African anti-corruption commissions

Political will

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Short essay on Political Will

The most frequently stressed mantra on the effectiveness of ACCs in the need for political will or commitment. This is commonly cited as a necessary precondition for establishing an ACC and a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for its subsequent effectiveness.

Political will is seen in the literature as the cardinal commandment of the '10 Commandments' for ACC success, but curiously it has not been the object of much critical deconstruction.

• What is political will and how can it be assessed comparatively and over time?
• Whose will is under consideration?
• Is it individual, group, institutional or systemic?
• How do we recognise its impact and what are its limits?
  

Clearly, the expression of political will to combat corruption is often seen as a rhetorical device employed by leading political figures to emphasise their credibility with constituents, with civil society, with other political actors and institutions and with the international community.

Equally clearly, given democratisation processes and the economic dependency of most African states, it is difficult to imagine any current political leaders expressing their indifference to corruption and even those suspected of the greatest corruption find it politically and financially expedient to declare loudly and on a regular basis their unequivocal personal and governmental commitment to fighting corruption.

Political will in fighting corruption cannot therefore be assessed by a textual analysis of presidential speeches and other public statements. Just because one leader refers to their personal anti-corruption commitment more than another does not mean that their words are supported by their actions.

Part of the difficulty is that the term political will seems to be used to refer primarily if not exclusively to the attitudes and conduct of presidents and prime ministers rather than as a more pervasive issue. So here the critical question may develop from asking whether the president has the political will to combat corruption to asking where, in the polity and society, such a commitment can be found. The question is thus not whether there is political will or not, but where? It could exist in the presidential palace but it might also exist in NGOs, in the business community, in the professions, in parliament, among rival political leaders, in the courts as well as in the international community and donors.
There is therefore a need for donors to locate political will institutionally. But there is also a pressing need to discover its genesis, character and limits.

The genesis of political will is important because in order to judge how authentic and robust it is, we need to understand what has elicited it. It may, of course, be a pure expression of moral principles motivated by a genuine concern for the well being of all citizens. But disinterested motives in politics are rare. Political saints are hard to find and even they can have suspicious relatives and supporters. If we understand the motivations behind political will, it is likely we will also expose some of its limitations. For example, new political leaders often quickly assert their determination to root out corruption but what they mean is the corruption of their predecessor in office and his/her associates. The political advantages and benefits are obvious. Blame and attention is focussed on the iniquities of the old regime and the integrity and reputation of the new leader is enhanced.

The political will to combat corruption is consequently often retrospective and directed more at punishing past transgressions than at preventing new corruption.

Political will is, for similar reasons, often intensely partisan and competitive in that the political will of government leaders is usually stronger when directed at opponents of, and rivals within, the government. By the same token, the political will of opposition politicians is directed at the government of the day and forms part of a broader strategy of portraying the government as unfit for office. The 'going negative' strategy, as Americans call it, has become the global practice of politicians desperate for office and the material opportunities it offers.

Political will is, for reasons of personal and political advantage, conditional and limited by political and economic imperatives. There are often limits, implicit or explicit, on who may be prosecuted or investigated. The president, his close relatives and leading supporters are normally beyond intense scrutiny by ACCs.

The first law of political will is that political will declines in direct proportion to the proximity of corruption to the political elite. Conversely, political will strengthens the closer corruption comes to predecessors, critics, rivals and opponents of the government.

Analysts of ACCs tend to treat political will as axiomatic but they rarely consider its retrospective, partisan, conditional and limited dimensions. What may be more productive is to link the notion of commitment to anti-corruption strategies by testing the local sense of political acceptability or tolerance. This has two dimensions:

1. "Where do ruling politicians attempt to hold the line in protecting their positions? Will the Cabinet sacrifice senior civil servants? Will the President sacrifice a Cabinet member and, if so, would the sacrifice extend to senior Cabinet members with kinship or other ties to the presidential palace. In short, we need to establish in specific countries what political limits constrain the scope and effectiveness of ACCs.
   
2. The second dimension relates to the citizens, civil society and the international community. Here the question is what are the politically acceptable or tolerable levels of corruption? If this is seen as too high and the political will to tackle it is seen as obviously too weak, then ruling politicians risk defeat in elections, social unrest and the withdrawal of development assistance.
   

The calculations are different in each country because the character, security and composition of governing regimes differ as do the awareness and involvement of civil society and the international community. But in all African states notions of political will are informed by levels of political acceptability and tolerance; acceptance by the ruling elite of the need for at least partly effective anti-corruption agencies are tempered by concerns for their own security and material well being. And toleration of these efforts by citizens, donors and the international community is another factor essential for survival.

But toleration has limits on both sides and political will is tempered and moderated by it. It will be less robust and consistent than donors would wish but it can also be more conspicuous and influential than it was, for example, in the 1980s when dictatorship and kleptocracies were more prevalent and secure from internal and external challenge.

The principal lesson for donors is to ask what objectives they have in anti-corruption work and how far, given the limits of political will, they can expect an ACC to achieve them. They may have to recognise as a fact of political life that certain persons and practices are beyond the reach of the ACC. More commonly, a polite fiction is maintained by donors and governments in which all are assumed to be subject to the law and the authority of the ACC, but such as approach strains the credulity of the local citizens and the media and encourages cynicism about the other work of the ACC and about the anti-corruption strategy overall.

If donors place unrealistic expectations on ACCs, they risk exposing the impotence of ACCs in the face of harsh political realities. Politicians and officials may express sufficient political will to pursue reform but it is always reform on specific terms and a key term is the political survival of the reformers.
The task for donors in each country is to judge how far to press their objectives and to test the political acceptability of these objectives with the political leadership. Objectives may need modification to fit with actual political realities and to insist on objectives or performance criteria which are very likely to meet political obstruction and interference is to predetermine the failure of the ACC.

Conversely, donors must not be passive recipients of internal political agendas but should strive to test and extend the limits of political will whenever possible and by whatever means.

Pr. Robert Williams, 2004
University of Durham