David Szakonyi, associate professor of political science in the George Washington University’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS), researches political corruption around the world. He teaches two courses on the subject, one called Money and Politics Around the World and another called Corruption and Kleptocracy.
With Frederik Obermaier, the investigative journalist behind the Panama Papers revelations and other major stories, and Zoë Reiter, combating kleptocracy director at the National Endowment for Democracy, Szakonyi co-founded the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Data Collective, bringing together people from various fields to work on data-driven approaches to exposing corruption around the world. “I’m a quantitative scholar who works a lot with big data sets,” Szakonyi said. He spoke with GW Today about his work.
Q: Are there multiple forms of corruption?
A: A number of varieties of corruption appear around the world, mostly depending on the institutional context. There are some forms that we call grand corruption, which means higher-level political elites abusing their public office for self-enrichment, selling access to different types of political favors and maybe embezzling state funds. We might distinguish that from petty corruption, as in lower-level frontline bureaucrats—think of police officers or hospital workers or even professors—who solicit and receive bribes from citizens in exchange for favorable treatment. But in general, it’s better just to think of corruption as the abuse of public office for personal gain.
Q: Does corruption make people complacent?
A: I’ve been pleasantly surprised that, at least in America, people don’t seem to feel that way. They are angry about the corruption that’s happening all around us, especially in Washington. It’s been going on for decades, but a lot of it has accelerated in the last two years. I'm not as worried about complacency, but more about how people channel their frustration and their anger in productive ways and whether or not politicians can respond with the right solutions and answers to fix the situation.
I think corruption will be one of the defining issues of the 21st century, in line with things like climate change, inequality and the advance of AI. It feeds into a lot of other subject areas and it’s also ever-present, unfortunately, in a lot of countries around the world.
Right now people are understandably quite cynical about politicians. But that doesn’t mean the pendulum can’t swing back, and we could see better policymaking in the future.
Q: Do you think corruption is more widespread in the 21st century than it was in the 20th?
A: The 20th century was marked by persistent conflict between democratic and authoritarian regimes. Many dictatorships governed brutally and ultimately were responsible for causing millions of deaths. Corruption has always existed, but questions involving respect for human life loomed larger then.
Many authoritarian regimes have moderated their use of violence in the 21st century, focusing instead on accumulating power for themselves but also extracting wealth. Their leaders today are increasingly more self-interested, impoverishing their society in order to benefit a small number of elites. In that sense, I would not necessarily say that corruption is more widespread, but I do think it has become a more prominent and important issue.
Wherever there’s money to be stolen, people will abuse the system. And in some places, we have better safeguards against corruption. In other places, we don’t. It’s kind of like a game of whack-a-mole right now, but I still think we have a lot of good tools at our disposal to fix it.
Q: What is your advice for citizens concerned about corruption?
A: Buy a subscription to your local newspaper and support independent media. That’s our first line of defense against corrupt behavior. We have a lot of evidence that when the story is exposed, it can catalyze and trigger a lot of other consequences for the people who are involved.
Participate in elections and reward politicians who take strong stances on corruption and have a track record of standing up for accountability. Showing up to vote and doing your due diligence on whether or not this person's going to behave honestly in office are two of the easiest things people can do and have a huge impact.
Engage in civic activism. That could include donating to nonprofits that are fighting the good fight or protesting, even on a local level, when you see problems.
I also think we need to pay politicians more to facilitate access to the political sphere for a broader section of Americans. A lot of people don’t run for office because the pay is so low. Opening up our political system and encouraging the lower and middle classes to be as involved in our political leadership as possible would go a long way toward reducing elite-centered corruption.
