Slaying the Dragon of Corruption: Application of Multiple-Streams Framework in Anticorruption Policy Processes in Devolved Systems of Government in Kenya
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2024
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International Public Policy Association
Abstract
Public sector corruption is often defined as the abuse of public office for private gain (Alfano, Baraldi, & Cantabene, 2020). Scholars who support this definition argue that public office provides ideal breeding ground for certain types of corruption, such as embezzlement and bribery (Prasetyono, 2019). This paper focuses on embezzlement and bribery as they are of particular concern in Africa. It is estimated that Africa loses over U.S $ 50 billion annually to embezzlement, despite being the second fastest growing economic region in the world (World Bank, 2020). Africa is also home to some of the world’s most impoverished people who are forced to fork out bribes to access government services (Chalil, 2020). In Kenya, embezzlement and bribery have been identified as one of the greatest threats to public service delivery in the devolved governments (Opalo, 2020). A study carried out by Kenya’s Ethics and Anticorruption Commission found that 63% of Kenyans have to pay bribes to access county health facilities, 59% have to pay bribes to access water and sanitation, 58% have to pay bribes to access markets, and 57% have to pay bribes to access trade licenses within Kenya’s devolved governments (EACC, 2015). 2 Although policy makers view devolution as an anticorruption strategy, there is growing evidence that corruption poses a significant threat to the delivery of public services in many devolved jurisdictions (Mulyaman, Ismail, & Raya, 2019). Evidence from various Slaying the Dragon of Corruption: Application of Multiple-Streams Framework i... International Review of Public Policy, 6:3 | 2024 1 studies shows that corruption undermines the redistributive nature of public services, forcing the poor to shoulder a disproportionate burden, thus creating inequalities in society, exacerbating poverty, and causing an overall adverse effect on human development (Plotica, 2017). This problem is compounded by the absence of formal theoretical models within the anticorruption decision-making processes that would lead to successful outcomes within devolved governments (Chalil, 2020). Thus, scholars call for more empirical studies to delve into the complexities inherent in anticorruption policy processes within devolved governments and the state and nonstate actors involved (Boone, et al., 2019). 3 Current approaches to tackle anticorruption in the public sector have been influenced by scholarly views that look at corruption as a principal-agent problem, thus focusing policy efforts on integrity measures, strengthening institutions, training, and legislation (Brierley, 2019). The UN Convention against Corruption borrows from this tradition by emphasizing criminalization and law enforcement, which many countries currently use as a template for fighting corruption. Unfortunately, these approaches are based on interventionism (arresting the culprit after the corrupt act) and managerialism (tightening systems, procedures, and protocols to seal loopholes of corruption). They have been criticized for being based on western experiences and the exceptional case studies of Hong Kong and Singapore (Wickberg, 2018). They have also raised ideological concerns of the high moral ground taken by proponents of corruption policy agendas, especially those coming from the west and being pushed to third world countries (Arce & Hendricks, 2019). Critics argue that the corruption discourse and measures to fight it are highly western-centric and riddled with ideological interests of a capitalist and neoliberal economic agenda that promotes and legitimizes epistemological claims about corruption that are fundamentally westerncentric (Andersen, Johannesen, & Rijkers, 2020). For example, the function of the global corruption perceptions index is seen as legitimizing the corruption combating measures that western countries have placed on developing countries with the aim of eliminating obstacles to the free flow of capital (Andersen, Johannesen, & Rijkers, 2020). 4 Further, a growing body of literature is showing that anticorruption efforts are failing globally, in spite of high-level prosecutions that have targeted public officials, particularly in the third world. This has been blamed on current anticorruption policymaking approaches, which have been mainly informed by the principal-agent approach and tend to target the demand side of corruption (public officials) and mostly ignore the demand side (business/public) (Nguyen & Luong-Montenegrin, 2020). Other studies show that communities such as businesses and civil society, welcome corruption in certain contexts as the solution to easing the burden of bureaucratic bottlenecks, thus saving time and boosting their revenues (Nguyen & LuongMontenegrin, 2020). This view is not surprising given that many corruption studies have been approached from a functionalist and rational theory viewpoint, which tends to view corruption as how things are done (jumping bureaucratic hurdles). This approach has however received criticism for being tautological, as it does not rend itself to explanations on when corruption is functional (or not) (Smartis, 2018). It also does not explain why some people are corrupt and others are not, and what kinds of problems might be more amenable to corrupt solutions (Smartis, 2018). Slaying the Dragon of Corruption: In the absence of robust empirical evidence, Kenya’s attempts to deal with corruption have followed global trends by adopting a managerialism and interventionist approach. This has involved criminalizing corruption, tightening procedures, and arresting the culprits. At the national level, Kenya has attempted to increase public sector wages and privatize public services, but this has not yielded the desired results and has exacerbated corruption (Boone, et al., 2019). Evidence from the Kenyan counties (devolved governments) shows that efforts to combat corruption have not been rigorous, as current practices rely on faulty, anecdotal corruption indexes and politicized interventions (Opalo, 2020). For instance, when we look at county level policy instruments in Kenya, we find that they borrow from the rational theory approach and thus concentrate on managerialism and deterrent measures as anticorruption mechanisms (Mackey, 2019). Since different stakeholders such as the state, business and civil society have varying agendas with regard to the corruption situation, the resulting policy instruments at the county level will be the result of the actor(s) best able to lobby their case. 6 Despite this state of affairs, there is hardly any scholarly work on anticorruption policymaking processes in Kenya. Analytical frameworks that have been used to explain anticorruption policymaking in Kenya have largely been informed by rational choice theory (Chege & Wang, 2020). This paper makes a departure from this by utilizing MSF to add analytical value as it allows us to explore policymaking under conditions of ambiguity (Hoefer, 2022). Since policymaking is the result of complex processes involving a myriad of actors and institutions who operate in varying social, political and economic contexts, this paper seeks to illuminate Kenya’s anticorruption policymaking complexities under such ambiguity. MSF is considered suitable as it overcomes problems raised in earlier rational actor models (Hoefer, 2021). As this paper is the result of a case study of two counties in Kenya, MSF was deemed appropriate as it has been particularly praised for being helpful in conducting case studies (Cairney & Jones, 2016). 7 The study’s research strategy aims to provide comparative perspectives on the MSF model and contribute to comparative scholarship, taking into account key institutional differences between other countries and Kenya, and in so doing, potentially provide insightful theoretical and empirical contributions that may contribute to theory making in Africa. The paper makes a departure from existing anticorruption approaches by applying MSF to fluid and unpredictable environments that lack sequence. It also looks at MSF’s applicability to anticorruption agenda setting, drawing on previous implementation and evaluation to explain why hard-hitting anticorruption policies do not enter the agenda. 8 Contextually, the paper focuses on Kiambu and Nairobi City counties, which are two devolved governments in Kenya. The multiple streams framework is relevant for devolved governments in Kenya as it was initially applied to the U.S which has a devolved system of government. In analyzing the framework’s transferability, the paper looks at the interplay between three critical actors: the state, business, and civil society, which have been identified from the literature on the multiple streams framework as playing varying roles within the problem, policy, and political streams (Cairney & Jones, 2016)
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