Gambling on corruption, and making the political more practical
With the success of Stefan Dercon’s 2022 book Gambling on Development, now could be the moment to build a new resource for political economy research: a platform for practical politics.
This piece has a chequered past - it begins with a book review and ends with an elevator pitch. It started life as several blogs, and ended up as this somewhat flowery two part essay.
For a shorter business like version please see here on the Global Anti Corruption Blog with huge thanks to Matthew Stephenson for his editorial skills.
Part 1: Bringing corruption to book(s)
Where do you find research and insights on tackling corruption? Twenty years ago the answer was printed books, journal articles, and policy briefs. Now that we have a deluge of media, are books still important? What should be in the anti-corruption book club? Twitter dented my book habit, but I am on the road to recovery…
One book that I read recently, cover to cover, and promoted to anti-corruption people, is Stefan Dercon’s Gambling on Development – why some countries win and others lose. GoD (the author says the acronym was not intentional) is having a big impact in global development, and is widely discussed in blogs, podcasts, webinars, and by Stefan himself through a global book tour. His tour has included talking to the very governments and elites that GoD is critical about: so speaking truth to power.
Most of us would like to do this but… it’s tough! (and can be dangerous).
Here are my reflections on GoD and what it means for anti-corruption - a year after its publication, but just in time for the paperback.
GoD underscores the importance of technical and political approaches
Dercon captures, in a very engaging way and drawing on lots of personal experience, the kind of ‘political economy’ constraints and opportunities related to power and elites that I have long tried to articulate in anti-corruption, though sometimes without much traction. I use ‘political economy’ as a shorthand here. It’s easier to say than do, or do well, and definitions vary. I find Frieden’s guide for students blissfully straightforward:
“Political economy is the study of how politics affects the economy and how the economy in turn shapes politics. Training in political economy can help (us) understand how societies work; a useful skill whether (we) seek to become better policy analysts or more effective social reformers”.
A basic point from GoD, and political economy in general – whether in anti-corruption or in growth and development more generally – is that ‘technical only’ approaches often fail. Context matters, and we need to understand, and be brave enough to talk about, ‘the politics’ and the way power is distributed, and used, in a country and in a sector.
Despite this, some anti-corruption partners still say ‘we don’t do politics’. Or bemoan ‘a lack of political will’ and stop there. When I write or speak about all this I usually sneak in this picture, as a tongue-in-cheek way to encourage a dual focus:
Gambling on Development’s inside cover captures two key ideas from the book: development bargains, and the role of a country’s elites.
In the last 30 years, the developing world has undergone tremendous changes. Overall, poverty has fallen, people live longer and healthier lives, and economies have been transformed. And yet many countries have simply missed the boat. Why have some countries prospered, while others have failed?
Stefan Dercon argues that the answer lies not in a specific set of policies, but rather in a key ‘development bargain’, whereby a country’s elites shift from protecting their own positions to gambling on a growth-based future.
Dercon’s country case studies use a ‘zoomorphic guide’ to describe different approaches that elites take to growth and development. Successful development gamblers are ‘dragons, tiger cubs, peacocks’. Development losers include ‘hippos in the lake’ (eyes and ears above water, but political action invisible in the muddy depths) and hyenas. The vital question in each case is whether that country’s elite – politicians, business people, the military – takes a ‘gamble on development’, and makes real growth and poverty reduction their strategy for winning support, staying in power, and even winning elections.
Or whether they do the opposite; accumulate power and use it to serve their own needs – including looting national budgets and natural resources.
I call this ‘gambling on corruption’.
GoD’s shadow narratives
Shadow 1: Gambling on corruption
As a corruption nerd reading GoD, I pick out a strong ‘shadow narrative’. Mentions of corruption, and how elites use it, come thick and fast. The index illustrates how development efforts are shot through with corruption cases: Corruption and… Congo, Kenya, Indonesia, Kabul Bank, Malawi, offshore centres, Sierra Leone.
Box 1: What does Gambling on Development have to say about corruption?
Afghanistan: ‘Procurement fraud and embezzlement were the biggest games in town…’ (p.202)
Malawi: ‘Minister Chaponda was sacked. Six months later, he was arrested, and bin bags full of foreign currency were found in his house. His alleged crime: procurement fraud in the purchase of maize.’ (p.134)
Sierra Leone: ‘Moreover, whenever he could, the president had awarded all Ebola-related contracts to a small network of businessmen … with close connections to the president’s APC government.’ (p.124)
But the major book reviews of GoD didn’t pick up on this narrative. Corruption jumps out at me, but not others. Am I over-obsessed, or is the development mainstream a little under-focused? Is corruption too specialised (and nerdy) a niche?
Shadow 2: ‘Match fixing’ in public procurement
As the examples in Box 1 show, there is another common thread in Dercon’s case studies: public procurement. Self-interested elites treat government contracting as a personal kitty, using it to fix political systems in their favour, line their own pockets, and buy off other sub-elites.
If corruption is a bit niche for many, ‘public procurement’ can provoke indifference in otherwise energetic development and public policy people. ‘Isn’t it very technical and best left to procurement experts?’
In 2019 I wrote this Twitter thread to try to make public procurement a bit ‘sexier’. I’m not sure that this worked, but Covid-19 PPE procurement certainly raised the profile of the feverish politics of dull old public procurement in many countries, including my own (the UK).
The amazing Open Contracting network has also done wonders in making public procurement ‘everybody’s business’ through explanation, standardisation, and transparency. Huge amounts of data are now available about public contracts – for anyone who has the incentive to explore and use it.
Corrupt elites love public procurement – but so should you
Public procurement is ‘the world’s largest marketplace. One in every three dollars spent by government is on a contract with a company…’. That’s $13 trillion every year. All development outcomes, all SDGs, all services, and all infrastructure depend on this thing we call public procurement:
Public procurement: governments spending public money to buy stuff.
GoD is threaded with mentions of corrupt procurement, but there is nuance. My take is that some types of procurement corruption are less damaging than others. This is tricky ground, but I think it is best to be honest about our ‘priors’.
Successful elite bargains – and development gambles – are underpinned by procurement systems that are imperfect, but good enough. Rules are quite clear. Overt cheating is called out. Systems deliver fairly sensible, cost-effective policy choices; award contracts to more or less capable bidders; and discipline contractors to deliver roughly within budget and time – even when they are part of the self-interested elite. Public procurement broadly achieves intended purposes in service delivery and human capital, and builds infrastructure that creates more positive conditions for growth. Undue ‘rents’ are no doubt pocketed (perhaps paying off ‘Mr 1%’, who takes only a small cut), but these may fuel a broadly developmental political equilibrium. Elites consolidate power, but useful things also get bought, built, delivered. But ‘fairly’, ‘broadly’, ‘roughly’ – my ‘weasel words’ above are not popular with anti-corruption purists, but I think describe a reality.
This contrasts with public procurement in countries without Dercon’s development bargain, where elites gamble on corruption, not development, to entrench their position. Cards are stacked. Dice are loaded. (Metaphors are strained).
Public policy (eg, where to build a road) and procurement choices (at what budget and specification) are shaped by elites’ own self-interests. Politically connected bidders manipulate calls to suit their own strengths, form cartels and take turns to win (inflating prices), or simply scare off competitors. Consequences include absent infrastructure (no road), low-quality delivery (incomplete, not to specification), huge time and cost overruns, scarce budgets squandered (whether from revenue or aid), development targets unrealised, and already meagre growth opportunities lost. ‘Mr 50%’ gets very rich – keeping a large chunk to himself – but where’s the infrastructure?
Where growth is low and stuck, public procurement may be the major loot for elites to fight over. This perpetuates systems of bad politics – criminality, election war chests, political violence, and illicit financial flows out of the country, overseas property, luxury goods. Corrupt procurement hobbles growth and strengthens the grip of predatory elites.
‘Corruption is a problem! And it’s political!’ (So what?)
Yes, we have covered some old ground above, but the point is that we could be arriving at an important moment of inflection. Below I give some ideas on how we could build on the mainstream success of Dercon’s book, to normalise and increase the use of political economy research as a vital tool for both development and anti-corruption.
Worth a gamble…?
Part 2: An idea: making the political practical
One thing I most value about Gambling on Development is that it helps to ‘normalise’ political economy thinking in development. It’s being widely read, and brings together Dercon’s own work and decades of personal and professional experience, with a depth of wider research. GoD is reaching people who don’t usually seek out and read political economy stuff. But can we turn this insight into action?
Not grumbling
I have heard GoD mentioned in ‘mainstream’ discussions by people who would normally just sigh about ‘LoPW’ (lack of political will). Part of me says ‘Come on! We’ve been trying to tell you this for years!’.
But I am not grumbling; Dercon has a magic touch in getting ideas across. If you hear him speak you will understand what I mean.
A ‘ratchet moment’ for political economy?
I hope that this can be a ‘ratchet’. Discussion has tightened up, and we should not allow ‘we don’t do politics’ voices to let it slacken off again – back to the perceived safety of technocratic approaches and bemoaning ‘LoPW’.
GoD also puts the ‘political now’ into the sweep of recent history. Elite gambles on development, or on corruption, are often long games. Things can change quickly, but often don’t. Many development initiatives – whether funded by government revenue or aid – assume that things will change in three to five years (between elections, or an aid project period). This is unlikely. Elites can achieve a relatively stable equilibrium and this can survive, or be renewed through subtle change, for decades. Or may crash in days.
Political economy and where to find it
So, if you want to understand the political economy and the nature of the ‘elite gamble’ of a place, including your place, and sector, where do you start? This is several steps beyond reading the daily news.
You can, of course, read GoD, but Dercon makes clear that things can change, and quickly. Some of his successful gamblers plunged into crises just after the book was published (correlation not causation!). Even if he updates GoD, he won’t cover everywhere and everything. I see it as a ‘how to think about…’ book, not a ‘what to think’ book.
Practical political economy research
A steady trickle of country- and sector-specific political economy research is published, though not all is written in an accessible way, or geared to a practical ‘so what?’ for tackling, not just studying, blockages. Allied research in accountability, governance, and service delivery may include political economy analysis without stating that in the title.
But global coverage of such research remains patchy. Research funding systems mean that supply is shaped by what researchers find interesting, and win funds for, rather than by demand or need. Publication can favour the novel over the useful. And, compared with the big ‘sectors’ – energy, health, education, climate – funding for practical political research (ok, social and political research in general) is small.
I try and persuade ‘big sector’ funders to put a small slice of their funds into social, political, and anti-corruption research, to help understand and address problems and unlock greater impacts from their big investments. After all, most agree that bad politics is a constraint, so why not try and do something about it? To stretch the gambling metaphor – if you play a high stakes sector game, why not put a small side bet on political economy research?
I wrote about this in another Twitter thread (‘Political research is good for you… in the end’). A friend called this ‘my career manifesto in tweet form’. But this advocacy is an endurance race – there is growing interest in using such research, but less interest in funding it.
Some agencies pay expert consultants to deliver bespoke political economy analysis (PEA) – or build skills to do PEA in house (eg, see the renowned PEA training course by The Policy Practice). But the outputs may not be published.
What I call ‘Big R’ Research – by universities, think tanks, research organisations – has the advantages of rigour and quality (such as through being peer reviewed), transparency (methods clearly set out), and being published (ideally free-to-access). You may not like it, or dispute it, but at least you can read it.
Some ask an ‘expert’. I get a steady stream of queries: can I recommend anything on political economy and corruption in sector x in place y? I use tools available to all – including Google – to help, but also ‘curate’ this using my skills and experience. I really enjoy doing this, but this is no way to make ‘practical political economy’ systematically available to all who want it – or ideally so available and easy to find that even those who don’t want it cannot avoid it (lookin’ at you, UN agencies!).
The idea: a ‘Practical Politics Platform’
I have long dreamt of creating a ‘practical politics platform’ where good quality, accessible (ie, plain language) political economy research is collected, curated, and presented to be easily findable and freely available – and so hard to avoid. It would be searchable by country, by sector, and by date, so that gaps – geographical, sectoral, and temporal – are clear and could be prioritized for funding.
As an example of what I am imaging, Transparency International has mapped 10 years of anti corruption helpdesk reports in this way. I think it looks great (but then again I am a geographer), and it helps illuminate the tremendous resource that they have produced. Imagine this for wider political economy-related research, accumulated from diverse sources, and with layers of clickable links!
[Elevator pitch for the Practical Politics Platform]
“It’s like Our World in Data but for practical political economy research”.
What’s it for? It would help development and public policy people find relevant political research, enable them to understand and tackle binding political constraints to growth and development, and unlock greater impact from their efforts.
How would it work? Clickable maps that disaggregate the political economy of a country. For example, click to find research on different levels and sectors in Bangladesh:
Bangladesh national level; 2013, 2017, 2017.
… to city/region (Dhaka); 2012.
…… to sector (health); 2019, 2020. 2021
……… to sub sector (absenteeism in health). 2022.
There are constraints and ‘gambles’ – that enable or impede progress – at each level. Shading on the map would show the year of the research, and there would be syntheses or summaries at each level to signpost key issues, and help users to use the research (I have had lots of feedback about the need to ‘skill build’ and ‘hand hold’ as well as make this research available).
How would it change the world? The platform could drive further normalisation of political economy research in public policy and development, making it easier to find what already exists, prove its utility, and demonstrate pathways to impact. It could generate momentum for more: more funding, more skills, more innovation, more engagement, more uptake.
Who will use it?
- Existing fans of political economy research. The platform would make life easier for them.
- The ‘political economy curious’. It would help them to become confident users of this type of research.
- ‘LoPW hold-outs’. It might embarrass them into action by making ‘technical only’ approaches even less defendable. And it could save lots of money by squeezing the funding for ‘technical only’ failure.
No hard boundaries: Practical Politics would include corruption issues, but they would not be its only or even major focus. In fact, calling this an anti-corruption tool might be the best way to undermine it. Related research (eg, accountability, transparency, public sector governance) could also be integrated. This includes context-specific studies, comparative research, and testing policy-relevant theory (eg, comparison of development performance by ‘regime type’).
The platform would set out ‘big P’ Politics (elections, parties) and ‘small p’ politics and power relations at different levels, including where these impede progressive change, growth, and development; but also where there are opportunities to mobilise collective interests and ‘shift equilibria’ towards a positive gamble.
The Practical Politics Platform as a public good:
Ideally this would be a collective approach and be a public good. It would showcase great research and point potential users to the original (open!) sources and so be an aggregator and navigator more than a generator of new research. It could help identify critical evidence gaps – and persuade funders and researchers to fill them.
Mainstreaming research is a way to protect vulnerable researchers:
The platform could also be a means of providing peer support, solidarity, protection, and funding to researchers focusing on sensitive politics in dangerous places – particularly those doing heroic work who are from and work in those places. I know political economy researchers from many countries, and it is far from the easiest career in academia – you struggle for funds, and make powerful enemies.
Normalising this type of research – creating demand from policy and practitioners, and proving its utility to all – could help reduce such risks. There is lots to improve in the equity, funding, and power balances in research partnerships between the ‘south’ and ‘north’ (explored in this excellent blog by Rita Perakis). However, from experience, good south–north and south–south research partnerships can provide cover, and reduce risks, for those doing political research in their own tough places, and also help build capacity in all directions. As an inspiration, I recently heard Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), making clear the protective effect that national journalists get from the ICIJ global collective. Elites care about their global profile and may think twice about attacking local ‘truth seekers’ who are connected to global networks and platforms.
Practical Politics… worth a gamble?
There are, of course, lots of problems, risks, and constraints with this idea. And lots of possibilities. Is there a role for artificial intelligence, for instance – perhaps in finding, sorting and summarising research? Or maybe someone is already delivering this very idea; if so, great!
Elites worldwide continue to gamble on corruption and bad politics, so perhaps now is the time to roll the dice ourselves, and put practical politics into action. In the service of anti corruption, but more importantly for tackling the binding political constraints that hold back growth, development, health, education, climate adaptation, anything.
Worth a gamble?