There is a muted but ongoing debate about whether a country can be democratic and fight corruption at the same time (see Success stories). A related debate concerns economic development. Thus, can the undemocratic Chinese government achieve the economic growth it aspires to without increasing accountability? Some people hold up China’s stellar performance as evidence that it need not, while others allege that its growth would be greater still if it were to change its political system.

This month Rajesh Tandon, a prominent civil society leader from India, spoke at the closing of the International Society for Third-Sector Research conference. In response to a question from the audience, Tandon argued that it is no longer possible to have economic development without democracy because of the availability of information. For example, the ease of sending images by cell phone has made international news out of events like the Chinese crackdown on Uighur protesters last year, whereas ten years ago it is unlikely anyone but locals would have known what happened. Moreover, cell phones as well as the internet can help organize social movements demanding accountability in places that were once able to silence all opposition.

All this is true. But I fear that the world’s tyrants are more resilient than this suggests. New technology may empower ordinary people, but they are not the only ones with access. Those in power, whether in China, Guinea, or Saudi Arabia, have both the incentive and the resources to out-maneuver their opponents. New technology is the playground of the young and agile, neither of which generally characterize authoritarian bureaucracies… but they can learn, both from their opponents and from each other, in the same way A.Q. Khan spread nuclear secrets around the world.

For example, what happens now that millions of people saw videos of Chinese police beating Uighurs: Has treatment improved, or has the Chinese government simply wakened to the need to repress in a lower-profile manner? When was the last time you heard about the Uighurs anyway?

In face of this, those of us fighting for governments that better serve their people must not become complacent. We have a head start right now, and we have to be careful not to squander it. Keeping on the cutting edge, developing continually new strategies, and thinking outside the box are the tools of the information age. With these, the collective brainpower of average citizens is far greater than their oppressors’.

New technology is indeed a democratizing force, but only if it is channeled effectively will it fall into the right hands.

In October 2008 I attended the International Anti-Corruption Conference. On a bus from the hotel to a reception, I sat next to someone named Julian Assange. At the time, I did not know who he was. He told me he worked for a group called Wikileaks, which was not a wiki but rather a website where anyone can submit (either electronically or by regular mail) otherwise unpublishable information for publication. Unlike a wiki, the information is verified. In fact, it is passed through a series of servers in a series of countries to make it legally unassailable. Wikileaks has been responsible for publicizing everything from Sarah Palin’s emails to hard evidence of government corruption in Kenya, all obtained through anonymous sources.

Julian, whose picture appears in a recent Economist article, spent the bus ride and longer more or less arguing that he and his colleagues were the sole people at the conference who were doing anything serious about corruption. The only way to expose corruption, he said, is to make information public that proves it. Anyone sniffing around the edges was doing no more than that. There was no need to worry that the “wrong” information might be revealed, causing unintended consequences or unnecessarily damaging a reputation. Wikileaks takes care of that, he said, by vetting all submissions. And isn’t it better that the information is out there to be used than buried by a select and self-interested few?

I argued in vain that all of us at the conference were contributing our bit to fighting corruption, that a range of different anti-corruption methods were required. I was also shot down when I called him a cynic. Despite our somber topic, most of the conference attendees were generally optimistic that their work was changing the world. Julian was dark, portraying general evil at every turn. He may have been optimistic, but only about counteracting the relentless wicked nature of human beings.

In contrast to the Economist, Julian would not admit that he had founded the company. He vaguely indicated that there were several people involved and no one was directly responsible, just as their information was distributed in such a way as to make no single country’s laws applicable. The countries with the most generous laws on freedom of information, protection of sources, admissibility of wiretap evidence, etc. are each given a piece of the pie.

On 17 June Iceland passed a reform to its media laws after consultation with Wikileaks. The reform, whose protection for sources and journalists who might face foreign libel suits is considered the strongest in the world, was designed in collaboration with Wikileaks. The addition of this law to the world’s mix of legal frameworks will allow initiatives like Wikileaks to further flourish in this globalized media environment. But in the United States, land of checks and balances, Wikileaks’ “multi-jurisdictional” model smacks of a lack of accountability and the trap of the “benign” dictator. May they continue to have only the best interests of the world in mind and not make any missteps along the way.

Every year Transparency International ranks nearly all countries in the world in its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). In 2009 the United States ranked a respectable 19 out of 180. But within the United States there is considerable variation. Anyone who follows national news might make their own U.S. Corruption Perceptions Index, with the sheer size of the scandals putting states like Illinois, Louisiana, and New York at the bottom and seemingly happy places like Vermont and Indiana at the top.

News site The Daily Beast conducted such a survey for the fifty U.S. states. They compiled information on public corruption, racketeering and extortion, forgery and counterfeiting, fraud, and embezzlement from 1998 to 2008 and came up with a full ranking. New Hampshire came out on top with the best ratings. Tennessee takes the prize for most corrupt.

Like the CPI, the Daily Beast ranking does not give much detail on why different states landed where they did, although it does describe a “Recent Scandal” for each state. New Hampshire’s damning story is of two local men who were charged with mail and wire fraud (watch out, New Hampshire!). Some other scandalous accounts are of odometer tampering (Wyoming) and a woman who stole her ex-husband’s checkbook and wrote herself $4,100 worth of checks (Iowa). There are also some surprises. Illinois is in fact one of the better-ranking states by the Daily Beast’s measure, at number 47 of 51 (where 51 is least corrupt, including Washington, DC). Apparently the Blagojevich saga only ran so deep.

Just like the CPI, rankings like the Daily Beast’s are better for pitting neighbors against each other than comparing two very disparate entities. My own positive view of Vermont was apparently false, as Vermont ranked only 39 against New Hampshire’s crystal-clean number 51. But my home New York can be proud of its 24th place against only 21st for New Jersey. Washington State scraped by Oregon at 38th to 35th. South Carolina can boast its 9th place against North Carolina’s 5th. Indiana wins against Illinois 49th to 47th.

After the CPI is published (or most international rankings, for that matter), country representatives request meetings with those who put out the ranking in order to ask how they can move up the ladder. Usually they are not looking to move into the top place, but rather to surpass their main rival: Bulgaria vs. Romania, Algeria vs. Morocco, Laos vs. Cambodia. Such competition can spark positive action, leading to genuine change in hopes of moving up those one or two spots. Do you think we can generate such positive competition here? Come on New York, you can beat California next year!

Mobile phones have already transformed life in developing countries. They have brought phone service to remote areas that had little hope of ever seeing landlines. They have also had major economic benefits for so-called micro-entrepreneurs, helping them with everything from establishing mobile barbershops to determining the best time to bring goods to market. And now they are trying to fight corruption.

Apple has launched an app, called “Antimordidas” or “Antibribes”, to help users fend off corruption in Mexico City. The app has various features such as a calculator for verifying traffic fines and a user-friendly compendium of traffic regulations. It is soon to be launched for Blackberry as well. Given the interest that this story has garnered in other countries, especially India (where most versions of the story do not specify that the app is only available for Mexico), apps for other locations should not be far behind.

It is always encouraging when new technology is used to combat ancient problems. However, it is unfortunate that the app is limited to smartphones. Corruption hurts most for the people who can least afford it – who happen also to be the people who can least afford smartphones. The Economist has predicted that within five years everyone on earth who wants a cell phone may have one, but smartphones will remain luxury items (except in New York, where people seem to think they are a fundamental need).

Shouldn’t it be possible to fight corruption with a traditional mobile phone? You don’t need fancy apps, just a number to call to report abuse anonymously (which does exist in some locations). An information line is also handy, where callers (or better yet, texters) can find out similar facts as those displayed on Mexican iPhones. Further innovation from handset manufacturers would be welcome. As a social program, they could support a designated mailbox for subsidized SMSs detailing shoddy infrastructure projects or dishonest service providers. Allowing photos to be sent for free would be better still.

There is space for much more innovation in smartphone anti-corruption technology as well. A good start would be a streamlined app for reporting bribery, with automatic submission of time, date, and location: for government agencies and some service providers, no further information would be necessary to discern trends and determine which offices require management intervention.

Last week I attended the annual meeting of the UN Development Program (UNDP)’s Civil Society Advisory Committee. The significance of this committee for UN accountability merits attention.

The UN – and most donor countries, for that matter – spends a good deal of time preaching the importance of civil society. As the line goes, civil society is the way in which ordinary citizens organize themselves in order to review the activities of their government and hold them accountable for wrongdoing. Without civil society, individuals would be too weak to take action against the powerful interests in charge.

But who holds the UN accountable? There is certainly a clutch of civil society groups with offices around UN headquarters, writing reports and lobbying for change (not to mention some diehard anti-internationalists in Congress). But the UN has operations in every country of the world; UNDP has offices in 166 countries: who is holding them accountable?

After some civil society criticism at the end of the 1990s for its private sector strategy, UNDP decided if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Thus, it created the only civil society advisory committee in the UN system. To this day, for all the UN’s talk about how crucial it is to have strong civil society (and this goes up to the Secretary-General level), no other UN agency actually gathers civil society together in order to hear their input. Incidentally, major government donors aren’t much better.

It was refreshing to observe the two-day meeting, at which the civil society representatives there had the opportunity to challenge a series of UNDP representatives on why they are doing certain work, what alternatives they have considered, how they are reflecting the interests of vulnerable populations, how they are confronting vested interests, etc. When UNDP displayed flashy PowerPoints detailing their successes, the committee asked them to reveal their failures. When UNDP said they have abandoned controversial policies and have a clean record, the committee said, In that case let’s rewrite your official strategy together. No one got off easy, although certainly the private sector team had the toughest session.

The civil society advisory committee is a model for any organization that is interested in how the public is viewing its activities, whether it represents government, an international organization, or a company. While they might hear things they would rather ignore, it gives them an opportunity to engage and respond. Maybe we could start with BP gathering environmental, human rights, labor rights, and other non-governmental organizations together in the Gulf region to hear what they think. Not a public hearing: individual representatives around a table, in a closed room without the media, having a rational conversation. Would that be possible?

This week one of China’s former richest men, Huang Guangyu of Chinese appliance giant Gome Electronics, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for bribery and insider dealing. This follows rejection of the appeal of former Rio Tinto executives, who some believed had received unreasonably harsh sentences for bribing so-far unnamed government officials. Is China getting serious about fighting private sector corruption?

Russia holds a unique place in the international economy. It isn’t the largest, fastest, strongest, or even scariest, but it is a heavyweight whose actions matter more than most. It ranked just 146 out of 180 countries on the 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, and had the 8th largest economy in the world in 2008 according to the World Bank. And yet the government is not a signatory to the OECD anti-bribery convention and it seems to slip farther below the anti-corruption radar than China.

Russia has been at the center of a couple of recent corruption scandals involving major multinationals. The U.S. Justice Department has evidence that German carmaker Daimler paid millions of euros in bribes to Russian government officials related to sales of vehicles for official purposes, and German prosecutors are investigating whether the German branch of Hewlett-Packard paid an €8 million kickback for providing the Russian prosecutor general’s offices with computers. In face of the Russian government’s blasé attitude to such activity, foreign governments that care must rely on local laws such as the FCPA to try to end it.

Companies have taken a different approach. Since many firms don’t want to be the first to stop bribing as they believe it will leave them at a competitive disadvantage, more than 50 have teamed up and agreed collectively to stop offering bribes in Russia. They signed an accord at a ceremony in Moscow last month. Without legal enforcement the agreement only means as much as the word of its signatories, but this is an innovative solution to the challenge of operating in a country that is not especially interested in changing.

Whether bribery in fact makes business more efficient in some environments or is only a short-term fix with longer-term costs is still open to debate. Daniel Kaufman and Shang-Jin Wei argued against the efficiency hypothesis more than ten years ago. Certainly there are firms that have made a clean record work to their advantage. But the Russias of the world continue to lead many on a crooked path.

As I write this, British voters are going to the polls in what has been billed as one of the most exciting UK elections of the post-war period. Nick Clegg, member of the third-party Liberal Democrats, could overtake his mainstream rivals Gordon Brown (Labour) and David Cameron (Conservative). Regardless of the outcome, this is the kind of campaign that inevitably makes you think hard about first-past-the-post systems.

Britain, like the United States, elects the members of its legislature through the infamous system in which whoever gets the most votes, wins. This has begun to look anachronistic in face of today’s global preponderance of systems of proportional representation, in which smaller parties have more than a fighting chance at legislative seats. While Americans may look at the battles over forming a coalition in places like Israel or Iraq and think the stability and governability of our system eclipse its disadvantages, it is hard to deny that having only two dominant parties limits voters’ representation and government accountability.

Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post last week, saying that Clegg’s rise in Britain should make us think on this side of the pond as well. Clegg has proposed far-reaching reforms to the electoral system that could seriously disrupt the current party system there.

The Liberal Democrats have in fact had more representation than third parties in the United States, which have not gained any noticeable traction in the modern Congress. The fact that running as an independent (e.g. Joe Lieberman) is preferable to joining a third party certainly distinguishes our two legislatures. Another major difference is that third-party Clegg could be head of government, a feat basically unimaginable in today’s U.S. politics. In the absence of major turmoil that disrupts our entire political system, the United States is unlikely to see an American Clegg in the presidential race any time soon. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader served the purpose of stirring up the debate more than presenting a viable alternative for the presidency.

This matters because we all know how stagnant the political debate can become when there are only two voices. If the entire political spectrum is divided into just two parts, parties rarely have to challenge established norms. This leaves them less accountable to the voters that put them in office, and instead free to select just a couple of main issues to fight for while leaving the remainder unchanged. That benefits no one but the people in power.

And so, in the next election, when some third-party candidate is eating into your majority-party’s share of the votes, try reveling in your opportunity for choice rather than bemoaning the spoiler.

In some countries, political will is not enough. This is because they don’t have the institutions to implement whatever anti-corruption political will there might be. Fighting corruption requires investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration in a prison with guards that can’t be paid off. Some countries lack some or all of these things.

Guatemala poses an interesting example in this regard. Guatemala’s problems stem from its 1960-1996 civil war, which has left a legacy of illegal forces in operation throughout the country. Rule of law in Guatemala is notoriously poor. In the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, Guatemala was in the 13th percentile for rule of law – it doesn’t get much worse than that. In 2006 the murder rate was 45 per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world. Moreover, its police and judiciary are among the most corrupt, making a bad situation almost incorrigible.

In 2006, the government decided to take a new tack. It agreed to allow the UN to set up an independent investigative body, called the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), to assist with investigation and dismantling of violent criminal organizations. In many countries, this would be considered an infringement of national sovereignty… or maybe that would just be the excuse those in power would use to protect their criminal friends.

The CICIG began work in 2008. Since then, its work has led to the dismissal of almost 2,000 policemen, an attorney-general, 10 prosecutors, and 3 Supreme Court justices. According to the CICIG’s head, “We have sent to jail 130 individuals, the kind of people who had never been prosecuted in Guatemala before, a former president, a former defence minister, a former finance minister [and] two acting directors of the national police.” This was able to happen through cooperation with honest policemen, prosecutors, and others.

The CICIG is trying to have its mandate, which runs until September 2011, extended to specifically cover corruption and organized crime. This would be a boon for anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala, as well as a remarkable example for other countries. Just imagine if such a commission were invited into Afghanistan.

But the other lesson of the CICIG is that vested interests can run deep and be entangled in the very institutions that are supposed to protect against them, and yet all it takes is the right garden trowel to dig them out.

Violent demonstrations led to the fall of President Bakiyev in Kyrgyzstan last week. The opposition has taken control of the country, including the president’s supposed stronghold in the south.

This is, of course, the second time a popular uprising has led to a change of government in Kyrgyzstan in the last five years. Both times, governmental corruption lay behind the discontent (although it did not help when Bakiyev ordered that troops shoot at protesters). In 2005, the opposition took over vowing to clean up rampant corruption and bring democracy to Kyrgyzstan. This year, a faction of that same opposition, which had split once in power and became the new opposition, faced the same challenges and made the same promises. Roza Otunbayeva, who helped overthrow the 2005 government, is now interim leader against the Bakiyev government. Dare we say: Plus ca change….

Will it be any different this time? As I’ve said repeatedly, the fight against corruption must come from the top. But Bakiyev not only lacked the will to combat the corruption below him: he perpetuated it by setting his own example. Nepotism put his son Maksim in charge of the development agency; in his new post, Maksim allegedly transferred funds to tax havens and signed deals with China that were criticized for lack of transparency. President Bakiyev meanwhile presided over suspicious privatization schemes. Thus, the new government has much room for improvement.

Kyrgyzstan has a situation not unlike Afghanistan: deep-rooted corruption, tribal loyalties, no real experience with democracy. Overcoming these things will take true innovation and very enlightened leadership, even without Afghanistan’s conflict situation. Perhaps Otunbayeva, as a woman, is just the person. History is on her side: there aren’t many examples of female dictators. But she would have to stand up to more than a weak and fleeing president: the vested interests in the country may need more than a positive example to turn things around. It is too soon to really know which way Kyrgyzstan is leaning.