This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on July 29, 2019 - August 4, 2019

Recently, Malaysians have been reading about former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak standing trial on charges of criminal breach of trust and corruption linked to the 1Malaysia Development Bhd state fund that he helped set up. Other high-level officials from the previous government have also been charged. Yet others are widely suspected to have been involved in corrupt activities.

As all this happens, Malaysians need to reflect on the importance of giving more prominence to the topic of corruption and how to think about the problem. Our task is to create a society that does not tolerate corruption and all that it entails, particularly bribery and nepotism.

In a recent article published in the journal Critical Criminology entitled “Decolonising Criminology: Syed Hussein Alatas on Crimes of the Powerful”, Dr Leon Moosavi notes that “although there is now a well-established subfield within criminology that focuses on crimes of the powerful, criminology is still dominated by studies on what may be called ‘low-level crime’, ‘everyday crime’, ‘street crime’ or ‘crimes of the powerless’”. Moosavi cites an estimate that as little as 3% of publications in the top criminology journals are about the crimes of the powerful.

Among the crimes of the powerful is, of course, corruption. The type of state that is dominated by corruption is called a kleptocracy. Such a state may be democratic or authoritarian. What defines it, however, is that the normal functioning of the state is informed by corrupt activities. Corruption among state officials is so widespread that it defines the activities of the state and has far-reaching consequences for the life chances of ordinary citizens. Yet, it is a marginal field of enquiry in criminology and absent from the dominant views in political science and political sociology on the state. What is worse, some perspectives in the social sciences that do look at corruption actually have a regressive view that can even be damaging to the interests of society. An example is the functional view of corruption.

The view of corruption as functional

There are several important studies that have been undertaken by sociologists, criminologists and political scientists on corruption. One problem with many of such studies is that they have a functionalist perspective on corruption. The functionalist explanation views corruption as a means of equalising life chances and opportunities of citizens through access to services and resources that are in normal circumstances available through legal, bureaucratic procedures but which remain inaccessible due to the inefficiencies and malfunctioning of the system.

We need to be wary of the functionalist argument often made by scholars of corruption because of its possible ideological effects. There is a certain view of corruption that may function to justify its existence or at least dampen resistance to it. According to this view, corruption is functional in that it reduces bureaucracy, cuts down on red tape and speeds up administrative processes.

While there is much research that demonstrates the harmful effects of corruption, there is a perspective that suggests that corruption may be beneficial in that it promotes efficiency and economic development by “greasing the wheels”. Among the first to critically assess this perspective was Syed Hussein Alatas in his The Sociology of Corruption, published in 1968.

Political scientist Myron Weiner noted that bribery enabled business to get done. Referring to the bakhshish system, he suggested that it “is not as disruptive as might at first appear. It lends to the administrative system discretion and flexibility (which admittedly are provided by other means in other systems) without which many businessmen would find it difficult to function”.

Several others have suggested that corruption may be beneficial, facilitating the emergence of entrepreneurs and raising efficiency. When institutions fail to perform the functions they are supposed to perform, corruption may be beneficial in that it allows for a certain level of efficiency that would otherwise not be there.

Syed Hussein’s critique is that the so-called beneficial aspects of corruption only apply to one type, that is, extortive corruption, in which the victim is forced to offer a bribe in return for a service that is actually his or her right, and which would have been forthcoming had there been no bureaucratic corruption to begin with. Furthermore, Syed Hussein argued that while extortive corruption may increase efficiency in certain cases, the overall effect on a society was the lowering of efficiency as well as the distortion of development priorities.

Syed Hussein stated that when the total effect of corruption in economic, administrative, political or judicial terms is considered, “no stretch of sociological imagination could ever succeed in suggesting that it has some positive function in development, except in the development of exploitation, inequality and moral and legal disorder”.

What is the function of the functionalist view? It may be used to excuse or even justify corruption and, therefore, dampen criticism and resistance to corruption, thereby helping to legitimise corrupt governments.

Secondly, the functionalist view may serve the interests of Northern regimes that may use the outbreak of corruption scandals in the South to wield some control over politicians in developing or underdeveloped societies.

Corruption systemic

Corruption is obviously something that cannot be completely eradicated. But not all states in which corruption is found are necessarily kleptocratic. Our understanding of the kleptocratic state must begin with three crucial points. The first is that corruption, rather than being a coincidental phenomenon and the criminal acts of atypical individuals, is actually the criminal behaviour of a group, the ruling elite or a section of them.

Second, there is a dualism in the corrupt acts of the members of this group. They act in “a dual contradictory function” in that their acts are a function of both their office (the legal aspect) and their private interests (the illegal aspect). In other words, their role in the public sphere is dualistic, between the legal and the illegal.

Third, the criminal acts of corruption are not occasional aberrations of certain individuals but systemic and deliberate phenomena that define the state.

For this reason, El-Wathig Kamier and Ibrahim Kursany, in a report entitled “Corruption as the ‘Fifth’ Factor of Production in the Sudan”, refer to corruption as a principal mode of financial accumulation as well as the “fifth” factor of production.

Alternatively, it could be said that corruption in a kleptocratic state is a major means of capital accumulation. When corruption reaches these proportions and becomes embedded in the state machinery, it gets difficult to control.

State officials in government have vested interests in the perpetuation of the corrupt system and resist efforts to clean up. For this reason, the Malaysian public needs to continue to pressure the government to deal with corruption. The pressure that the rakyat exerted on the government prior to the 2018 general election should not be eased up upon.

Syed Farid Alatas is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore

Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.

P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's AppStore and Androids' Google Play.