Corruption and state capture

YELLOW PAD NATHAN GILBERT QUIMPO

- NATHAN GILBERT QUIMPO

In corruption studies, a field largely unheralded in the Philippines, there is a concept with growing global impact that has not drawn much attention yet in the country: state capture. Corruption studies expert Daniel Kaufmann defines state capture as “the undue influence by members or groups in the economic and political elite in shaping the rules of the game: morphing and distorting the laws, policies, regulations and institutions of the state to their own advantage at the expense of society.”

The Philippines has been rocked by scandals of grand corruption over the past few decades and is now confronted with a flood control scam said to be the biggest corruption scandal in the country’s history. Has the scale and level of corruption in the Philippines reached that of state capture? If so, what is the relationship between corruption and state capture?

The idea of the Philippine state being “captured” or “captive” is not really new, but characterizations of such capture have usually been subsumed to broader characterizations of the state as being “weak,” “soft,” “patrimonial,” or “anti-development.”

Temario Rivera described the Philippine state as being “a weak state” that is a captive of “dominant social classes and powerful political families and clans.” Jose Abueva portrayed the Philippines as “a ‘soft state’ dominated and perpetuated by the political and economic elite,” specifically “rent-seeking” oligarchs,” and “rich and powerful politicians and their families.”