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Corruption, Political Stability and Development: Comparative Evidence from Egypt and Morocco

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

John Waterbury
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WHILE IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO MEASURE QUANTITATIVELY THE extent of corruption in any polity, it may well be that in an absolute sense it is more prevalent (although not necessarily more conspicuous) in ‘developing’ economies and polities, than in societies with relatively high standards of living. This, if it is so, results from a concatenation of politico-economic factors which fosters the spread of corrupt practices in virtually all dealings between the citizenry and the state. In what follows, we shall consider three forms of corruption – endemic, planned, and developmental – which, while analytically distinct, are not necessarily so legally or operationally. In everyday life they form a whole which will now be pulled apart. However, taken together these three forms may literally add up to ‘systemic’ corruption. This means simply that as a proportion of the total resources and talents available to an economy, those tied up in corruption are particularly high and alternatives in achieving individual or collective ends particularly few. These propositions must remain tentative, and instinct as much as hard measurement has informed them. Further, the trifold categorization of corruption used here is largely descriptive, and it is not my intention to undertake an exhaustive examination of causes nor to suggest remedies. However, a good deal will be said about effects.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1976 , pp. 426 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1976

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References

1 Nye, Joseph S., ‘Corruption and Political Development: A Cost‐Benefit Analysis’, American Political Science Review, LXI, N. 2 (06 1967), p. 416.Google Scholar Samuel Huntington has put it more parsimoniously. ‘Corruption is behavior of public officials which deviates from accepted norms in order to serve private ends.’ Political Order in Changing Societies, Yale University Press, 1968, p.59. See also for important general discussions of corruption, Scott, James, Comparative Political Corruption, Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972 Google Scholar, and Palombara, Joseph La, Politics Within Nations, Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974, pp.402–419.Google Scholar

2 See Eldersveld, S. J., et. al., The Citizen and the Administrator in a Developing Democracy, New Delhi, 1968,Google Scholar in which, on the basis of survey data, the authors show that Indian citizens tend to view their civil servants as corrupt and dishonest, but nonetheless demonstrate a strong preference for government service for their children;pp. 31–33.

3 I do not hold with the Marxist view that corruption is a peculiarly capitalist phenomenon. Abuse of public authority for personal ends, let us say among managers in state enterprises, is all too well‐known in the USSR. The difference may be that instead of monetary or material pay‐offs, the object of such abuse may be to sustain one’s power relative to others within the system—for instance, by falsified book‐keeping to show over‐fulfilment of production quotas.

4 I have pursued this theme in detail elsewhere. See my ‘Endemic and Planned Corruption in a Monarchical Regime’, World Politics Vol. XXV, N. 4, July 1973, PP. 533–555.

5 See Laurence Whitehead, ‘On Presidential Graft’, paper presented at the Conference on Political Corruption, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, March 12–14, 1975.

6 See Waterbury, , ‘The Coup Manqué’, American Universities Field Staff Report, North Africa Series, Vol. XV, N. 1, 1971 Google Scholar; and Roudan, Michel, ‘Justice, pouvoir et politique au Maroc’, L’Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord, Vol. XI, CRESM, Aix‐en‐Provence, 1972, pp.253–286.Google Scholar

7 See Moore, C. H., ‘Les syndicats professioneis dans l’Egypte contemporaine: l’encadrement de la nouvelle classe moyenne’, Maghreb‐Machrek, Paris, July‐August 1974, N. 64, pp. 24–34.Google Scholar

8 King Hassan’s strategy may have a new lease on life as Morocco, the world’s leading exporter of phosphates, quadrupled the price per ton in 1974. Increased earnings will produce additional slush for the corruption‐patronage networks and allow them to absorb more clients. The Shah of Iran, reaping the benefits of Iran’s oil earnings, has pioneered along these lines. See Zonis, Marvin, The Political Elite of Iran, Princeton University Press, 1971 Google Scholar, and Bill, James, The Politics of Iran, Charles E. Merrill Pub. Co., Columbus, Ohio, 1972.Google Scholar Besides Nye, op. cit., Leff, Nathaniel, ‘Economic Development Through Bureaucratic Corruption‘, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 8, 1964, pp.8–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and La Palombara, op. cit., have made the most determined defence of the services corruption can render to development.

9 Newspapers reported that in 1972, there were 672 verified cases of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, occasionally involving substantial amounts: LE 700,000 (ca. 1.4 million dollars) in a glass factory, LE 360,000 in a paper pulp plant, LE 300,000 in the municipality of Shubra al‐Kheima, LE 226,000 in the Western Delta Transport Co.

10 See Huwaida, Fahmy, ‘Tragi‐comedy’, al‐Ahram, 3 06 1975.Google Scholar

11 For example, see the remarks of the liberal bourgeois journalist, Ahmad Abu al‐Fath in al‐Ahram, 17 April 1975. Egyptians of course do not talk of planned corruption but rather of high‐level corruption or abuse of power.

12 This point has been nicely set forth by Amin, Galal, ‘Income Distribution and Economic Development in the Arab World’, L’Egypte Contemporaine, Vol. LXIV, N. 352, 04 1973.Google Scholar

13 It is significant to note that both countries have low per capita incomes, S158 for Morocco and 8174 for Egypt in 1970. Adult illiteracy rates are high for both countries, in the order of 70% for those over 15 in Egypt and at least 80% in Morocco. In Morocco about 70% of the population and of the work force is rural, while in Egypt the corresponding figures are about 55% and 50%.

14 A recent example from Egypt concerns Assiut University which contracted with a local labour supplier for 20,000 labourers to work on an experimental farm. The workers were to get 15 piastres a day (ca. US 30φ) but the labour supplier paid them only 10. The University Administration found out about this and annulled the contract. This is unusual and the recruiter must have failed to split his take—which amounted to LE 1,000 per day! On government‐run land‐reclamation projects equally lucrative deals have been successfully concluded.

15 There are similar processes in Morocco. The National Tea Office which distributes tea imported by the state through franchised dealers, was easily manipulated by ten or so Casablanca wholesalers who regularly bought up the monthly allotments of the other 1500 dealers. They would then hold the tea off the market, drive up its price, and sell it behind the counter using their own retailers (co‐tribesmen in the event) to distribute it. See Waterbury, John, North for the Trade: The Life and Times of a Berber Merchant, University of California Press, 1972, pp. 79–86.Google Scholar

16 Luxury flats in Cairo are currently sold for Le 20,000–30,000 or more. In the summer of 1975 one was sold for LE 180,000 or $360,000.

17 See Waterbury, John, ‘Cairo; Third World Metropolis: Part III, Housing and Shelter’, American Universities Field Staff Report, Northeast Africa Series, Vol. XVIII, N. 8, 1973.Google Scholar

18 The United States, in relation to the developing countries, resorts to strategies analogous to planned corruption, re‐enforcing its own economic dominance at the expense of a more rational and equitable distribution of world resources. The US is of course not alone among states in this strategy, but merely pre‐eminent.

19 See, for instance, La Palombara, op. cit., p.414.