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The Impact of Corruption on International Security:
Does Corruption lead to instability?
Joshua K. Myers
Department of Political Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
April 28, 2016
Abstract
Today the world is witnessing an increase in instability in key regions of foreign policy
due to organizations such as the Boko Haram, ISIL, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and many others. A
new book authored by Sarah Chayes titled Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global
Security attempts to persuade the reader that it is corrupt regimes cause global security threats.
Corrupt regimes spread discontent, erode legitimacy and push people either towards joining
fringe groups such as the Taliban or make a populace apathetic to their opposition to the regime.
However her evidence for this is entirely anecdotal. The case presented is entirely based on her
experiences working for an NGO and then for the State department. Thus the question is will one
see more destabilizing insurgency groups in corrupt nations? There has been little to no research
on this as it is not integrated into current conceptions of foreign policy. Thus my research
question will provide a new framework in how to view the rise of destabilizing organizations
such as ISIL. Through my research I find that corrupt states do not tend to have statistically
significant evidence in pointing towards corrupt regimes suffering from conflicts. Thus there is
some other unexplored factor at work. These findings may have an important impact on how
States concerned with international security approach addressing these issues.
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social
being that determines their consciousness.”
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Introduction
Corruption is a global and pervasive issue that no country can declare they are free from.
Though that may be the case, the classic view of corruption and its corrosive nature have
generally been focused on economic factors such as development and criminal organizations.
The text that was the inspiration for this research Thieves of State by Sarah Chayes exemplifies
this in a number of anecdotal stories as she travels throughout the world for her NGO. However
her book is an attempt to refocus the massive efforts by the United States and other nations to
combat destabilizing terrorist groups and insurgencies by combating corruption within states.
Essentially her argument is two-fold. First is that corruption is destabilizing to a state.
The second is that states concerned with instability and global security tend to not include
corruption into their equation for solving issues of security; it is instead a concern of
development to be handled internally by the offending state. An example of this is the United
States ignoring the corruption in Afghanistan, partially because the structure of international
relations is that states only know how to interact with other states, regardless of whether that
state is corrupt or not.
However Chayes provides examples of trying to combat corruption in her stories only to
be told that it is not part of the mission at hand for the United States, that it is an internal issue
the Afghans must solve themselves. This is the running theme of the book where Chayes
provides examples of corruption effecting security on the ground but the organizations concerned
with that security do not see it is a prevalent concern (Chayes 2015).
One of the initial and most striking examples of this comes in the beginning of the book,
a former Afghani police officer is retelling a tale of his brother dealing with police officers
running checkpoints, they continually ask for bribes to let his brother through these checkpoints.
When he finally erupts he’s had enough of paying these bribes they slap him and a complaint to
the chief of police only begets a response of “Did it kill him?” This leads to the poignant
example of the former police officer swearing an oath that if he ever saw the Taliban place an
IED on the road he would not warn the police and would let them run over it (Chayes 2015).
This begs the question, if a former police officer would vow to do such a thing against his
former brothers in the police force, how many other citizens without these attachments quietly
support the Taliban or ignore their activities to the detriment of security forces because of the
corrosive influence of corruption?
That example is also just one out of many in the text. There are a number of countries and
types of corruption that Chayes lays out in the text but one of the most interesting things to
happen is during her time at the State department the Arab spring uprising happened, specifically
the protests in Tunisia. Tunisia according Transparency Internationals Corruption index is one of
the most corrupt countries on the planet and the response from her colleagues to the peaceful
uprising (that easily could have been violent, much like Nigeria, another country high on the
corruption index) was literally a shrugging of shoulders. Policy makers should not be shrugging
their shoulders at instances like this, especially in response to corruption. This research is an
attempt to move on from anecdotal evidence and onto showing policy makers they should
consider corruption as integral to their policy crafting endeavors (Chayes 2015).
Literature Review
While the inspiring text for this research is based on the Chayes text it was imperative to
find whether her claims had already been researched and her book was redundant or the opposite
was true and she was on to something new and interesting. From the research accomplished it
appears Chayes is on to something new, there were quite a few limited texts discussing the idea
of corruption effecting security on a global scale. In fact there was a limited amount of research
done on corruption effecting security in general, though it certainly exists it seems to pale in
comparison to the economic factors one normally associates with corruption.
To quickly summarize the general consensus or concern of corruption when
accomplishing this research focused on economic factors and development. For instance in
Benjamin Friedman’s writings on poverty he describes a virtuous circle, vicious circle concept.
Essentially many factors contribute to poverty but corruption was tied into state and poor
governance issues that are in the vicious circle. These vicious circles are a spiral-downward not a
plateau, so the effects simply feed off themselves and worsen (Friedman 2005).
The concern over economic development is again reiterated in a paper done for the World
Bank by Susan Rose-Ackerman. The concern presented by Rose-Ackerman is the effect of
corruption, especially on developing states. She lists wide spread corruption as a sign of a poorly
functioning state, which hinders economic growth. Many of the potential policies she advocates
for are structural reforms for tax collection and regulation, institutional reform to allow for
transparency. Though her work is focused on economic development and concerns as part of the
World Bank much of what she says seems to be either relatable or translatable to a security
minded focus (Rose-Ackerman 1998).
For the security minded much of the focus of the literature that was available was focused
on corruption effecting national security and not global security. This is an important distinction
in regards to this research. National security is generally perceived in these papers to be a threat
to the state itself, which is an internal threat. This can be a threat to infrastructure and
development such as the United States concern for its electrical grid and crumbling infrastructure
being a national security concern but it can also include the threat of a coupe.
The difference in this research may not be obvious. While National Security is confined
to the state itself, the global security perspective that this paper is endeavoring to research is
founded on a destabilization of not only the state in question but of the region and the
international system of states. A prime example of this is the rise of ISIL in the Middle East or
Boko Haram in Nigeria. ISIL is not simply interested in performing a coup of the Iraqi
government. They have destabilized the entire region with their armed insurgency. More
examples of this include Boko Haram in Nigeria bleeding into Chad and other countries, the
Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in Pakistan.
The next important area of literature was from the United Nations. In 2002 to 2003 the
United Nations created a new committee to focus on corruption; The United Nations Convention
against Corruption (UNCAC). The convention made some important strides in moving towards a
discussion of corruption as something that could be worked on by the international community.
However its description in the foreword of the conventions resolution has significant bearing on
how the international community still views the issue of corruption (UNCAC 2005).
“Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies.
It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts
markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to
human security to flourish.” (UNCAC 2005)
While they include terrorism and organized crime there is no mentioned of wider
security. Human security is a broad and new concept, in fact it is so broad that the Human
Security Network has its main proponents, Canada and Japan, espousing different definitions for
what human security is. Canada views human security in a more narrow light as a threat to the
individual whereas Japan sees it as not just individual but societal and global threats such as
global warming (UNCAC 2005).
Thus the language used in the UNCAC example of corruption is useful in understand the
pervasiveness of corruption it does present a seemingly obvious tone of “corruption is bad”.
While this is useful and informative (though everyone should likely view corruption as
inherently bad without needing that information) the UNCAC provides little in the way of
presenting clear cases of corruption. Instead they immediately move onto the importance of the
international community and remedies for corruption that can be provided.
This is an issue because they are recommending broad fixes for a broad definition, which
essentially sounds good while providing no clear path forward. The second issue is that they
provide no index for corrupt states. While one can suppose that member states of the UN would
baulk at the idea of other members rating them on corruption it is not really clear how the
UNCAC would deal with corruption if they don’t know where to look and understand how
deeply rooted it is. Thus this research had to turn to NGOs as a way to find metrics for
corruption.
Freedom House, an NGO that measures freedom throughout the world and provides
scores for every country was one of the first destinations for a possible measurement on
corruption. It became apparent quite quickly that the methodology used in Freedom House would
not suit this research because its focus was on civil liberties and freedoms and not corruption. In
fact while corruption is mentioned in their methodology page, they do not include corruption in
their scores for each country.
Freedom House works on a checklist of ten political rights questions and fifteen civil
liberties questions. None of these questions actually include corruption specifically. Only by
coincidence do they appear to include corruption, such as the electoral process, political
pluralism, rule of law and organizational rights. However corruption is not actually included in
their scale for freedom throughout the globe. It is only mentioned as one of the symptoms of a
society no being free. It is only haphazardly included and not an actual metric in their
methodology. Corruption is only mentioned once in their methodology page in their rating
system of political rights and nowhere else.
Thus Freedom House while an interesting source of information for freedom throughout
the world was able to provide little in the way of information that would aid one in acquiring a
metric for corruption, let alone deciphering if corruption is in anyway tied to conflict and
security throughout the world.
With Freedom House not providing an adequate source of for measuring
corruption another reliable source had to be found that would provide valuable and useable data
to discover whether conflicts arose from highly corrupt states. The gap was filled upon
discovering Transparency International. This is an NGO that is solely dedicated to providing a
perception index for states globally and regionally.
However this source also has its own limitations. Transparency International was founded
in 1993. They did not release an index of corrupt states until 1995. Transparency International
also has the flaw that they are forced to use perception, which is essentially a survey of experts,
businessman and other knowledgeable individuals that have experience with each state. They
then attribute a score to these states based on a number of factors such as perceived economic
corruption, political corruption, etc., with an overall score attributed as a Corruption Perception
Index Score or CPI (Transparency International 2015).
However an issue with using this source was that Transparency International did not have
a set standard for producing their data sets until seemingly the year 2011. This is when the
scoring system appears to hit a comfortable stride of reliability. The score system from 1995 to
2010 is changed multiple times; states are not grouped by regions and instead haphazardly
ranked on a global scale. In 2011 it appears the data is formalized into a standardized form as
well as states being grouped by region.
This is where the data from this paper is pulled from when handling whether a state is
corrupt or not and how corrupt they are but the data set is limited due to this standardization only
appearing late in Transparency Internationals work. Perhaps at a later date with more time and
effort available this paper could be relooked at to sort through Transparency Internationals
earlier findings, transmute their earlier scoring system and include it in future research on this
topic. For now the limited data set will be used to see if the initial findings hold water so one will
know whether to continue on that path or not.
With a way to measure corruption finally achieved the next step in this review of literature and
data was to find a measurement of conflict in the world that would be able to be correlated to the
corruption index from Transparency International. What the research bore out was the discovery
of the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research. The Heidelberg Institute provides
an easy to use, comprehensive index of conflicts around the globe. It also sorts these conflicts by
the year of their start date and continuation and the region the conflict takes place in. The
regional classifications make correlation easier with the region organized corruption index in the
later Transparency International indexes.
Theoretical Expectations
Because much of the literature and previous study on the topic of corruption is so focused
on economic development and not on the ties between security threats the theoretical
expectations of this paper are limited to the data and literature available on the subject. However
what is available provides a compelling and intuitive list of research questions to focus on for
this paper. Firstly with Chayes anecdotal yet compelling evidence one should be to discover that
a state that has a high corruption perception index (CPI) will also have a high probability of
having a security conflict. One should also be able to see this across multiple regions, while the
main focus of conflicted regions today generally focuses on Africa or the Middle East, one
should be able to see the same pattern occur in a region like Eastern Europe that has states like
Ukraine and George, both states that have had well publicized conflicts both internally and with
their neighbor Russia.
H1: A state that is rated as having a high corruption rating, that is a rating from
Transparency International that marks a state as having a high level of corruption, will be a
source of conflict within a region. Essentially, if corruption is a cause of degrading security, and
degrading security leads to conflict, one will see conflict within these highly corrupt states.
H2: Of course if a state with a high corruption rating is a source of conflict, one should
see the opposite come to fruition as well. States with low corruption ratings should see little to no
conflict. This is more easily measured today due to the peaceful nature of states.
Research Design & Methods
As stated in the literature review there is two sources of important data to test these
hypotheses written above. These are the Corruption Perception Index from Transparency
International and the Global Conflict Index from the Heidelberg Institute for International
Conflict Research. Due to the lack of standardization in the index for the Corruption Perception
Index (CPI) this paper is left with a data set limited to the years 2011 to 2015. Each country
throughout these years has a specific score that will be averaged for these years. Thus the limited
data set from 2011 to 2015 is less of an issue.
For the Heidelberg Institute and its index on global conflict there is a more straight
forward approach for their data set. Simply put a state either has a conflict or they do not, thus
the conflict index provides a binary solution for comparison to the averaged CPI scores.
Correlating the two scores should, according to the hypotheses written above, produce a viable
data set that shows corruption-laden states are more prone to having conflicts. The Heidelberg
Institute index also provides a score for the intensity of each conflict. However this was found to
be superfluous and did not add anything to the value of whether a corrupt state was in a conflict
or not, as it is a fairly binary question. It is either a yes, a state is in a conflict or no it is not, the
intensity of the conflict should have more contextual issues outside of corruption and thus will
not be included in the data shown in this paper.
However a potential and recognizable problem arises from this method outside of the
data set. Focusing on one region may simply be a coincidence for the region, especially if a
conflict happens to have spread and had no correlation to corruption. Thus this paper will look
into two different regions that have a high propensity for a mix of corrupt and non-corrupt
nations, specifically the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and then Eastern Europe and
Asia (EEA).
Focusing on two, geographically separated regions should provide good, reliable, and
independent tests for the hypotheses. Thus will allow the research to show that corrupt nations
are not only affected by conflict in one region that may have been due to an outside source
different from corruption; two examples of a similar pattern should be sufficient to show a trend
and show that the limited research done so far is worth looking deeper into.
It is worth noting that the Heidelberg Institute also provides another quantifying set of
data in that it rates the intensity of each conflict. While this has no bearing on whether this
papers initial findings are accurate or not, it would be interesting in separate paper as a
continuation of this research to discover whether or not these higher intensity conflicts are also
destabilizing for the region. For the purpose of this study however it is not something that
provides a meaningful difference between states that either is or is not in conflict, with the
correlating factor being their levels of corruption.
Another concept to take note of is the importance of declaring whether a state is involved
in a conflict or not, this requires a definition of a conflict must be provided. Because corruption
is referenced by the Chayes book, in the inspiration for this research, as a corrosive force that
leads to destabilization this research will not differentiate between internal conflicts and external
conflicts.
A state will simply be marked as either in a conflict as 1 or not as 0. This is due to the
fact that there are new threats in the world such as ISIL that are both internal and external
threats, and thus would either not be categorized in this way or would simply be counted twice.
The same applies to groups like Ukrainian rebels fighting for Russia in the Ukraine. Thus the
binary score mentioned above will be accurate for this research design.
Results
Before getting to the results of this study, it seems incumbent upon the research to show and
clarify the data being presented outside of an abstract description of methodology. Thus before
presenting Graphs 1 and 2 this paper will present a map displaying the corruption index, showing
the regions sampled in this study as well as the aggregate level of corruption in the region.
This paper will then move on to including the spread of scores for each individual state
and nation for available critique to those reading in case something in these results was possibly
missed.
Graphic 1.
With red being the higher the state of corruption in a country, it is recognizable that the
MENA and EEA both have a high average of corrupt states. Yellow is the color of less corrupt
states, which is labeled as a “clean” or “cleaner” state. There appears to be no score for a country
that is absolutely free of corruption, this makes sense as it seems corruption and its prevalence
throughout the world shows it is part of human nature. Its deep rooted prevalence, acceptance
and effect in an are what should be the concern.
MENA CPI –
This table is describing the MENA region and its CPI ratings. In this column what to take
note of is that the lower the score, the higher the corruption. It is also interesting to take note that
countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates who are known for their slave labor have
received a “cleaner” rating than western oriented nations such as Israel and Jordan.
CPI Country Region71 Qatar MENA
70 United Arab EmiratesMENA
61 Israel MENA
53 Jordan MENA
52 Saudi ArabiaMENA
51 Bahrain MENA
49 Kuwait MENA
45 Oman MENA
38 Tunisia MENA
36 Algeria MENA
36 Egypt MENA
36 Morocco MENA
28 Lebanon MENA
27 Iran MENA
18 Syria MENA
18 Yemen MENA
16 Iraq MENA
16 Libya MENA
12 Sudan MENA
EEA CPI –
This table is describing the EEA region and its CPI ratings. Once again the lower the
score is a higher rating of corruption. Yet another interesting note to make is that Turkey is
considered to be less corrupt than Russia, as well as Russia being surprisingly low scored for
being such a major super power in the world.
CPI Country Region52 Georgia EEA
44 MontenegroEEA
42 The FYR of MacedoniaEEA
42 Turkey EEA
40 Serbia EEA
38 Bosnia and HerzegovinaEEA
36 Albania EEA
35 Armenia EEA
33 Kosovo EEA
33 Moldova EEA
32 Belarus EEA
29 AzerbaijanEEA
29 Russia EEA
28 KazakhstanEEA
28 KyrgyzstanEEA
27 Ukraine EEA
26 Tajikistan EEA
19 UzbekistanEEA
18 TurkmenistanEEA
Now that the preliminary data has been shown, it is time to match the CPI rating of a
state to whether that state has a conflict or does not. According to the two hypotheses listed in
the methods section of this paper the results should show that the lower scored states be involved
in conflicts while the higher rated states in the region should not be involved in conflicts.
MENA Region CPI & Conflict Data – Result Graph 1
The results shown above in the correlated data for the MENA region does show an initial
trend for more corrupt nations being involved in conflicts. However it is important to note that
the MENA region seems to be embroiled in conflict regardless of the score given to these states.
The initial finding provides two thoughts: One, the region is embroiled in conflict regardless of
CPI Country Region Conflict71 Qatar MENA 0
70 United Arab EmiratesMENA 0
61 Israel MENA 1
53 Jordan MENA 1
52 Saudi ArabiaMENA 1
51 Bahrain MENA 1
49 Kuwait MENA 1
45 Oman MENA 1
38 Tunisia MENA 1
36 Algeria MENA 1
36 Egypt MENA 1
36 Morocco MENA 0
28 Lebanon MENA 1
27 Iran MENA 1
18 Syria MENA 1
18 Yemen MENA 1
16 Iraq MENA 1
16 Libya MENA 1
12 Sudan MENA 1
corruption but we may still see a trend in other regions such as the EEA that will show
corruption does in fact have an influence on state conflict involvement. When compared to the
EEA region, one should see whether the trend continues with
EEA Region CPI & Conflict Data – Result Graph 2
CPI Country Region Conflict52 Georgia EEA 0
44 MontenegroEEA 0
42 The FYR of MacedoniaEEA 0
42 Turkey EEA 1
40 Serbia EEA 1
38 Bosnia and HerzegovinaEEA 0
36 Albania EEA 0
35 Armenia EEA 0
33 Kosovo EEA 0
33 Moldova EEA 0
32 Belarus EEA 0
29 AzerbaijanEEA 1
29 Russia EEA 1
28 KazakhstanEEA 0
28 KyrgyzstanEEA 0
27 Ukraine EEA 1
26 Tajikistan EEA 0
19 UzbekistanEEA 0
18 TurkmenistanEEA 0
In the results for the EEA region there is a clear difference in the levels of states being
involved in conflicts, but not a clear difference in the levels of state corruption. Thus the EEA
region appears to show that the hypotheses presented in the research expectations part of this
research paper are not globally applicable. In fact the clear distinction is that corruption may play
such a minor part in security and conflict concerns that it is another factor that actually
contributes to the rise of conflict. Comparing them side by side may provide a more clear
distinction.
MENA & EEA CPI & Conflict Results – Graph 3
CPI Country Region Conflict CPI Country Region Conflict
71 Qatar MENA 0 52 Georgia EEA 0
70 United Arab EmiratesMENA 0 44 MontenegroEEA 0
61 Israel MENA 1 42 The FYR of MacedoniaEEA 0
53 Jordan MENA 1 42 Turkey EEA 1
52 Saudi ArabiaMENA 1 40 Serbia EEA 1
51 Bahrain MENA 1 38 Bosnia and HerzegovinaEEA 0
49 Kuwait MENA 1 36 Albania EEA 0
45 Oman MENA 1 35 Armenia EEA 0
38 Tunisia MENA 1 33 Kosovo EEA 0
36 Algeria MENA 1 33 Moldova EEA 0
36 Egypt MENA 1 32 Belarus EEA 0
36 Morocco MENA 0 29 AzerbaijanEEA 1
28 Lebanon MENA 1 29 Russia EEA 1
27 Iran MENA 1 28 KazakhstanEEA 0
18 Syria MENA 1 28 KyrgyzstanEEA 0
18 Yemen MENA 1 27 Ukraine EEA 1
16 Iraq MENA 1 26 Tajikistan EEA 0
16 Libya MENA 1 19 UzbekistanEEA 0
12 Sudan MENA 1 18 TurkmenistanEEA 0
As stated above the findings clearly show there is little correlation to be had between
corruption and conflict when one compares the regions to each other. This leads to the
conclusion that other factors must play a much larger role in whether a state is involved in a
conflict or not, especially since the definition of a conflict in this paper was broad enough to
include both internal and external conflicts. With such a broad definition of the parameters of a
conflict, it is even starker to see the lack of a relationship between corruption and conflict for the
regions in these states.
While this research had a lack of corroborating research that it could rely upon as well as
a lack of available data that was sufficient in measuring corruption, a valuable measure was still
able to be taken and shown to disprove the hypotheses that were in correlation with the intuitive
argument of the Chayes text mentioned in the literature review of this paper. Thus the final result
of this paper is in fact an example of the necessity of testing whether an intuitive hypothesis is
falsifiable, and if it is, to test whether the argument holds water. That is a discussion for closing
statements
Conclusion
So it becomes apparent that though Chayes’s text Thieves Of State: How Corruption
Threatens Global Security provides a compelling and intuitive case for the research done above
it simply does not correlate into quantifiable findings in reality. This makes sense due to her
book being tied into anecdotal evidence while making a push for policy changes tied to her field
of expertise, corruption, when she is aware that large, powerful states like the United States are
focused on international security and combating groups like ISIL and the Taliban.
Providing a narrative to shift U.S. policy that is focused on security from reliable sources
that threaten it to unreliable, anecdotal cases is not in the best interest of policy makers. Thus this
research, while it seemed intuitive, does not match up with reality and thus a note of warning can
be given to potential policy makers when they come across a compelling text such as Chayes.
One must make sure there is quantifiable, falsifiable information to back up major policy
changes that will potentially affect the rest of the world. Hopefully this research has
accomplished that goal, whether the initial hypotheses agreed with the Chayes text or not.
Works Cited
Benjamin Friedman, “Virtuous Circles, Vicious Circles,” The Moral Consequences of Economic
Growth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 327-345.
Susan Rose-Ackerman, “Corruption and Development,” Annual World Bank Conference on
Development Economics 1997 (Washington, D.C.: IBRD, 1998), 35-57.
Chayes, Sarah. Thieves of state: Why corruption threatens global security. WW Norton &
Company, 2015.
Transparency International (2011-2015). "Corruption Perceptions Index”. Transparency
International. Transparency International.
Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (2011-2015). “Conflict Barometer”
Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research.
