Comedian Flip Wilson headlined his first nationwide television special in September 1969. Risking his tentative hold on a new (white) audience, Wilson joked about a minister's wife who justified her latest shopping spree by claiming, “The Devil made me buy this dress.” This declaration of self-indulgence later developed into “the Devil made me do it” and became a staple for one of the show's most popular recurring characters, Geraldine Jones. A comic genius, Flip Wilson understood the importance of a tag line that would resonate with his audience. Few fantasies can be more widespread than abdicating personal responsibility in the pursuit of a good time.
Political scientist Rasma Karklins points out a common excuse for corruption in postcommunist societies: “The system made me do it.” Her book explores the foundations of this defense with the “ultimate goal” of “containing” postcommunist corruption and removing obstacles to democratic and economic progress (pp. 3, 37). She asks readers to accept three fundamental propositions: Postcommunist political corruption is a serious problem, some types of corruption are substantially worse than others, and corruption should be “controlled as much as possible.” Karklins uses these propositions to provide the “main themes as well as the structural framework for the study” (p. 3). She marshals an impressive array of data to support her arguments: sociological surveys; surveys of firms, experts, and officials; case study data; ethnographic data; and reviews of the press.
As much as they might find it amusing or even timesaving, political scientists cannot rely for explanations on metaphysical characters like “the Devil.” In Chapter 2, Karklins ties her adopted concept of “the system” to postcommunist reality through a comparative/situational analysis oriented around corrupt acts, perpetrators, and the costs imposed on victims, the state, and society. Her “Typology of Corrupt Acts” is aimed at showing “the nature, context, and political implications of post-communist corruption” (p. 37). The typology organizes corrupt acts around three levels: (I) “Everyday Interaction Between Officials and Citizens,” (II) “Interaction within Public Institutions,” and (III) “Influence over Political Institutions” (p. 25). Level I corruption, unsolicited bribery involving a police officer and a speeder at a traffic stop, for example, has little effect beyond the immediate act. The most hurtful type of corruption takes place at Level III, where self-serving action by “collusive networks” of state officials can become “self-perpetuating,” and lead to an “institutionalization of corruption and a change in the foundations of the political system” (p. 38). Karklins uses a variety of well-documented examples to illustrate key types of corruption at all levels. On the basis of the need to protect the “legitimacy and functioning of the state” (p. 21), she concludes that in the battle against corruption, “priority should be given to containing corrupt deals at the highest levels, especially in privatization and procurement” (pp. 16, 26–28).
Chapters 3 through 8 provide a plethora of background material intended largely to demonstrate the depth of the corruption problem and the need for action. Chapter 3, “The Experience of Corruption,” relies on World Bank and other published surveys to summarize how corruption affects people living in postcommunist societies. Karklins argues here that the media have a special role in defining “what a society knows and does about corruption.” Chapter 4, again using survey data, traces social and political patterns of thinking about corruption: “Attitudes determine whether people will participate in corrupt acts or will be active in trying to contain them” (p. 58). Chapter 5 discusses how the structures and processes of postcommunist states are influenced by the peculiar institutional legacy of preceding regimes. Chapter 6 starts from the assumption that corruption can be better understood by examining its opposite. Political theory is used to discuss the value of good citizenship and the “concrete benefits” of civic virtue. Chapter 7 explores existing anticorruption literature to find institutional configurations that have worked to contain corruption. The author argues for “an emphasis on countervailing powers, checks and balances, and monitoring by media and civil society.” “The basic institutional formula for containing corruption,” she maintains, “is to de-monopolize decision making, limit discretion, and enforce mechanisms of accountability” (p. 123). Chapter 8 explores the relationship between corruption and accountability “measured by electoral upsets, resignation of officials, the quality of media reporting and parliamentary hearings, reversals of corrupt deals, and investigations and convictions.”
Karklins takes on the book's second major challenge in Chapter 9. Unlike Flip Wilson's sassy Geraldine Jones, Karklins cannot merely suggest corruption's power with a wink and a smile. She must explain how the system “makes them do it,” that is, how incentive structures typical of postcommunism propagate a vicious cycle of corrupt behavior. Containing corruption involves showing how private interests can be harnessed for the public good, or at least kept from turning against it. Building on work done by Susan Rose-Ackerman and Robert Klitgaard, Karklins outlines “a framework for analyzing specific situations and thinking strategically about incentives and how to change them” (p. 161). She suggests that every corrupt act has three basic actors: “the person initiating the corrupt act, a second person who participates actively or passively, and a third actor, an individual or group,” who pay the costs of the corruption, even though they may not be aware of it (p. 147). Identifying and specifying costs is the best way to get “third actors” involved and change the calculus for all participants: “The third actor is key in the containment of corruption” (p. 152). Successful containment, she argues, is based on increasing risk and uncertainty for all corrupt actors: “If potential victims and other third actors become galvanized to work to prevent corruption, it is possible to limit or even reverse the spiral of corruption” (p. 155).
Given the author's ultimate goal of containing corruption, Chapters 2 and 9 are the heart of this book. Unfortunately, both chapters, and the book as a whole, are weakened by a lack of focus. There are two key drivers here, one related to goals, one to structure. First, Karklins never explicitly chooses a target audience. She fails to recognize and fully meet the needs of any one core constituency. Three are particularly important: 1) Policymakers will not find an easy-to-read, action-oriented, anticorruption primer. For all but the most bookish bureaucrat, this volume (with its beautiful cover art) is likely to remain (in a prominent place) on the shelf. 2) Comparative political analysts looking for new concepts and methods will find interesting assertions on targeting and battling corruption, but these assertions are unsupported through detailed and systematic analysis of comparative data over space and/or time. Anecdotal support of key assertions is certainly helpful, and Karklins does it well, but statements such as “corrupt networks tend to self-perpetuate” (p. 31) or “in the final analysis it all comes down to effective deterrence” (p. 160), beg for in-depth treatment. 3) Positive political theorists are likely to find their interest piqued—and later disappointed—when the author invokes “the basic notions of rational choice institutionalism” and the “interactive dynamics” (game theory?) involved in outlining “the calculus of people as they decide whether to engage in corruption or participate in its control” (p. 147). Unfortunately, Chapter 9 is neither detailed and rigorous enough to satisfy most formal modelers nor written in a way that would attract and keep a wider audience interested in an introduction to this approach.
A second reason for the book's lack of focus is structural. Placing an unreasonable burden on her readers, Karklins splits key arguments between Chapters 2 and 9 and never shows how they can be tied together. Instead of building on the strengths of Chapter 2's situational analysis and marshaling comparative data to provide the type of organized, detailed argumentation that would support her most provocative assertions, she marches readers through six chapters of materials that contribute only weakly to her most interesting arguments. To be fair, she employs this material, in part, to battle “strong popular and scholarly skepticism about the efficacy of institutional reforms” (p. 146). Nevertheless, the author herself points out at the end of Chapter 2 that corruption “has political consequences that need to be spelled out and assessed” (p. 37). She does not follow through. For example, the entire cost side of the argument—Karklins rightly points to corruption's economic, political, and social costs as underexplored territory—is left virtually untouched. Thus, her assertion in Chapter 9 that anticorruption messages for the all-important third actor will be compelling only if they identify concrete, short-term costs leaves the reader wondering how this might be done. Chapter 5's discussion of the legacy of communist economic and political institutions, a vital part of the argument for a self-described neoinstitutionalist, is literally trapped in the middle, clearly informing neither Chapter 2 nor Chapter 9.
When weighing the contribution of a book with such compelling strengths and frustrating weaknesses, it may be helpful to return to comedian Flip Wilson for some words of advice. Another of his post popular lines is right on target here: “When you're hot, you're hot, when you're not, you're not.” This book, despite its weaknesses, is hot. It has a simple message that can and should motivate further research: “Citizens have a choice whether they will be accomplices and victims of corruption, or whether they become part of a counterforce” (p. 152). Karklins should continue to marshal the counterforce while making it easier for the troops to follow.
