Thieves Of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security - Plot & Excerpts
In patronage systems, as in healthy modern governments (p. 212), resources are drawn from the population to the center, but then are largely distributed back downward within the system, in the form of patronage, or else infrastructure, public services, decent salaries for public officials, and so on. In today’s Afghanistan, the money is moving upward within the system and is largely sent outside Afghanistan altogether. (“Dubai” is a placeholder for offshore financial havens.) The revenue streams captured are listed on the top left. In return, the government provides free rein (“permission” ) to extract resources, protection from repercussion, and punishment of officials with too much integrity. The bounceback arrow on the top right represents the contractors’ profits and other overhead spending that never reaches Afghanistan at all. (“USA” is a placeholder for the international community.) Note the absence of any arrow representing taxation. Mubarak’s Egypt had two main—and largely separate—kleptocratic systems, which were only beginning to compete late in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
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