Is Fighting Corruption Authoritarian? 

The fight against corruption is often presented as the natural path to strengthening democracy. It is not uncommon to hear that, if we eliminate bribery, favoritism, and embezzlement, institutions will become stronger and society more just. Many of the elements that make up anti-corruption efforts are also democratic elements, such as greater transparency in government accounts and decision-making processes, more formalized bureaucracy, equal access for all citizens, and mechanisms of oversight and accountability.

Decades ago, Huntington already pointed to a simple principle: deficient democratic systems produce corruption. When social groups or elites do not find legitimate channels of representation, or when there are no economic opportunities, corruption becomes a means of survival and influence. The logic is clear: if the system does not serve the interests of the people and elites, it is bypassed through corruption. More recently, scholars such as Ziblatt and Della Porta remind us that democracy only flourishes when elites find ways to participate constructively, and that anti-corruption social movements can be an ingredient of democratic resistance, as long as they are not co-opted by populist or authoritarian forces.

It is at this point that the debate intersects with the Principal-Agent Model, the most widespread theory in the corruption literature. The idea is relatively simple: the state and its representatives — the agent — are supposed to serve the population — the principal. Problems arise when the agent has its own interests or information that the principal cannot monitor. The classic solution proposed by economists and political scientists is to increase oversight, create incentives and penalties, formalize procedures, and make bureaucracy more transparent and independent. In theory, all of this strengthens democracy.

In practice, however, this logic hides a trap. By rigidly separating “agents” and “principals,” by formalizing bureaucracy and making every decision traceable, a predictable and centralized system is created. Authoritarians have learned to use exactly these tools to their advantage. Anti-corruption agencies, strong courts, oversight commissions — which should be instruments of transparency — can be instrumentalized to target opponents, while the public narrative continues to point to a fight against corruption, not authoritarianism. Recent experiences in countries as different as Georgia, Hong Kong, and Brazil show that anti-corruption efforts can, paradoxically, accelerate democratic backsliding. Measures against everyday corruption — the small, ritualized kind, like bribing a police officer to avoid a fine or a bureaucrat to move a process forward — did work. But political corruption, at the highest level, grew. The immediate result was not democratic consolidation, but institutional weakening and the persecution of opponents.

In Georgia, the security apparatus and the anti-corruption agency were used to pursue political adversaries. In Brazil, part of the momentum generated by Operation Car Wash was instrumentalized by Sérgio Moro to capture the judicial process and punish political rivals. Authors such as Hardin and Heilbroner, in the 1970s, already suggested that democracies would not have the strength to deal with problems such as corruption, and that only strong leaders could impose order — an idea that gained traction in the following decades, not in academia, where it has since been empirically and theoretically discredited, but among the public, especially among voters of the authoritarian right. It is common to hear that the system is corrupt, and that only a myth, a people’s hero, will be able to clean it up, even if that requires authoritarian action. Today, authoritarians use these lessons in an adaptive way: they do not need military coups, only the co-optation of anti-corruption institutions and a convincing narrative that justifies authoritarianism as an attempt to “clean up politics.”

A Mythomaniac Myth

If a well-intentioned authoritarian were capable of “cleaning the system,” we would see “clean systems” spread across dictatorships around the world. However, the reality is the opposite. In China, regional leaders inflate economic indicators to impress their superiors, securing promotion within the Communist Party. In Hungary, small-scale corruption becomes a political instrument: if the system is corrupt, discontent and apathy are created, demobilizing citizens and weakening social movements that could challenge the concentration of power. Many other examples are possible, but the pattern is clear: corruption is a product of a system in which interests are not equally represented. The solution is not an authoritarian hero, but equity — a good life for everyone. It is no coincidence that countries with higher levels of popular satisfaction and social equality, such as the Nordic countries, are also those with the lowest levels of corruption. Nor is it a coincidence that dictatorships, in general, are widely known to be more corrupt than democracies.

“But this politician is different, this one will clean up the country”: Let us imagine that individuals are capable of producing substantial change on their own, immune to any constraints imposed by the system in which they operate (something highly unlikely, as I discussed in the column “For an Eco-Dictatorship?”, referenced below), and that once these changes are made, these myths are able to sustain them even after their deaths or unlikely departure from power (something that Bueno de Mesquita shows is also unlikely, given the instability of new coalitions after periods of deep transformation).

Let us continue in good faith with the argument, and also imagine that we are able to know the true interests, values, and dispositions of these myths before granting them power (as Mearsheimer explains well in his book “Why Leaders Lie,” even less likely — just think, for example, of Erdoğan at the beginning of his career, pushing Turkey toward a generous agreement with the Kurds, working toward a secular state, etc., and compare it with the current fundamentalist authoritarian Erdoğan). Let us also imagine that their dispositions, values, and interests remain stable over time, or that if they change, they change positively. Let us imagine that this leader protects minorities that do not give him power, that he treats those who disagree with him fairly, or those who attack him in a free press that, of course, the myth would maintain.

Even under these extremely generous assumptions, we would still not be able to guarantee stability, predictability, or justice over time. And here we arrive at a central element that is often underestimated in personalistic narratives: the rule of law.

More than “having laws,” the rule of law means having stable, known rules of the game, applied in an impersonal way, including — and especially — against those who hold power. It is about ensuring that no one is above the rules, and that these rules do not change according to the convenience of the ruler of the moment. Such a system does not depend on the contested and elusive virtue of a leader, but on institutional predictability.

This is crucial because leaders pass. Even if, hypothetically, the initial “myth” were incorruptible, nothing guarantees that their successor will be. On the contrary: by concentrating power and weakening oversight, this leader tends to leave behind a system more vulnerable to capture by less scrupulous actors. Without stable rules, every transition becomes a risk; every new ruler, a potentially dangerous unknown.

In a consolidated democracy, this problem is mitigated by institutional mechanisms that do not depend on the goodwill of individuals. Free and competitive elections allow for the peaceful replacement of rulers. Independent courts can limit abuses of power. A free press investigates, exposes, and informs. Oversight institutions operate with relative autonomy. And, perhaps most importantly, there is a real possibility of removing leaders who violate the rules — not through rupture, but through institutionalized procedures.

This set of guarantees does not eliminate corruption or prevent occasional backsliding. But it creates something more important: the capacity for correction. Democratic systems make mistakes, but they also provide ways to correct them without collapsing. Systems that concentrate power, on the other hand, may act quickly, but they lack precisely this capacity for self-correction.

Moreover, democracy offers something no authoritarian arrangement can sustainably replicate: pluralism. The coexistence of divergent interests, competition between political projects, and the possibility of public contestation are not obstacles to good governance, but conditions for its existence. It is from this friction that more balanced policies emerge, more legitimate decisions are made, and, paradoxically, less space is left for systemic forms of corruption.

If corruption is largely the result of power asymmetries and lack of control, then the answer is not to concentrate even more power, but to organize it in such a way that no one can fully capture it. And that, as history suggests, is something only democracy — with all its imperfections — has been able to offer.

The Privatization of Corruption

Another easy solution popularized by the neoliberal wave to corruption is the privatization of state activities, based on the argument that private agents, subject to competition and market incentives, would tend to be more efficient and less prone to corrupt practices than public bureaucracies. If, according to the Principal-Agent Model, the problem lies in the state “agent,” the solution seems simple: aggressively reduce the state and transfer its functions to the private sector, where market discipline would supposedly replace the need for constant oversight.

The problem, as Paul Starr argues, is that this view is based on a limited understanding of both the state and the market. Privatization does not eliminate power — it merely redistributes it. And, more often than not, it shifts it into less transparent and less democratically accountable arenas. Private companies that take over public functions begin to operate in a kind of grey zone: they exercise power, but without the same level of control, transparency, and scrutiny that exists over state institutions. The result is not necessarily less corruption, but a different kind of corruption: more opaque, harder to trace, and often legalized through contracts, lobbying, and regulatory influence.

Moreover, the idea that markets are naturally self-disciplining ignores the fact that they also depend on rules, enforcement, and institutional guarantees — that is, on the state itself. Without this, what emerges is not competition, but concentration. Privatization processes, especially when carried out rapidly or without robust institutional safeguards, tend to create private oligopolies or monopolies with enormous economic and political power. In such contexts, corruption does not disappear; it is reorganized around relationships between large economic actors and political power, often through regulatory capture. Just think of the rapid privatization of the former Soviet Union or the former Yugoslavia, and how these processes were marked by the emergence of violence, market failures, oligarchies, and highly corrupt economic elites.

The market is not, by definition, more efficient or less corrupt than the state. It operates within the same system, under the same rules of power. The distinction between market and state is itself often misleading, as seen in mixed-capital or state-owned enterprises, politicians operating large private companies (Trump, for example), companies with political power (such as Elon Musk’s firms and their multilateral influence capable of shifting the balance in the war in Ukraine, or historical examples like the British and Dutch East India Companies), among others.

Starr also draws attention to the fact that certain state functions are not merely services, but expressions of public authority — such as health, education, security, and justice. When these functions are privatized, it is not just operational efficiency that is transferred, but the very nature of the relationship between citizens and power. Rights tend to be reinterpreted as commodities, and access becomes dependent on purchasing power or market position, which can deepen inequality and, paradoxically, create new incentives for corrupt practices.

As in the case of the “savior leader,” the promise that the market can “clean up” the system ignores that corruption is not merely a failure of individual incentives, but a structural phenomenon. Without strong institutions, transparency, and democratic oversight mechanisms, both the state and the market can become fertile spaces for abuse of power. The difference is that, in the case of unchecked privatization, this power tends to move even further away from citizens’ reach.

If the goal is to reduce corruption sustainably, the question is not simply “more state” or “more market,” but how to structure both under clear, stable, and democratic rules. At the end of the day, corruption is the lack of proper and functional channels of representation. It is a lack of social and economic equity. Treating corruption in isolation through punishment alone is a recipe for authoritarian rule.

References

Bueno de Mesquita, B. (2010). The dictator’s handbook: Why bad behavior is almost always good politics. PublicAffairs.

Della Porta, D. (1996). Social movements, political violence, and the state: A comparative analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge University Press.

Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248. 

Heilbroner, R. L. (1974). An inquiry into the human prospect. W. W. Norton & Company.

Huntington, S. P. (1968). Political order in changing societies. Yale University Press.

Mearsheimer, J. J. (2011). Why leaders lie: The truth about lying in international politics. Oxford University Press.

Molinero Junior, G. R. 2025. “Por uma eco-ditadura.” DPolitik. April 16, 2025. 

Starr, P. (1988). The meaning of privatization. Yale Law & Policy Review, 6(1), 6–41. 

Ziblatt, D. (2017). Conservative parties and the birth of democracy. Cambridge University Press.