State Capture Research Articles

“Linking the Dots”: Metaphors in the Narrative of Self-Justification by Former President Zuma

Former South African President Jacob Zuma recently delivered his opening statement at the Zondo Commission in order to address his implication in state capture. Instead of systematically addressing factual aspects, Zuma narrated events in a manner which set him up as strategic key in understanding the “true” reasons for South Africa's current situation. This article aims to understand the metaphors that build up the conceptual system in terms of which Zuma articulates his self-defence during this appearance, within the broader context of frames and scenarios. Two main frames unite the metaphorical expressions: the frames of warfare and journeys. In order to structure his argument, Zuma capitalises on the way in which these metaphors highlight and hide important factors, but he also manipulates overlapping elements by exploiting the grey area between the literal and metaphorical interpretation of his language.

Waterproofing the State: Migration, River-Borders, and Ecologies of Control

ABSTRACT Transboundary waters serve critical bordering functions and are often obstacles for migrants transiting throughout the globe. This article focuses on migrant encounters with Mesoamerican river-borders, as highlighted in recent media images of river crossings – from individuals to migrant caravans – that show how people use waterbodies to evade state capture. Analysing widely circulated images of migrant death at the Rio Grande (US–Mexico) and the caravan spectacle at the Suchiate River (Mexico-Guatemala), I attend to contemporary migrations taking place at the intersection of securitisation, border-making, and ecology. Reflecting on historical events such as the Río Sumpul Massacre in El Salvador, recent Central American caravan migrations across Mexico-Guatemala, to the widely circulated river death of migrants Óscar and Valeria Martínez Ramírez in mid-2019, I consider the environmental relations, cultural practices, and social forms that emerge around river-borders. I highlight ongoing processes of terraforming that are shaping borderland biomes and that are subsequently disrupting boundary dynamics linked to popular mobility, informal economies, and ecosystem health. Juxtaposing migrant sociality at river-borders with contemporary border-formation, I show how migrant movement is discouraged and repelled in service of sealing borders through the making of ecologies of control.

Unpacking History, Unpacking Corruption, and Unpacking Media Analysis: Some Recent Books on the South African Media

This article is an extended review essay that maps recent titles written by practising journalists and journalists turned academics in South Africa. The analysis focuses on Gawie Botma’s Race Talk in the South African Media; Lizette Rabe’s A Luta Continua: A History of Media Freedom in South Africa; Glenda Daniels’ Power and Loss in South African Journalism: News in the Age of Social Media; and Anton Harber’s So, for the Record – behind the Headlines in an Era of State Capture. These studies follow earlier analyses, namely: Herman Wasserman’s Media, Geopolitics and Power: A View from the Global South; and Sean Jacobs’ Media in Postapartheid South Africa: Postcolonial Politics in the Age of Globalization. An intersecting track is the journalists’ exposés, such as: Paper Tiger: Iqbal Survé and the Downfall of Independent Newspapers by Alide Dasnois and Chris Whitfield; SABC 1936–1995: Still a Key Player … or an Endangered Species? by Wynand Harmse; The SABC 8 by Foeta Krige; and Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV by Rajesh Sundaram. How each study frames history, the researcher/s’ position and their respective writing styles are discussed. The author argues that academic studies should be read in concert with works written by journalists because abstract frames of reference tend to bracket out the daily nitty-gritty struggles within newsrooms, especially within the current conjecture. In conclusion, the author suggests that whatever the alleged flaws of the “mainstream media” may be, individual journalists (and others) are the ones telling the story behind the story in the slew of books that have been published recently on state and private sector corruption.

State capture and collective action

A promising approach to analyse the phenomena usually described as 'state capture' may be drawn from the literature on 'institutions', 'social orders', and the 'collective action problem'. These studies seem broader and more theoretically persuasive than the literature that confines itself to the notion of 'state capture', and this is especially true in respect of the Balkans, in whose societies it is often hard to draw a fine line between the 'captured' state and its 'captors'. Seen through the lens of those strands of literature, the phenomena usually described as state capture appear to be more widespread than is currently assumed, as they also surface in advanced democracies, and behind them typically lie collective action problems, which prevent the public interest from imposing itself over special interests.

State capture: Case of South Africa

"Grand corruption" and "state capture" are two intertwined concepts of corruption that have become systemic and institutionalized in many transitional countries around the world. "State capture" can simply be defined as "the payment of bribes at high levels of government in order to extract or plunder significant amounts of money from the state". The following paper will argue that when state capture occurs in transitional countries, it runs the risk of becoming socially embedded and institutionalized, which in turn makes it difficult to maintain the principles of democracy and threatens the overall stability of a country in transition. South Africa makes for a useful case study because it clearly represents how corruption in the form of state capture has infiltrated the political landscape of a country in transition, thereby rendering all state institutions redundant and threatening the principles of democracy. The paper will research what the dangers of state capture means for the countries in transition with the aim of proposing recommendations of minimizing state capture in order to reduce the negative consequences for security, peace and democracy. One corruption scandal that occurred in South Africa will be described which became known as "state capture". The paper was prepared based on the analysis of documents, academic and media articles that focus on state capture and the corruption in transitional countries. The paper will conclude that governmental corruption has become socially embedded in the "logics" of negotiation and interaction, thereby indicating that it has become institutionalized and culturally embedded within South Africa.

State capture, hybrid regimes, and security sector reform

In this introduction into the special issue on state capture and security sector governance, we argue that state capture is a relevant concept that helps us understand the current autocratisation and the rise of hybrid regimes. We argue that the extraction of public resources via party patronage, privatization of public administration, judiciary, security institutions, and media are vital for influencing political competition. In the second part of the article, we argue that the concept of state capture brings added value to the understanding of security governance and transformations. We show why the parts or whole of security and justice institutions are the inevitable targets of state capture and what it means to understand the success of security sector reform (SSR). Finally, we examine a range of possible positions of the security sector within the captors and what it means for both the literature on state capture and civil-military relations.

State capture and security intelligence agencies in Serbia

Security intelligence agencies play a central role in state capture. Due to the very nature of how they are organised and operate, security intelligence agencies first become targets of these processes, before becoming their principal agents. Indeed, political elites and security intelligence agencies become natural partners in this endeavour, with the very process of state capture coming to resemble a complex intelligence operation. Even though the experiences of many countries bear this out, attempts to research the role of security intelligence agencies in a systematic and theoretically grounded manner remain rare. By using recent theoretical approaches defining state capture as a deliberate political undertaking, the main goal of which is the acquisition of unrestricted state power that in turn enables the unhindered and unsanctioned pursuit of the narrow interests of political elites to the detriment of the public good, this study aims to determine the factors, conditions and mechanisms that facilitate the rapid capture of security services and their further use in capturing the state. This will be explored through the example of Serbia - a country that, two decades on from the start of its democratic transformation, is now a captured state sliding towards autocracy.

Whitewashing state capture: Discursive legitimization of large construction projects in the Western Balkans

Through the use of language, government institutions and officials in elective democracies try to present particular instances of abuse of power and public resources as legitimate and enable similar practices in the future. This article aims to identify and reveal the strategies used within the Western Balkans' official discourses to legitimize particular cases of suspected state capture and assess their outcomes. The empirical study of six prominent cases of suspected state capture in the construction industry in the period from 2010 to 2020 indicates that a single legitimization strategy is used region-wide, and this article contributes to better understanding it. To assess the strategy outcomes, an original analytic model is proposed. The findings suggest that the deployment of the strategy to legitimize the suspected cases of state capture encourages potential captors in the region to consider engaging in similar practices in the future.

Notes: ‘Observations’ on the State Capture judgment

This note concerns a controversial issue that has, surprisingly, received limited academic interrogation: whether the Public Protector has the power to instruct the President of South Africa to appoint a commission of inquiry. In this respect, I critique a high court decision which answered the question in the affirmative. I contend that the judgment contradicts prior case law, including Constitutional Court precedent. Thus, I argue that the court misconstrued the law on the President’s powers, particularly when it concluded that those powers are not purely discretionary but entail ‘responsibilities’ which are ‘coupled with a duty’. This reasoning led the court to conclude that the President thus has a constitutional ‘obligation’ to appoint a commission. In summary, I take issue with the court’s conclusion that the Public Protector has the power to instruct the President to appoint a commission of inquiry. I conclude that the decision caused uncertainty on the limitations of the Public Protector’s powers. I further say it is questionable whether the commission, better known as the ‘State Capture’ commission, was established lawfully.

Will the Real Conspiracy Please Stand Up: Sources of Post-communist Democratic Failure

At the start of the pandemic, it looked like the biggest COVID-related threat to democracy, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, was executive aggrandizement. This focus, however, may lead us to overlook a bigger threat to Eastern European democracy. We argue that Eastern European democracies' original sin of state capture has been exacerbated by the rise of conspiracy theories, whose stock has only increased with the addition of COVID misinformation. Eastern European voters struggle to differentiate between the `true' political conspiracy that enables private interests to control the state and conspiracies without empirical basis, such as COVID denialism, world government, or political correctness as a tyrannical plot. As a result, conspiracy theories enable the state capture camp to divide the reformist opposition and maintain their grip, while simultaneously claiming that they are governing competently and in line with European values. We use an original survey from Bulgaria and a GLOBSEC 2020 cross-national survey to explore this hypothesis. Finally, we draw some theoretical implications from the empirical evidence for assessing the nature of democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe. We call for more research on the conspiracy cleavage as a factor in explaining backsliding processes.

Political Distortions, State Capture, and Economic Development in Africa

Political Distortions, State Capture, and Economic Development in Africa

Consultation on the Draft South African National Infrastructure Plan: Comments on ICT Networks

The government of South Africa has adopted a National Infrastructure Plan (NIP) with ambitious targets, including for telecommunications. This is only partly aligned with its adoption of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), the subject of a recent lengthy report. The telecommunications part of NIP set targets in terms of old technologies, while its implementation is already badly delayed. In particular it is a decade late in digital migration and much longer in releasing spectrum to mobile operators for 4G and 5G services. The problems lie with ministers, rather than the regulator. Consequently, the call to benchmark the regulator is misguided, what is needed is a review of the system, including ineffectual or outdated legislation. There is a lack of granular data on which to base public policy and regulatory action. Equally, given problems of corruption and state capture, there is a lack of transparency data of donations, gifts and meeting between business, ministers and officials.

Does the Communist Mentality Explain the Behaviour of Albanian Politicians During the Transition Period?

During the three decades since Albania overthrew the communist dictatorial system and began its democratic changes, the existence of a line of thought in Albanian society has been noted, which tends to explain the behaviour of Albanian politicians during the transition period based on the assumption of a “communist mentality” carried by them. This line of thought has often been dominant and has been reflected in the Albanian media and public space as a form of “main” explanation to show many of the failures that Albanian democracy has faced during these 30 years, the authoritarian behaviour of political elites, the “state capture” by political parties, the crisis of state institutions, etc. Applying the concept of “communist mentality” in the Albanian media and public space and explaining through it (almost) any kind of negative phenomenon, problem, or behaviour that contradicts the idea of democracy or prevents it from developing, is very problematic, therefore it has served as an impetus in undertaking this study. In this paper, a critical approach will be offered to this discourse that has often dominated the Albanian media and public space, questioning whether is this “communist mentality” the determining factor for the behaviour of Albanian politicians and the failures of Albanian democracy or there are other factors that may explain these phenomena.

Natural resources, transitional states and grand corruption

A multifaceted and integrated approach to both transitional justice and environmental peacebuilding will fall short if it does not simultaneously consider the risks, and often the reality, of grand corruption (sometimes called kleptocracy or systemic corruption). This overview chapter argues that unsustainable resource extraction and uncontrolled state capture and grand corruption are at the same time causes and consequences of violent conflict, and that successful transitions away from such conflict require attention to both phenomena, and to their linkages. It considers the links among natural resource exploitation and corruption, and why transitions away from violent conflict or dictatorship facilitate, and exacerbate, grand corruption. It then summarizes some of the international law frameworks governing the combat against grand corruption, their limitations and gaps, and some promising new approaches. It concludes with some suggestions for integrating consideration of grand corruption into a post-armed conflict or transitional framework.

FIGHTING POWER WITH POWER: THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE AS A WEAPON AGAINST CONCENTRATED PRIVATE POWER

AbstractContemporary critics of the administrative state are right to highlight the dangers of vesting too much power in a centralized bureaucracy removed from popular oversight and accountability. Too often neglected in this literature, however, are the dangers of vesting too little power in a centralized state, which enables dominant groups to further expand their social and economic advantages through decentralized means. This article seeks to synthesize these concerns, understanding them as reflecting the same underlying danger of state capture. It then articulates a set of heuristics for the design of public and administrative institutions, which aim at minimizing the risks of capture from both public and private sources. By following these heuristics, it claims, we can successfully employ the administrative state as a weapon against concentrated private power, rather than allowing it to serve as a tool of dominant groups.

The European Union’s Rule of Law Promotion in the Western Balkans: Building a Rule of Law Constituency

This paper deals with the failures in the promotion of the rule of law in the six countries of the Western Balkans that are in different stages of their EU accession process. Drawing on concrete examples from more than two decades of rule of law promotion through the enlargement circles, the paper identifies the different evolutionary stages of this undertaking. It finds that the current dominant paradigm of rule of law conditionality concerning the benchmarking of progress in the areas of Chapters 23 and 24 of the acquis fails to tackle state capture as the main structural obstacle to the rule of law in the Western Balkans. The paper proposes that this situation is to be improved by re-imagining rule of law promotion as an effort focused not merely on standards but on building a rule of law constituency. Four different approaches to rule of law promotion that have been less frequently used so far are offered: legal mobilisation, institutional strengthening, the politicisation of anti-corruption, and economic development. The paper concludes with reflections on the realistic reach of the proposed interventions into efforts to promote the rule of law, arguing that while imperfect they remain necessary in order for the project to succeed. Keywords: European Union, rule of law promotion, Western Balkans, corruption, economic development. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution − Non-Commercial − No Derivatives 4.0 International License. Suggested citation: N Hogic, ‘The European Union’s Rule of Law Promotion in the Western Balkans: Building a Rule of Law Constituency’ (2020) 16 CYELP 197.

Reputations and corruption: Bell Pottinger in South Africa

Learning outcomes The case can be used in strategic management, international business or ethics courses. In strategic management courses, students will be able to identify political relationships as sources of a firm’s competitive advantage. Students will also understand the role of ethics in the firm’s competitive advantage. In international business courses, the students will be able to analyze the role that corruption and bribery play in the analysis of a country’s institutions. Students will also understand how corruption in a host country influences a firms’ decision to internationalize. Finally, students will understand the challenges that firms face when serving customers in other countries. In ethics courses, students will understand the nature of state/business corruption, i.e. the abuse of public office for private gain and the concept of state capture, i.e. managers controlling the political system for their advantage. Students will be able to analyze the decision of whether to collaborate with unethical partners or customers. Case overview/synopsis Bell Pottinger Private (BPP) was a British public relations (PR) firm with a successful but questionable reputation of helping famous critical figures and despots improve their public image. In 2016, Lord Tim Bell and the other leaders of BPP were asked to create a PR campaign for the Gupta family. The Guptas were a group of businessmen headed by three brothers who migrated from India to South Africa in the early 1990s. By the 2010s, they had built a business empire allegedly thanks to a corrupt relationship with the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma and his family. The press and prosecutors were increasing their investigations on these relations. The case has two parts, which address two separate challenges and can be taught as standalone cases or in a sequence in two sessions. Complexity academic level MBA and Executive Education. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 5: International business.

Governing through markets: Multinational firms in the bazaar economy

AbstractThis article highlights a counterintuitive dynamic of neoliberal globalization. India has controversially liberalized foreign investment rules in the politically sensitive food retail sector. Critics argue that India bowed to pressure from multinational corporations, consistent with a common view that under neoliberalism markets eclipse state power. We suggest by contrast that policymakers seek multinational firms to strengthen their capacity to govern food markets that for centuries have been dominated by networks of local traders. These traders use informal conventions of market governance that have long proven resistant to centralized state control. Global retailers promise to transform these opaque, “traditional” systems into transparent, “modern,” supply chains that comply with liberal rule of law principles. Thus we argue the turn to multinational capital should neither be understood simply through the logics of state capture or welfare economics, but rather also as a political governance project that illustrates how different kinds of markets produce different conceptions of the state.

Incomplete Transition – Is there a “Mid-Transition Trap”?

Abstract The subject of this paper is the analysis of the classification of economic systems. The traditional classifications of capitalist, socialist centrally planned, and socialist market systems, and the newer classification of variants of capitalism into the Anglo-Saxon, European continental, and Asian models, are inadequate to explain new phenomena in a globalized economy. After the collapse of central planning, countries in transition became a category describing processes of deep socio-economic transformation. These transition countries aspired to meet the standards of developed European market economies, as well as governance standards regarding democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. A new classification of economic systems by Balcerowicz (2014) combines the traditional classification of economic systems with the characteristics of well-governed democratic societies in order to come up with a matrix that shows the interaction of economic system characteristics and governance outcomes.This paper builds on Balcerowicz’s classification by introducing and delineating the categories of state capitalism, crony capitalism, and state capture in order to provide a new classification of economic systems. It uses these concepts to empirically analyze the transition countries, with special reference to states aspiring to EU membership and the new EU member states. The methodology used is analytical and empirical. The results find that the transition is incomplete, especially in terms of governance, leading to the hypothesis of a ‘mid-transition trap’, similar to the much discussed ‘middle-income trap’. The results should lead to further, more refined research.

The perils of succor: The European Union's financial role in the Western Balkans during COVID‐19

AbstractThe Western Balkans' response to the first wave of COVID‐19 was efficient and swift. The countries’ capacity to mitigate the crisis has been vastly facilitated by EU fiscal disbursements. The funds have enabled governments to implement health and economic policies that counteract the crisis' socioeconomic repercussions. In this article, I examine the temporal effects of EU conditionality on the health outcomes and democratic governance of Balkan states. Identifying three features of the domestic political context—government accountability, the strength of opposition parties, and judicial system effectiveness—I assess the likelihood of divergent effects of the funds on health and democratic outcomes. I argue that while beneficial in the short term, in the long run, the EU funds risk enabling state capture and inadvertently jeopardizing the Western Balkans' post‐pandemic democratic prospects. I empirically substantiate my argument by examining the relationship between prior EU allocations (Instrument for Pre‐Accession Assistance) and clientelism in WB states during 2007–2017.