Globally Rational

This is the first post in the “Nominal Breakthroughs” series, which will talk about news that is farcically touted as groundbreaking.

The fight against political corruption is one of the most important tasks confronting many of today’s developing countries; for instance, many leaders have stolen billions of dollars (which is worth a lot more in Africa/Asia than it is worth here) from their starving population. For this reason, the UN has spent a lot of resources in the past five years to establish the Convention Against Corruption, which establishes a set worldwide anti-corruption regulations. These regulations will allow a country to prevent this theft, criminalize the thieves, and recover lost assets.

Let’s let go of the fact that it took them five years to say that “theft is illegal, thieves are criminals, and stolen money should be recovered.” It’s more interesting to focus on this: they are expecting the leaders of a corrupt government to persecute corrupt leaders. If you were stealing money, would you really want to bring attention to the fact that money is being stolen? I do see potential benefits from such legislation… but why did it take them so much time and energy to pass such a simple regulation with no real means of enforcement? I know that it will be completely ineffective in my home country of Pakistan, but they tried to mask this by publicizing the Zambian government’s recent recovery of a measly $60 million. I wonder how much money they spent trying to make this convention a reality… will they even recover what they spent?

Since I usually get angry comments when I challenge the status quo, I decided to do a Google search for scholarly articles about the subject (which are written by people who know what they’re talking about). Click here to see the response study by the Anti-Corruption Resource Centre.

Where is the incentive for corrupt governments to follow these new regulations?

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