exist a sort of "mania for control" issuing tons of restrictive laws and punishments, useless, all those just increase the power of well located officers who pretend to be "the honest ones" making lot of arrangements under the table. All this is because the moral approach against corruption who only increase hypocrisy and manicheism.
Corruption is a cost and benefits issue and if the cost of control is bigger than reasonable, must be fight decreasing the opportunities "opportunity makes the thieve" say a Spanish saying and is true: only a small and transparent government can decrease corrupt behavior efficiently
What about the efficiency of the cancellation of supposedly anomalous contracts? This has been a major component of the recent anti-corruption drive in the Philippines. Yet couldn't this lead to the erosion of property rights for the sake of corruption enforcement? http://www.econ.upd.edu.ph/dp/index.php/dp/article/viewFile/676/141
Allowing big companies to go around the world where they can benefit by bribing and corrupting heads of states of dictatorial governments and eventually allowing their wealth (both the briber and the bribed) to be stashed and also be invested in western countries is the major corruption issue that needs to be discussed about.
What about governments bribing governments and I am not even just talking about western democracies. They help keeping corruption up. I also still believe that corruption is sometimes supported by culture. Family ties in Africa and Thailand's rip off culture. They foster corruption and hamper growth by reducing productive trades.
Do you think the high-profile corruption cases in Brazil might break down the sense of immunity from corruption than many top Brazilian politicians no doubt felt?
Punishments are seldom effective as example because for every caught there are 100 with impunity so the cost/benefit is still low, that is the case of Brazil where most of corrupts was not touched and many people sees punishment as image cleaning. Better prevention is to suppress opportunities of discretionary power to politicians
It seems that Putin is using the "Publicity" and "Increasing Penalties" approach these days: http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21567384-vladimir-putin-has-initiat...
Maybe he thinks that it works!



Another spanish saying to do with all this: "Muerto el perro, muerta la rabia". ;-)