What Romania must avoid in the fight against corruption. Expert: “Not all approaches are acceptable in a liberal democracy”
Political scientist Marius Ghincea, security expert at the ETH University in Zurich, warns about some aspects regarding the fight against corruption. The expert warns that Romania risks repeating the mistakes of the past, which led to the loss of trust in state institutions and the weakening of civil control over the intelligence services, which have increasingly increased their power.
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Romania is obliged to find a way to wage an effective fight against corruption, but without returning to the past and without using means specific to authoritarian regimes. This is the message of political scientist Marius Ghincea, security expert and researcher at the ETH University in Zurich, one of the most appreciated universities worldwide, present in the top 10.
“Corruption is a major problem for Romania for two fundamental reasons. First, because it undermines long-term prosperity. Corruption is part of and fuels extractive institutions, which discourage investment, innovation and free market competition, as Acemoglu and Robinson demonstrate in works such as Why Nations Fail. Second, corruption has a corrosive effect on trust between citizen and state. When citizens do not have the guarantee that tax money is being used effectively for public services, the natural result we should expect is a decrease in tax compliance and cooperation not only with state institutions, but also with each other as citizens“, says Ghincea.
More anti-corruption fight, but less power for services
The expert warns that although the fight against corruption is truly a necessity in Romania and cannot be postponed any longer, not every approach can be accepted in a liberal democracy, as politicians claim our country is.
“It is, therefore, imperative that the judiciary and the institutions of the Romanian state make sustained efforts to eliminate corrupt practices and to reform the extractive institutions that facilitate them. Practices and institutions that Alina Mungiu-Pippidi has identified in her research, since the 1990s, as inherently pre-modern. However, we must pay attention to the ways in which we fight against corruption. Not all possible approaches are acceptable in a liberal democracy, even more so one with an authoritarian past as is the case of Romania”he says.
Marius Ghincea comes here with the example of the fight against corruption during the period of President Traian Băsescu, which he says led to an imbalance and the weakening of civil control over services in Romania.
“The last major episode of combating systemic corruption at the highest levels of the Romanian state was based on tools and resources that, although they punished high-level corruption, led, as an indirect effect, to the erosion of the democratic character of the state, to the imbalance of civil-intelligence relations and the weakening of civil control over the services. These corrosive effects of the Basescu approach were and are good known in the specialized literature. The “narrow corridor” that Acemoglu and Robinson describe in their theory of the development of prosperous societies does not include methods that erode civilian control over institutions of force. The erosion of civil-military and civil-intelligence relations takes societies on trajectories different from that of the narrow corridor. Trajectories that can compromise both democracy and long-term prosperity,” explains Marius Ghincea.
The approach that is not good for Romania
Precisely for this reason, the Romanian expert from Switzerland warns that such an approach risks doing a lot of harm to society in the future and leading to an even greater rift between state institutions and citizens, at the same time increasing the tense climate and the population's lack of trust in the bodies that should ensure this balance.
“That's why I don't think it's at all appropriate for Romania to return to the Bassesian approach to fighting corruption. This doesn't mean that we don't have to fight corruption. It just means that we have to do it through methods compatible with democratic principles. Considering the dynamics of civil-intelligence relations at the moment, I can guarantee you that returning to the Bassesian approach will lead to an increase in cases of grand corruption, but it will further strengthen the intelligence services, which will further increase their operational autonomy and resources, including by widening the net of influence into even more institutions. And that will further degrade the nature of civilian control, further unbalance civilian-intelligence relations, and ultimately we may end up with a truly hybrid regime.”concludes Marius Ghincea.
