Book review: Democracy, Inequality, and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines Compared
| DOI | 10.1177/2057891116672028 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Author | Herbert Kitschelt |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
Book review
Jong-Sung You, Democracy, Inequality, and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan, and
the Philippines Compared, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2015;
XIII þ293pp. ISBN 978-1-107-07840-6, US$99.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Herbert Kitschelt, Duke University, USA
DOI: 10.1177/2057891116672028
Income and wealth inequality have long been suspected to cause corruption and clientelism, as
well as to be reinforced by it. Jong-Sung You offers the first systematic examination of these
relations with a two-pronged research design strategy, an in-depth small-N process-tracing case
study comparison of political regimes and partisan linkages in three South/East-Asian countries
(Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines), as well as a large-N follow-up macro-quantitative cross-
sectional statistical examination with a global country sample.
You disaggregates the causal processes that create the relationship between inequalit y and
corruption in two steps. The link from inequality goes first through two mechanisms that mediate
the link between inequality and corruption. They are (mass) clientelism and (elite) government
capture. Together, the presence of these political practices creates the incentives among poor and
wealthy citizens to accept and promote corruption. Thus, ultimately inequality is a root cause of
corruption. In policy terms, if citizens and politicians wish to confront corruption, something needs
to be done about inequality—a difficult, controversial reform to propose.
Abject inequality creates large pools of poverty. People trapped in profound poverty are recep-
tive to clientelistic appeals, as they seek to hedge risks and score well in a perpetual struggle to
secure existential survival. Ri ch people, in turn, encourage rall ying the poor around political
parties through clientelistic appeals in order to preempt the formation of programmatic parties
that might attract poor voters with demands for economic redistribution. Simultaneously, since
clientelism requires political parties to control a great deal of resources which they can then funnel
to their target constituencies, clientelistic politicians will be receptive to the lure of grand corrup-
tion. They are willing to sell political decisions to the highest bidders—rich individuals and
corporations—thus enabling parties and candidates to secure the means needed to reinforce their
clientelistic support networks. Rich individuals and corporations, in turn, use political capture
strategies of the state to achieve privileged access to economic resources in the political economy,
thus reinforcing and cementing inequality. High inequality promotes clientelism and state capture,
which together fuel corruption. Ultimately, all of these practices reinforce inequality.
A further component of the analysis has to do with political regime. Following the argument
that programmatic party competition—where parties commit to (and implement in government)
club and collective goods enjoyment which accrues not just to those who voted for the winner—
can be credible only after multiple rounds of democratic competition, the switch of authoritarian
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2017, Vol. 2(1) 104–106
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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