Corruption Prevention in Legislative Drafting in Indonesia

Corruption not only happens in the implementation of legislation or policy (administrative corruption) but also in the process of legislative drafting (state capture). Since the establishment of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), many members of the House of Representatives (DPR), the Regional Legislative Council (DPRD), or government officials have been arrested and convicted of criminal acts due to legislative corruption. In legislative corruption, the actors involved consist of the interest parties and lawmakers. The interest parties attempt to obtain political, economic, and social benefits (supernormal profits) from the formulated legislation. To the same extent, the lawmakers expect the money or other personal benefits from the interest parties in return for the assistance given. Legislative corruption will lead to disorganized policy implementation, loss on the national economy, public distrust of the law-maker institutions, and long-term effect of distrust of law and democracy. Several prevention strategies of legislative corruption can be employed by improving four principles of legislative drafting: management, professionalism, justification, and public participation.

The slippery slope to State capture: cadre deployment as an enabler of corruption and a contributor to blurred party-State lines

Drawing on both legal and political sources, this article scrutinises the policy of cadre deployment that the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa, has implemented, and continues to apply. The analysis begins by recalling and commenting on the only reported judgment in South African jurisprudence that dealt with the political influencing of municipalities' exercise of their public power to make appointments, namely, Mlokoti v Amathole District Municipality & another 2009 (6) SA 354 (ECD). What the Mlokoti case has confirmed is that the legal foundation for the exercise of public power is found in the Constitution and its enabling legislation, and not in party political policy, such as the ongoing practice of cadre deployment. In an investigation of cadre deployment, the article then demonstrates that this ANC policy, particularly judging by its stated purpose, is incompatible with the constitutional State and, instead, enables the rise of the shadow State. Unsurprisingly, therefore, political commentators increasingly observe that, apart from the revelations at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry, State capture in South Africa in fact commenced when the ANC assumed political power in pursuit of the National Democratic Revolution. It is argued that the pursuit of a National Democratic Revolution in South Africa is directly at odds with the vision and goals of the 1994 constitutional pact. Convening a bipartisan national convention on philosophical and other approaches to the fight against corruption may offer a solution. Here, a starting point would be to reconsider the country's anti-corruption strategies to pay proper attention to the ethical causes of this scourge.

Organized crime and state capture in the Western Balkans

The main objective of the article is to show that the temporary symbiosis between centres of political power and organized crime leads to the development of permanent, corrupt and opaque networks. Focusing on the countries of the Western Balkans, the author points to the reasons for the development of organized crime in the region and then to the conditions created in the post-conflict period that resulted in the failure of effective attempts to stop organized crime and the corruption that facilitates it in the these countries. The article also points out that the creation of symbiotic relationships between political elites and organized crime groups leads to a ‘state capture.’ The unresolved problems of corruption and organized crime, in turn, have a direct impact on these countries’ EU-integration processes.

Cattle Grazing and Forest Devastation in Brazil

This article examines the history and present-day dynamics of deforestation and cattle grazing in Brazil’s Amazon. It discusses the long-standing strategic alliance between agribusiness and the Brazilian state, as well as the role of livestock grazing in Brazil’s developmental ideology of the frontier. It shows how the livestock industry is enlaced with soy production in the deterritorialization and deforestation of the Amazon, as well as the legalized theft of indigenous lands. It places these Brazilian dynamics into larger international context and analyses the class structure and state capture of Brazil’s agro-industrial sector.

Democracy revisited? Prospects of (liberal) democracy (not only) in the East-Central Europe

Scholarly debate about the prospects of democracy have undergone a fundamental change in the last three decades. While the period of the 1990s might be distinguished by extensive optimism, in the 2000s we can observe a distinct change towards a more restrained perception. Furthermore, the last decade might be evaluated as pessimistic in the social sciences on the grounds of economic recession after 2008 as well other crisis in an economic, societal and political senses. The rather distinctive terms used for the expression of doubts about the pro-democratic development and consolidation, such as ‘semi-consolidated’, ‘new’ or ‘young’ democracy, or de-democratisation, were replaced with more dramatic expressions such as illiberal democracy, democratic backsliding, hybrid, regime, soft dictatorship and ‘the light that failed’, as Krastev described the recent image of East-Central Europe in an almost dystopic manner. While in the 1990s the Slovak version of democratura – Mečiarism – was perceived as the exception, in the late 2010s populist neo-illiberal regimes became the dominant shape of regimes in (East)Central Europe. This review essay presents three recent analyses of the democratic backsliding and state capture (not only) in East-Central Europe and frames this presentation into the more extensive literature review.