Recently, the government has taken quite a heavy handed approach when it comes to dealing with corruption. While on the surface it may seem like the top leaders have had a sudden moral awakening, if you study the political history of many authoritarian leaders, this emerges as a common tactic among most of them. Let’s see why they do it:
Let’s take the very recent example of China. Ever since Xi Jinping came to power, he has taken a “tough on corruption” stance against many members of his own party. While he, his family and his close associates amassed billion dollars in wealth, he has cracked down on other politicians who have looked to do the same.
You see, their problem is not with corruption per se, their problem is sharing wealth and power with too many people. Ultimately, if you wish to be authoritarian, you have to allow massive levels of abuse in the government. No dictator, no matter how stern, can ever rule alone. You need to have people around you who want you to stay in power. What vested interested will they have in your reign if you ultimately don’t allow them to blatantly abuse the system? As your reign gets longer and longer, two things begin to happen:
1.) You inevitably start losing public approval.
2.) The number of stakeholders in our governance begins to increase.
As you lose public approval, you need to consolidate power more and more to stay on top. This means increasing the benefits received by your key supporters. You have to allow them to abuse the system more frequently. As the Chinese economic growth rate slowed down, Xi recognized that this was becoming unsustainable. There were way too many stakeholders and each one of them were expecting increasing benefits. At one point, it became impossible to keep everyone happy. He had to identify the stakeholders who were expendable. These stakeholders were put under the axe and their share was transferred to the ones who were critical to Xi’s grip on power. Now, simply cutting them off isn’t sustainable either. You need to make sure that they can’t retaliate and to that end, Xi put them behind bars. Transparency international reports that corruption and abuse of power has never been more rampant in China, but, now, only a very small number of politicians benefit from it as opposed to a decade ago.
This has happened so many times in history around the world, that you could write a handbook on it. So, in short, no, our government hasn’t had a change of heart, it’s just a classic move for consolidating power. They are just following the footsteps of countless dictators before them.
Shams Rahman is a member of the editorial board at Muktiforum.
