CIGI Research Blog

The author commences his discussions of anti-corruption efforts in Liberia by outlining two important characteristics that have accompanied them.   These are: a long sought-out genealogy that goes to the early history of the state; and secondly the extensive international oversight that has taken place in the Liberian context.  

The most recent anti-corruption program initiated by the international community, with the blessing of the Liberian authorities, is the Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP).   This program has its origins from a major donor’s meeting in Denmark on 11 May 2005, which brings international experts with Liberian officials to tackle corruption in government bureaucracies.   GEMAP has introduced innovative techniques to tackle corruption which, most importantly, places these experts with counter-signing authority in Liberia’s state-owned enterprises, central bank, and in its accounting office.   Moreover, the program has helped earmark the necessary resources to establish an anti-corruption commission while providing for external auditors to audit government accounting revenues and expenditures.

In his paper, William sought to address two important concerns surrounding the country’s anti-corruption program.   This includes just how this latest attempt to root out corruption from public life is any different from other failed initiatives in the past?   He also toys with the question as to why corruption in the country is so endemic and rife? Lastly, he attempts to provide some words of wisdom with regard to what it would take, necessarily, to break the cyclic pattern of corruption in the country.

On the nature of corruption in this West African state, William stresses that Liberia was home to some of the world’s most corrupt officials, including the infamous Charles Taylor.   The former president has been alleged to have siphoned more than $200 million in annual proceeds from, mostly illegal, and some legitimate, business operations, roughly two or three times the entire budget for government operations!   In his opinion, his administration was infamous for the corrupt practices that transpired across all government bureaucracies and administrations.   It was imperative for the survival of Taylor’s regime.

The administrations that followed Taylor’s were not much better.   For example, public officials in the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL), since its inception in October 2003, were accused of violating UN Security Council resolutions, including bans on both timber and diamond exports.   To support this assertion, the IMF and the World Bank, which were in charge of negotiating debt relief and future loans; the UN Panel of Experts implementing economic sanctions; as well as the European and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) auditors; have all confirmed in separate reports of the prevalence of high-level political corruption during the period.

However, Liberia is not alone as an endemically corrupt state.   William also points out that Asia is home to some of the most corrupt societies in the world.   He points to Paul Hutchcroft's work in 1998 that outlines the prevalence of high levels of corruption in places like the Philippines.   The study asserts that there is a tight-knit oligarchy that colludes with corrupt officials to drain-off state resources for personal gains.   The work that David Kang had conducted on the prevalence of corruption in emerging states, such as in South Korea, in which he argued that corruption can even prove beneficial to national economies in the short term, because it reduces transaction costs associated with doing business since there exists a tight, informal political connection between corrupt captains of large corporations and government officials.

Indeed, William goes on to state that what sets Liberia apart from other states is that its organization of corruption is distinctive, which constitutes an important catalyst for economic contraction that helps fuel income both inequalities and violence.   Unlike its corrupt counterparts in Asia, Liberia was not strategically located in the centres of conflict during the Cold War period.   It was not central to American strategy of containment at a critical stage in its development.   By the end of the Cold War, Asian emerging middle powers, particularly South Korea, China, and Taiwan had built enough technological advances and industrial capacities to play an integral part in the global economy.  

Moreover, complicity between the state’s larger captains of industries and state officials, albeit controversial, has not only helped promote economic growth but also in suppressing political dissent and social instabilities.   William argues that state officials have acquired some degree of flexibility to distribute their own patronage to their subordinates in the pubic bureaucracies who, in turn, engage in corrupt activities with managers of state enterprises seeing the state’s favourable concessions on a variety of financial projects.   Government bureaucrats tend to acquire protection from arbitrary enforcement of anti-corruption measures, because their job performances have been largely tied to the state’s supreme objective, since the 1970s geared towards the promotion of economic growth at all costs.   This has, in turn, led to an increase of productive supplicants who are expected to offer payoffs to these state bureaucrats who then channel them, in the form of kickbacks, to highly-placed state officials.

On the other hand, Liberia was immersed up in economic mismanagement and widespread corruption that ultimately left it at the mercy of both international commodity prices and Western interference in its economy.   This is largely due to the lack of central oversight and control, by the Liberian central authorities, to steer the wide array of constituencies and local municipalities that were left to amass considerable power to control and manage their local economies, as in the cases of several administrations, since the toppling of President William Tolbert in 1980.   During the 1980s, capital-based elites and captains of industries entrenched their influence and financial muscle into the country’s political arena.  

Successive leaders largely lacked the authority and capacity to centralize resources of the state into the government’s central administration.   Their governments were largely vulnerable, due to the fact that they relied on groups of people who, at one point, put them into power for their own personal interests - which shifted over time and which were not based on personal ties.   As a result, successive presidents up to the former president, Charles Taylor, were incapable of controlling the patronage system which led to the increased demands of local government officials who took it upon themselves to extend their network of corrupt business managers.   However, this increasingly took the form of partnerships with foreign business managers, some of who were active in illicit business ventures, particularly in the timber and diamond industries.

In summary, William stresses his point that corruption can play a positive role in the construction of some state institutions and strengthen political stability in the process.   However, in others, as in the Liberian case, it had led to economic mismanagement and political grievances that allowed instability and violence to erupt.   The structure of patronage in Liberia is largely a product of an emphasis on decentralization and the international community’s continued support for the framework of government during the past decades.   Any successful effort to combat corruption in the country must address its deep-seated roots, which include decentralization, lack of capacity and ability by central governments to both control and manage state resources and dysfunctional anti-corruption commissions that have failed to encourage ordinary Liberians to take ownership of the process, thereby outlining the case of how corruption helps entrench social inequalities and economic stagnation, while also promoting political grievances.