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By Rashad Aliyev

The Government of Azerbaijan (GOA) recently embarked on an anti-corruption drive owing to pressure by real and perceived threats to its authority akin to those in the Arab world. Despite all the hype about the anti-corruption measures, after 4 months into the campaign, petty bribery has been reduced in certain areas, but more deeply rooted forms of grand corruption in politics and the economy are unfazed by these measures. This gives reasons to believe that the government never intended to take a holistic approach to curb corruption in the first place. “Anti-corruption” in this case is a misnomer to this obvious placatory “anti-bribery” drive. Corruption in developing countries such as Azerbaijan extends far beyond petty corruption, and it is obvious that the government’s efforts are only smokescreens in an attempt to calm the angry masses. Not meaning to rain on an idealists’ parade, but this outcome was predictable from the point of view in the theory of violence and social order. Just as theory predicts, this step against corruption in Azerbaijan is not meant to run its true course under existing circumstances as it goes against the interests of the controlling elite in Azerbaijan.

A measure designed to combat corruption is only effective to the extent that it goes beyond just applying stop-gap measures as opposed to addressing the root causes and systemic deficiencies that make corruption possible. What we have seen in Azerbaijan is not a genuine fight against corruption but only a step taken in order to contain the threat of violence in what is called a limited access order (LAO). According to the theory of social orders, societies are classified as open access societies such as most countries of Western Europe and North America, and limited access orders such as Azerbaijan and most developing countries. A key distinction among nations that makes this classification possible is the variation in the levels of openness and access to the political arena and the domestic markets, in other words the level of fair political and economic competition. The LAOs limit access only to the elites and their client networks.

The number one objective of the elites sitting on top of the pyramid which controls the resources of the society is to maintain order and contain violence to ensure unobstructed access to the resources for themselves and limit such access for the masses. It can be noted that there are times when unpredicted external factors such as increase in the prices of commodities or natural disasters threaten this order and enhances the risk of violence. Case in point, the impact on the Middle East and North Africa, first of the global rice shortages and more recently of the hike in the prices of crops due to restricted exports from Russia and elsewhere caused by natural calamities. That is when the ruling elites are forced to make concessions commensurate with the level of perceived threats of violence to its authority. In the case of Azerbaijan, the pressures that brought about the recent campaign were the flooding in several rural areas, rising food prices and of course the impact of the revolutions in the Arab world among others. The impact of each of these factors was evident both in the run up to and during the said campaign, despite government claims that the campaign was a preconceived act before the uprisings abroad: the residents of the regions that suffered from floods organized several protests instigated by mismanagement and misdistribution of relief and reconstruction funds; the rise in food prices, including the unprecedented spike in the prices of eggs, due to a callous move of a certain “egg cartel” who raised the prices of eggs in order to take advantage of the holiday season.  These prices were promptly rolled-back by President Aliyev himself owing to public outrage.

The steps undertaken by the political elite in Azerbaijan bear two distinct features. First, this “anti-corruption” drive is not an intra-elite power struggle of the sort that was observed in Kazakhstan at its peak in 2009, when high-ranking officials, including the Minister of Environment and two of his deputies, a Deputy Minister of Defense, Chairman of the Water Resources Committee, the director of the Astana City Construction Company, Chairman of the Financial Control at the Ministry of Finance, former head of KazMunaiGaz and advisor to President Nazarbayev, as well as influential regional governors were subject to criminal investigation and prosecution. Second, the GOA has taken a bottom-up, rather than top-down approach to combating corruption by tackling mostly petty corruption. In Azerbaijan this drive has so far taken a heavy toll on the rank and file, barely grazing those in the higher echelons. Only few top level officials have been dismissed since the official “go-ahead” was given during the January meeting of the State Anti-Corruption Commission (such as the head of the state water utility Azersu, head of penitentiary service and a deputy-minister of national security) but again, those dismissals were not followed up by arrests or investigations, hence cannot be directly linked to corruption. A number of municipal officers have been arrested and placed under investigation but not a single chief regional executive officer has been subject to corruption related investigations to date. This is perfectly in line with the low expectations about this government policy.

These “anti-corruption” measures by the GOA do not follow the pattern of a genuine and meaningful public policy, but only is a spur of the moment drive instigated by sudden and unexpected external and subsequent internal threats. The flawed character of this policy is evident from numerous observations and an example from the recent changes in the administrative penal code is a telling example of the nature of this campaign. For decades the dreaded traffic police have been among the most corrupt and therefore exuberant government offices encouraging excessive bribery by its staff, so much so, that it had evolved into one of the most desired employers in the country for corruptible wannabes from all walks of life - rural, urban, the young and the middle-aged. Until very recently, Azerbaijan practiced a bizarre scheme to collect fines for traffic violations - officers were allowed to collect fines from ticketed drivers on the spot for most violations. As the traffic police have been one of the most visibly corrupt areas in government, on the heels of the “anti-corruption” drive, the government decided to put an end to this practice of on-the-scene cash payments and now drivers must pay all fines at banks. But in line with the said theory on social order and violence, the government also realized it cannot slash their incomes from bribes without “just compensation”. After all, Azeri traffic police officers were until recently collecting very high profits from pocketing traffic fines, so a new incentive scheme was introduced by which 25% of the total amount of traffic fines collected will from now on be redistributed to the officers. Some consider this a positive change towards eliminating corruption, but there is a flaw that makes this imperfect incentive a double-edged sword. While changing the said law, the government ignored another related unorthodox practice by which the statutory fine for a given traffic violation is not a fixed amount but is a fine on an interval basis, where fines for most violations are shown in the law as intervals of 20-40, 100-140 and 200-300 AZN. And to make matters worse, there is no clearly defined criteria as to how the exact amount is to be determined, which again gives officers two strong incentives - to continue the old practice of accepting small bribes upfront in return for issuing 200 AZN ticket instead of a 300 AZN ticket or fine the maximum amount to receive a higher salary at the end of the month.

As “swift” as the government was to pull out the anti-corruption campaign out of its hat, once the populace tires of this “scheme”, it will only provoke other forms of protests organized by young activists who use social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, moves inspired by the developments in Egypt & Bahrain among others. So far, the government has succeeded in blindsiding activists as well as the opposition with an iron fist for now but these scare tactics will soon be short-lived as discontent festers.

By definition the ruling elite in Azerbaijan cannot implement sweeping changes because the sole purpose of the elite coalition is to protect its exclusive access to the sources of rents, of which corruption is an important element, and this flow of cash is the key factor that holds the elites together and ensures the loyalty of its client network. This role and interests of the ruling elites in limited access societies suggests that the ruling elites are inherently corrupt by virtue of their rent-seeking behavior. As a result, businesses, corporations, NGOs and the like who are outside the patronage or client network of these elites face both open and covert constraints to their operation in Azerbaijan. One of the main arguments against high-profile anti-corruption cases in LAOs such as Azerbaijan is that going too far with such campaigns may disrupt the political and economic fabric of the country, which is precisely what the elites are there to prevent from happening in the first place. In situations like this, the elites reduce corruption on the margins (petty corruption) and add more members into the elite coalition to increase the coalition’s ability to survive against threats. But this expansion is bound to be limited because there is an important trade off to make - expanding the coalition reduces the amount of rents and makes it less attractive to remain in the coalition. In other words, there is a certain feedback loop - lower corruption reduces the amount of rents for coalition members and their client networks, thereby increasing the risks of disloyalty and defection, which in turn puts pressure on the top elites to look for ways to expand or at least maintain the same level of rent opportunities, with corruption being an important source. These two counter pressures of maintaining social order and keeping its clients happy, force the elites to move away from at least the more visible forms of corruption such as bribe-taking by the traffic police, towards less visible corruption, such as embezzlement, nepotism and cronyism in granting government contracts, a trend already in process and expected to intensify further as the country prepares the capital Baku to hold the Eurovision song contest in May 2012. There has also been an increase in the channeling of government grants to pro-government youth organizations on the basis of political affiliation. In Azerbaijan the government is clearly stepping up the expansion of the network by mobilizing youth via networks of pro-government NGOs and forums, and the connection of these steps to the goal of strengthening the government authority is hard to miss.

Conclusions: According to the World Bank, corruption is only an outcome - a consequence of weak or bad governance. There is widespread agreement among international organizations and NGOs dealing with corruption that the rule of law, democratic and good governance, and strong civil society are the basic prerequisites to effectively and meaningfully fight corruption in all forms and at all levels of government. What we see in Azerbaijan is what dooms the said government policy from its onset - an extremely weak civil society and institutions, no judicial independence, no transparency coupled with poor accounting and auditing practices in government and the lack of other elements required to start and sustain a systematic elimination of this evil. Corruption is only a symptom of the dysfunctional political and economic system in Azerbaijan and bribery is only one among the many forms such as patronage and cronyism, embezzlement, monopolization, influencing judiciary, kickbacks, extortion, conflicts of interests and nepotism which permeates virtually all levels of government. Any anti-corruption policy can never be effective unless the governmenthttp genuinely has the conscience and heart to tackle this challenge by addressing the underlying causes of corruption and not by selectively punishing individual occurrences just for show.