Dismantling kleptocracy

 USAID has published a guide to combating kleptocracy--i.e. government by thieves.

DEKLEPTIFICATION GUIDE. Seizing Windows of Opportunity to Dismantle Kleptocracy

“And we’re going all in on dekleptification. Today, I’m announcing the creation of a new dekleptification guide—a handbook to help countries make the difficult transition from kleptocracy to democracy. This guide, drawn from previous democratic openings in Romania, Dominican Republic, and South Africa, provides advice to reformers on how to root out deeply entrenched corruption and technical advice on how to implement radical transparency and accountability measures, how to stand up new anti-corruption structures. Moving rapidly and aggressively in historic windows of opportunity will make these reforms harder to reverse.”  -USAID Administrator Samantha Power, remarks delivered on June 7, 2022.

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Here's the full report.

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"The Kremlin’s most common method of closing other countries’ reform windows is covertly bankrolling opposition political parties. The Russian Federation has gotten caught deploying financial interference in elections more than 100 times over the past decade.124 Until 2014, the targets were mostly limited to the former Soviet bloc. For example, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and Georgia’s Rose Revolution ended when Russia-backed oligarchs funded pro-Russian candidates who became presidents and rekleptified the two countries.  Over the decade ending in 2014, Putin felt increasingly rebuffed by Western politicians who would not stand for his violations of the sovereignty of neighboring countries.126 His relations with the West came to a head when Ukrainians opened their dekleptification window in 2014. Since then, the Kremlin has dramatically expanded the target surface of its financial interference in elections, deploying covert foreign money all over the world, often to close windows or prevent them from opening (see Figure 7).

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"CONCLUSION The ultimate objective of dekleptification is to help nations that endeavor to adapt their social contract away from kleptocracy and toward new social norms about the government’s duties and the public’s intolerance for corruption. Such adaptations take many years or decades, sustained by virtuous circles of institutions that prove effective and popular enough to withstand efforts to undermine them and restore kleptocratic rule. Exceptional institutional and societal resilience is needed in strategically contested countries, where the influence of foreign kleptocracies and the pathways of transnational corruption provide enormous resources to corrupt elements seeking to undermine reform.

"The most important and essential precondition for a virtuous circle is very broad and highly mobilized demand throughout the society, driving powerful domestic political action that ushers in a window of opportunity to roll back kleptocracy. Amid those pivotal openings, reformers urgently call for rapid responses from the international donor community. They need everything from fastmoving funding to targeted communications to in-kind technical expertise. When deciding how to build cutting-edge institutions to deliver transparency, accountability, and inclusion, reformers benefit greatly from lessons learned during similar windows in other countries.

"This guide captures those insights. It draws from USAID experts who were on the ground during the windows of Georgia 2004-2012, Romania 2004-2018, Egypt 2011-2013, Brazil 2013-2019, Ukraine 2014-present, Guatemala 2015-2017, Armenia 2018-present, South Africa 2018-2019, Malaysia 2018-2020, Sudan 2019-2021, Moldova 2021-present, Bulgaria 2021-present, the Dominican Republic 2020-present, and Zambia 2021-present. USAID partnered with reformers who forged inclusive institutions that were radically transparent and aggressively accountable, generating models for other countries confronting kleptocracy and strategic corruption. These reformers tried to establish anti-corruption institutions rapidly enough to seize and sustain fleeting windows of political will. And they scoped the policy details to be far more transparent, independent, and inclusive than is common elsewhere. This a not apolitical and technocratic work; it requires overwhelming public demand, timely political analysis, vibrant civil society, well-coordinated donors and interagency partners, and Missions highly attuned to the fluid and intense political dynamics of dekleptification.

"This comprehensive approach to rolling back kleptocratic structures is central to the modern pursuit of development, democracy, and peace."