FACTS ON CORRUPTION AND AID

from: Corruption and foreign aid in Africa,’ by Herbert H. Werlin

A 2004 World Bank report on corruption noted that bribery has become a trillion-dollar industry; causing far more wealth to flow from poor countries to rich countries than these poor countries receive in foreign aid. Whereas an estimated trillion dollars of foreign aid has been given to poor countries since World War ii, at least 5 percent of the world's domestic product (amounting to $1.5 trillion in 2001) goes into the financial markets of wealthy countries in the form of money laundering. According to a recent study of 30 sub-Saharan countries, those countries' ruling elites had private overseas assets equivalent to 145 percent of the public debts that their countries owed, and about 80 cents on every dollar borrowed flowed back to the West as capital flight. Robert Guest, the Africa editor of the Economist, estimates that this amounts to about 40 percent of Africa's privately held wealth

Typical definitions of corruption include three, often overlapping categories:
(1) misuse of money or favors for private gain;
(2) inappropriate exchanges of money or favors for undue influence or power; and
(3) violations of public interest or norms of behavior.
A distinction can be drawn between primary corruption-excessive partisan behavior, or greed, within an existing governmental system-and secondary corruption-partisan behavior carried out in the absence of viable statesmanship or governance. There is, in most cases, fear and shame associated with primary corruption, whereas with secondary corruption there is little fear of punishment or concern about dishonor. Where corruption is systemic, or secondary, the value judgments that are necessary in the standard definitions are undermined.

What prevents efforts to help countries like Ghana and Nigeria from being successful is the secondary corruption-the poor quality of the social relationships necessary for the functioning of institutions. Such relationships cannot develop unless political power takes an "elastic" form, allowing it to be delegated or decentralized without losing control and to predictably affect the behavior of subordinates and the general public.