On July 6, local time, the U.S. Department of State issued a statement announcing the appointment of richard Nephew, an international sanctions expert, as the "coordinator of global anti-corruption issues."
Richard Nephew.
After taking office, the Biden administration held high the banner of democracy and made the fight against corruption an important part of its national security and foreign strategy. At the end of 2021, at the "Leaders' Democracy Summit" planned by the United States, US Secretary of State Blinken announced that he would set up a special position "Global Anti-Corruption Coordinator" to plan the implementation of the US anti-corruption strategy. It is worth noting that during the Obama administration, Naifi served as an expert on sanctions on the Iranian nuclear issue and participated in the negotiation of the Iranian nuclear agreement as an expert of the United States.
In fact, in the United States, political donations, political lobbying, "revolving doors", pardons the market, etc., the unique "American-style corruption" routine has been popular for a long time, rooted in the political soil of the United States, and corruption has become the norm.
What is the root cause of the "more anti-corruption" in the US domestic politics? What is the intention of the United States in appointing an expert on international sanctions as the "Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption"?
Text | Fan Yang is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of International Relations, China Foreign Affairs University
Edit | Ding Guizi Lookout Think Tank
This article is the original article of the Lookout Think Tank, if you need to reprint, please indicate the source of the Lookout Think Tank (zhczyj) and the author information before the article, otherwise the legal responsibility will be strictly pursued.
1 "Corrupt Veteran"
Although the United States has only been founded for about 200 years, its corruption problem has a long history. Statistically, in the 19th century alone, corruption in the United States experienced three periods of high incidence around 1840, 1857-1861, and the end of the 19th century. This was closely related to the political, economic, and social environment in the United States at that time.
At the beginning of independence, the appointment of public officials in the United States Government followed the principles of good character, honest and efficient work. From 1789 to 1828, the federal government offices were largely classified as a class of famous and learned gentry, and high society monopolized government office. In 1829, then-President Jackson introduced a spoils system to promote democracy. Simply put, it is the allocation of government offices according to party affiliation. Political party candidates who win general elections assign government posts to those who have helped them win, and appointments to public office are not based on ability but on loyalty.
Although this system of electing officials provides ordinary citizens with the opportunity to directly participate in government affairs, after all, there are many monks and few porridges, and those who seek jobs are like carps crossing the river. As a result, allegiance became a slogan, and contributions became the biggest factor in determining appointments to public office, accompanied by a decline in the quality of officials and administrative efficiency.
The "political machine" is another example of early political corruption in the United States. At its core lies a group known as "bosses", who act as a bridge between politicians and businessmen, interest groups or voters, not only raising campaign funds and collecting votes for party candidates, but also personally participating in the election and continuing to share the benefits after winning the election.
At the same time, public spending by federal and state governments on infrastructure and economic development has increased dramatically. For example, in 1826, New York completed the construction of the Erie Canal, and the status of the transportation hub was improved, and the other states did not hesitate to borrow money and emulate the competition. The scope of expenditure by governments at all levels has expanded, and corrupt officials and corrupt officials have the opportunity to take advantage of it. With the outbreak of the Civil War, federal spending soared, officials' control over public funds continued to expand and they enjoyed great discretion, and tens of billions of dollars were wasted on counterfeit military products.
After the war, the United States experienced a wave of rapid economic growth. From 1870 to 1913, the total GDP of the United States increased by 2.4 times, and its share of the world's total GDP increased from 8.9% to 19.1%. Government revenues surged, with per capita fiscal revenue in the United States in the 1870s 2.45 times higher than in the 1860s (in 2000 dollars). The process of urbanization advanced, and the urban population increased by 18 million from 1860 to 1890, continuing to drive large-scale investment in municipal planning.
Economic growth has increased the profits of public officials in corrupt transactions, and municipal construction has given them opportunities to use their power for personal gain. Coinciding with the transformation of U.S. industry, large business owners have gained the upper hand in the economy and have been able to bribe government officials to formulate and implement policies that benefit businesses. The merchant clique buys and controls the bureaucracy, which is equivalent to the economy dominating politics. For example, in 1872, the Union Pacific Railroad gave members of Congress a large amount of stock to prevent Congress from investigating its corruption in building the railroad.
Different from the rapid development of the economy and society, the construction of laws and regulations in the United States at that time was not sound and relatively lagging behind, the punitive measures for corrupt acts were too relaxed, the flexibility in handling specific cases was very large, and the corrupt behavior was difficult to constrain.
The superposition of various factors eventually leads to the spread of corruption. For a time, large monopoly companies interfered in the formulation of policies at all levels in the United States through bribery, bribery and other illegal means; Politicians, after taking bribes, gang up to manipulate city elections and official appointments to control municipal decision-making power. By the end of the 19th century, the "political machine" controlled more than half of America's 20 largest cities.
2 The road to anti-corruption is long
In a grave situation, the United States has also tried to fight political corruption. From Lincoln to Garfield, presidents aspired to abolish the system of sharing the spoils, but because vested interests seeped into all aspects of government institutions, reform was difficult to advance.
In 1881, then-US President Garfield was killed by a lawyer who could not seek office, which became the "last straw" that overwhelmed the party's system of sharing the spoils. In 1883, the U.S. Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which introduced a "merit system" of civil service.
To put it simply, the reform of the civil service system includes the following three points:
1. Select public officials through open competitive examinations and select them on the basis of merit;
2. Once recruited, a civilian employee shall not be dismissed from his post for political reasons;
3. It is necessary to adopt a neutral attitude in politics and prohibit participation in political activities such as elections.
In order to ensure the integrity of the government and prevent money from eroding politics, Congress has passed a series of laws to curb corruption, such as the Campaign Funds Disclosure Act of 1910 and the Federal Anti-Corruption Act of 1925. In addition, federal criminal institutions such as the Public Integrity Division of the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as non-criminal institutions such as the Office of Lawyers of the Ministry of Justice and the Office of Government Ethics, jointly guarantee the effective implementation of laws and regulations. Since the 20th century, nearly 80 percent of public corruption cases have been prosecuted by federal prosecutorial agencies.
The reform of the civil service system became a major watershed in the history of political corruption in the United States, and since then corruption has decreased significantly.
Graph of the U.S. Corruption Index. Source: Reference 2
Even so, corruption has persisted in sectors and areas that reforms have failed to reach. In the case of the tax department, for example, after the reform of the civil service system, successive presidents still used political appointments to arrange key positions in the department. Until 1950, the federal tax office staff accepted bribes, tax evasion, and private tax relief for enterprises, exposing their series of problems in employment management, and finally ending with the reform of the tax system.
As the economy develops, the patterns of corruption evolve with the times, and interest groups are looking for institutionalized or undisclosed means to intervene in the political process. In the case of presidential elections, for example, controlling election fundraising and spending has always been a difficult point in the fight against corruption.
There are two broad categories of money involved in U.S. elections, namely "hard money" and "soft money." "Hard money" is a limited amount of contributions that individuals or political action committees can make to candidates or political parties during elections. The Watergate investigation revealed that in 1972, individuals donated more than $50,000 to Nixon's re-election committee, and some even donated $1.7 million in exchange for ambassadorial appointments. "Soft money" is generally donated by individuals or various political action committees to the Senate and The National Committee of the House of Representatives of both parties.
In 1974, Congress passed amendments to the Federal Election Act that severely limited the amount of money donated directly to candidates and established the Federal Election Commission to promote the disclosure of campaign funds, but did not limit the amount of money donated to political parties. After the 1980s, the Federal Supreme Court repeatedly loosened the Federal Election Law and provided channels for interest groups to participate in political activities. Through huge donations, they influence presidential and congressional elections and appointments of senior officials in exchange for policy support from candidates.
To put it simply, due to the imperfect anti-corruption mechanism, coupled with multiple factors such as interest groups and political party disputes, the problem of corruption in the United States has continued for decades.
According to statistics, between 1985 and 2004, a total of 17,945 U.S. federal, state, and local government officials were charged with corruption, an average of 897 per year; Among them, 62% are federal government officials, 10% are state officials, and 28% are local government officials; A total of 15,552 officials were convicted, an average of 778 per year, and a total of 6,865 awaited sentencing. During the same period, a further 5,657 private employees were prosecuted for their involvement in public corruption cases.
3
There are many tricks to American corruption
Corruption in the United States is rooted in its political and economic system, with bureaucrats and businessmen controlling each other, and various interest groups maintaining their operations, influencing legislation and policymaking. The problem of corruption in the United States has not been solved, but has been continuously "legitimized" and "proceduralized", forming a unique corruption path in the United States.
* Political contributions and political lobbying
Campaign funding restrictions have been ineffective, and U.S. election costs have grown rapidly. In 2000, the U.S. presidential election cost $1 billion, and four years later that number grew to $4 billion. In 2020, the cost directly for the election of the President of the United States and congressmen may exceed $14 billion, more than twice as much as in the 2016 election.
On January 30, 2016, in Dubuque, Iowa, the plane on which Trump was riding landed in front of many supporters, and on February 1, the first presidential caucuses of the two parties in the United States were held in Iowa.
Still, most of the political money comes from the pockets of wealthy Americans. The population, which accounts for about 1% of the country's population, can donate as much as 80% of the campaign money, which can be described as a "political game for the rich". The Koch brothers, the Billionaire Americans for Prosperity, who runs the lobbying group, threw $889 million in the 2016 election and were called "the shapers behind the Republican Party."
Some interest groups have also spent as much as $1.2 billion on election assistance in October 2020 alone. They also organize activities such as bribing voters, providing money and goods for voters to vote for themselves at polling stations, even casting or destroying ballots multiple times, allowing inappropriate votes, or tampering with election results.
In addition to political contributions, interest groups influence members of Congress and their aides by hiring lobbyists to compete for favorable laws, political appointments, approval of government project contracts, or tax credits. In 1971, there were only 175 registered lobbyists in the United States, and by 2009 it had increased to 13,700, meaning that each member of Congress had more than 20 lobbyists around him. K Street, north of the White House, is the lobbying hub of Washington, and is even known as the "fourth power" center in the United States.
[Note: U.S. law allows groups to form interest groups that compete with each other and influence congressional legislation and government decisions. 】
In the process, the political influence of interest groups has been increasing, and the influence of ordinary people on public policy formulation has been minimal.
* "Revolving Door"
The "revolving door" refers to the interaction phenomenon of the US political and business circles, that is, the two-way flow of people between the government and interest groups.
In the 1970s, only 3% of MPs left office to become lobbyists; But between 1998 and 2004, 42 percent of members who left the House became lobbyists. In today's American politics, this seamless connection between government agencies and the private sector has long been commonplace. Jeh Johnson, the Obama administration's homeland security secretary, worked for a well-known law firm and left the administration as a board member of the U.S. military giant Lockheed Martin (LMT).
Interest group lobbyists favor specific interest groups, and public officials jump into them and use previous administrative work experience, political influence, or personal connections to seek benefits for specific interest groups, so that the employed company occupies a favorable position in the market competition.
* Pardon the market
The presidential pardon system became the last guarantor of open corruption in the United States.
On the last day of his term, former US President Trump pardoned and reduced the sentences of more than 100 people. Only 18 on the list are approved by the Justice Department, while the rest are Trump's political allies, family friends, fundraisers and even lobbyists.
According to the New York Times, it was Trump's close associates who charged felons and their accomplices with heavy sums of money in exchange for leniency from the White House. However, the United States does not have effective measures to restrict the president's pardon permit, and it is not illegal for Trump aides to collect money to lobby for others.
In response, USA Today commented that the president's pardon power, which is supposed to serve the public interest, is increasingly being used in exchange for political benefits.
It can be seen that the problem of corruption in the United States today has long been internalized by its political system, and it is closely integrated with the domestic political system of the United States and contained with each other.
4
Striving to be the global anti-corruption standard-bearer?
In the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International, the annual Corruption Perception Index in the United States fell to 67 from its highest score of 76 out of 100 in 2015, to its lowest in nearly a decade.
Since Biden took office, he has not only established the fight against corruption as a core interest in U.S. national security, but also united with his allies to carry out so-called "joint action" on issues such as anti-corruption. At the end of 2021, at the "Leaders' Democracy Summit" planned by the United States, US Secretary of State Blinken announced that a new special position of "Global Anti-Corruption Coordinator" will be established at the US State Department to plan the implementation of the US anti-corruption strategy.
What is the purpose of the United States in the context of its own difficult anti-corruption process, still actively striving to become the global anti-corruption standard-bearer?
* Implement differential treatment and harvest foreign property.
As the world's largest "haven", the United States is not only the country with the highest concentration of fugitive corruption and economic crime suspects, but also an important inflow of corrupt assets. The Biden administration has focused its anti-corruption efforts on foreign assets, precisely targeting foreign assets in the United States.
On the basis of the establishment of the "Global Anti-Corruption Coordinator", the United States will also establish a so-called "asset recovery reward system", which ostensibly improves the ability of the US government to identify and recover stolen assets related to foreign government corruption and stored in FINANCIAL institutions in the United States, but in fact rewards the public for reporting behavior and harvests foreign assets in the United States. On the one hand, confiscation of assets stored in the United States on the grounds of the anti-corruption regime; On the other hand, the threat of confiscating assets has forced foreign officials to serve the United States.
* In the name of "anti-corruption", hold high the banner of democracy and export American values.
The United States secures the issue of corruption in an attempt to increase the "correctness" and "legitimacy" of its own interference in the internal affairs of other countries; Linking corruption to democracy, trying to control the standards and dominance of democratic division, using so-called "American democracy" to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, dividing camps, and excluding countries that do not meet the interests of the United States.
At the Leaders' Democracy Summit, the United States pitted so-called democracies against so-called "authoritarian states" by rendering crises and subjective attribution, while proposing anti-corruption strategies and shaping common adversaries.
* Expand the scope of long-arm jurisdiction and maintain US hegemony.
The Biden administration also mentioned that it is necessary to promote its diplomatic strategy of "The United States once again leading the world" with overseas anti-corruption as the starting point, not only to maintain and strengthen the multilateral anti-corruption architecture, but also to improve diplomacy and use foreign aid to achieve its anti-corruption goals. This would expand its long-arm jurisdiction and preserve U.S. dominance.
Such diplomatic measures not only increase the flexibility of U.S. foreign intervention activities, but also enhance the diversity and rationality of its foreign intervention through anti-corruption. Combating corruption abroad requires a well-developed intelligence-gathering network, and in the name of fighting corruption abroad, the U.S. information network will gradually penetrate the world from the intelligence sharing of partner countries.
Overall, as a world power, the United States should assume more international responsibilities and obligations. However, under the premise that its own corruption problems have been repeatedly prohibited, the United States still insists on taking anti-corruption as an important starting point for long-arm jurisdiction. The drunkard's intention is not to drink. "Corrupt veterans" frequently promote global anti-corruption, and promote their own interests to expand into the internal affairs of other countries in order to maintain their own hegemony, which will not only fail to alleviate their own problems, but also push the international community towards division and conflict.
*Intern Yuqi Wei also contributed to this article.
Resources:
1. Zhang Yuyan and Fu Jingjun, "Corruption in Contemporary America: Data, Cases and Mechanisms", International Economic Review, No. 6, 2006;
2. Shaoquan Wang and Lisheng Dong, "Fluctuations and Causes of the Corruption Index Curve in the United States", American Studies, No. 6, 2017;
3. Jia Li, "Special Interest Groups, Political Corruption and Wealth and Income Inequality in Contemporary America", Journal of Guangzhou University (Social Sciences Edition), No. 11, 2016;
4. Zhou Qi, "Political Corruption and Anti-Corruption in the United States", American Studies, No. 3, 2004;
5. Shang Fuxuan and Li Qingsi, "The Truth of Corruption in the United States", Situation and Policy, No. 2, 2016;
6. Yang Chengyu, "The Potential Impact of the U.S. Global Anti-Corruption Strategic Plan on the Mainland", International Public Relations, No. 1, 2022;
7. Yan Changwu, "The Enlightenment of the Progressive Era: The End of Political Parties" finance and economics, September 4, 2015;
8. "'Beauty Will Play', Pick Up Those Unique "American Corruption"", Xinhua Viewpoint, February 27, 2021;
9.Alt James and Lassen David， “The political economy of institutions and corruption in American States”， Journal of Theoretical Politics，Vol. 15，No. 3 (Jul. 2003)；
10.David G. Magleby and J. Quin Monson，“The Noncandidate Campaign: Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 2002 Congressional Elections”，Political Science and Politics，Vol. 36，No. 3 (Jul. 2003)；
Wait a minute.
Uncle Ku welfare
Uncle Ku's book donation activity has always been there! Chinese Min University Press provided Uncle Ku with 15 copies of The Details of Chinese Politics for enthusiastic readers. Based on three in-depth investigations of villages in Ganlan County, Shanxi Province, the author analyzes the political process embodied in China's poverty reduction governance at the village, county and national levels from the theoretical perspective of cutting-edge political scholars and the vivid language of eloquent speech, which not only allows Chinese and foreign readers to deeply understand the details behind China's governance, but also effectively responds to the cutting-edge issues raised by Western political science circles, and is a rare Chinese poverty reduction research work that has both mass communication power and serious academic dialogue with the outside world. Please comment under the article, the top 3 likes (more than 50 numbers) will receive a book donation.