Sarah Chayes

While others diagnose our key political problem as monopoly, Chayes thinks that it’s corruption—which both aids and is aided by monopoly. With fewer specifics than I might have hoped for, Chayes draws connections between the US past, the US present, and the present of other countries. For example, in comparing the US Gilded Age and Afghanistan: “Beneath what is usually framed in economic terms as corporate consolidation, I saw clusters of people sorting themselves out into relatively stable, rival—yet often allied—corruption networks.” And she finds continuities among the corrupt. “Every kleptocratic network that I have investigated, from Afghanistan to Honduras to Central Asian or African countries, has included a skein of outright criminals.” Personal relationships through marriage and kinship might not be as vital in the US as in other places [though see Trump] because other US institutions are stronger—colleges, the Koch network, and money, “that leveler.”

The most common and most effective tactic to deploy against anticorruption is to exploit and inflame ethnic or similar identity divisions. The solutions or natural reactions to corruption come from the labor movement or, if alternatives seem useless, violent extremism; widespread disasters like WWII offer the opportunity for reform. Chayes suggests redefined and expanded criminal prohibitions on bribery and enforcement thereof; also there is no alternative to civic education and continued activism.… (more)

Fascinating book about the terrible costs of corruption in developing nations, and also about the costs to America of supporting corrupt regimes and systems in the name of stability (and patronizing assumptions that the citizens of those regimes are inured to corruption so it’s not a big deal). Chayes has extensive experience in Afghanistan, but also discusses various Middle Eastern countries where she identifies similar dynamics, and says that other experts saw similarities with narcoterrorism etc. in other afflicted countries. The basic argument: when corruption reaches down into citizens’ everyday lives, such that they can’t plan on going to market or getting a business license without paying a bribe—and maybe without even any certainty about how much the officials/police will take—they are outraged, and willing to listen to radicals who promise that only strict religious control can fix the worldly corruption in government. Corrupt regimes then use the threat of religious extremists and separatists to extract more support from the US, which support they use to strengthen their power networks and to validate their legitimacy. Chayes tells a terrifically depressing story of American officials who were either ignorant of the corruption going on in their names (as she initially was) or indifferent, not understanding corruption’s devastating long-term effects on security. It’s hard not to read books like this and think that we should really just get the hell out, and not just militarily; Chayes has suggestions for constructive engagement that pushes in the direction of reform, but her experience indicates that the political will to implement tough stances against corrupt officials is generally lacking in American representatives abroad.… (more)