Opinion: Corruption eats away at democratic institutions around the world Corruption, Populism, and the Future of Democracy – Iowa City Press-Citizen

Marina Zaloznaya| Special to the Iowa City Press-Citizen

These days, corruption is a buzzword in political speeches, popular protests, yellow press and dinner table conversations around the world.

Sensational cases that involve large sums of money, sexand political power make for tantalizing stories, garnering substantial public attention. But corruption is by no means an exclusive domain of the rich and powerful. According to Transparency International, a staggering 1.6 billion people worldwide routinely pay petty bribes, extend in-kind favors, and pull strings to obtain desired goods and services in the public sector.

Corruption is as harmful as it is pervasive. No matter how minor, abuses of power for private gain disproportionately tax the poor, undermine meritocracy in the government, and inhibit free market competition. In the long term, these processes deepen social inequality and eat away at democratic institutions.

The unfairness at heart of corruption makes it intuitively repulsive to people across different cultures. This powerful moral charge has turned corruption into an effective call to arms for citizens dissatisfied with their governments in countries around the globe.

From the Arab Spring in the Middle East to the Occupy Movement in North America and Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe, grassroots anti-corruption protests have broken out in all regions of the world, overturning some non-democratic regimes and threatening many others.

Yet, despite the initial enthusiasm of the international community about this wave of uprisings, the anti-corruption surge had an unexpected effect of helping autocratic-leaning populist politicians ascend to power and hold on to offices that they already occupied. In countries as diverse as Brazil, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, the United States and the Philippines, right-leaning populist strongmen have positioned themselves as outsiders to the thoroughly corrupted political establishments. Many were, in fact, propelled to power by loud promises of draining the swamp or reducing corruption within the political systems of their respective states.

Yet, once in office, many of these very leaders turned to corruption as the primary mode of governing. To name just a few examples, informal distribution of public jobs, goodsand services in exchange for continued support at the polls, widely known as patronage, has been common in Argentina and Colombia; the sale of political decision-making to big business, or state capture, has shaken up South Africa; while the systematic blurring of boundaries between the public and private domains leading to spectacular enrichment of the elites has outraged many in the United States.

Some authoritarian-leaning leaders have also used the pretense of fighting corruption the initiatives that tend to be highly popular among ordinary citizens to further consolidate their hold on power.

For instance, recent governmental anti-corruption campaigns in Russia and China are widely recognized as subversive. Not only have they selectively targeted regime critics on manufactured and trumped-up charges of corruption, but they also created a faade for the likes of Xi and Putin to further diminish citizens civic freedoms and tighten state controls and surveillance. Ironically, then, popular disgruntlement with corruption has brought to power and sustained governments that are, themselves, deeply corrupt.

This brief discussion illustrates the enormous complexity of the relationship between the two phenomena causing current democratic backsliding worldwide corruption and populism.

To address this widely misunderstood relationship, and to foster an open dialogue about the challenges that corruption and populism pose to good governance and democracy, the symposium "On Corruption, The Rise of Populism, and Future of Democracy" (to be held at the University of Iowa on Friday and Saturday), will bring together leading corruption and anti-corruption scholars from across disciplines and geographic areas. The symposium is open to the public.

The opening event of the symposium, sponsored by UI International Programs, will be a free, public WorldCanvass discussion from 5:30-7:30 p.m.Thursdayat MERGE in downtown Iowa City. A number of highly regarded scholars will join me and WorldCanvass host Joan Kjaer to explore corruption, populismand the future of democracy a conversation that could not be more relevant at this moment in history. Please join us.

For more information, visit: https://international.uiowa.edu/worldcanvass-corruption-populism-and-democracy

Marina Zaloznaya is an associate professor of sociology and political science at the University of Iowa.

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Opinion: Corruption eats away at democratic institutions around the world Corruption, Populism, and the Future of Democracy - Iowa City Press-Citizen