Politics of Disorder

After reading a blog article about a study on reality of one of public sector organizations in Zimbabwe which are often described to be in a state of corruption, I wonder if it could be a good start to elaborate detailed micro-politics being practiced by many of public servants in relatively disadvantaged countries. It seems to me too obvious that people have a variety of reasons for being engaged in certain corrupted practices while quite a few of them remain committed to their formal duties, publicly desired norms and obligations. Thus, describing reality in detail is indeed necessary not to attribute underdevelopment simply to corrupted behavior. Nonetheless, I feel uneasy to see people from developed countries revealing reality in developing countries in part because they appear as if they stopped short of finding out just ordinary people doing ordinary things. Despite the variety of reasons of corrupted activities, at least partially the global political system must affect the situations negatively. Hence, it gives me an impression that people from developed countries which can exert significant influences are complacent unless analyses include practices on the side of those who have more power. The study mentioned in the article is critical of simplistic views on corruption in Zimbabwe. But, what we need to be critical of must be not only how to frame events and phenomena occurring there but also why and how the situation in which relatively simplistic views proliferate has been brought about and sustained. Obviously, those from developed countries take part in the processes. Their moral obligations cannot be fulfilled simply by revealing reality but they need to ask if they have legitimate right to do so.