About Dr. W. Scott Thompson

About Prof. Emeritus W. Scott Thompson

Introduction to Special Projects. Topic 1.

Peliminary Remarks on Research

of Top-Level Governmental Corruption

Dr. Thompson chairs UTICo, a U.S. corporation that retrieves, among other projects, purloined assets for governments, banks, companies, investors.

For 10 years, Dr. Thompson taught a seminar “The politics of Corruption.” The syllabus for the course began with the following words: “Corruption is the single greatest handicap to development in the third world at this time. It has always been with us, including in United States and European countries. But the problems of corruption in the third world, accounting for sometimes as much as a 3% charge on economic development, and even in one case-in Nigeria-cutting the economy and half, and at a time of rapid population growth in the poorest countries, is simply negating economic growth”.

With regard to research of international governmental corruption phenomenon, Dr. Thompson has held professorial appointments at Harvard University, Chulalongkorn University, and the Asian Institute of Management, Makati, Philippines, where he has recently completed a study of ethnicity in Southeast Asia and a biography of former president Fidel Ramos. He is chair of three foundations, including ICID, which has sponsored studies on corruption in Burma (Myanmar), a Burmese educational institute, and an Oxford educational foundation.

Dr. Thompson in 2001 organized an international conference on Corruption at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, held at a time of awakening global consciousness on the cost of corruption; had such international experts as Dr. Robert Klitgaard, author of "Controlling Corruption," now president of a California university. It was keynoted by the former Philippine president, Fidel V. Ramos, whose administration had been notable for its anti-corruption efforts.

Manifestly, action to curb corruption must come from governments; but the ideas disseminate from the academic community, spread to such institutions as the World Bank and spawn organizations such as Transparency International.

Students of Professor Thompson are now in 34 different governments around the world, and the ideas discussed in his seminar, or at his conference, have become an object of their government's policies.

For example, in the Philippines, where a monumental examples of corruption of the past, not to mention the present, are the highest topic of policy discussion at universities, in the papers, in investigative institutions, the first law of the new constitution adopted post-Marcos was Act #1, establishment of the Philippine Commission on Good Governance, 'PCGG,' whose sole function was to bring back the fruits of Marcos corruption.

For some years Dr. Thompson has met with PCGG and advised them on the possible routes they might take to returning the estimated up to $30 billion foreign accounts and real estate assets. Dr. Thompson has worked with cabinet secretaries, addressed Rotary Clubs and academic gatherings on corruption. In Indonesia and Thailand he has done the same, consulting with three prime ministers over the past decade.

Particular Publications Targeting International and Institutional Corruption

Dr. Thompson has recently been preparing a book on 'Corruption: Why, where, and How to prevent it' with the noted international strategist Dr. Edward Luttwak of Washington DC.

A paradigm of corruption, and its 3 ½ categories, was outlined in Thompson and Thompson “The Baobab and the Mango Tree”.

It outlined the three levels as ‘petty corruption,’ i.e. bureaucratic hand-greasing present in every developing society; political corruption in policy-directed funding of political campaigns aiming for rents and other benefits; and a third level, where leaders amass vast fortunes at the expense of the society. However, this third category is divided into two parts, firstly where a ‘cut’ is taken from growth already achieved (Suharto 1965-94) and where the political-economic structures are altered to nurture corruption, to the ultimate destruction of the society (Suharto ’94-98, Marcos 1972-86).

At this time, Dr. Thompson is also assembling research materials on the future book to be dedicated to the ‘Lazarenko Affair’ that may be completed and published within 3 years.

There is beginning to be a substantial literature on the problems of corruption and its manifestations. There are official investigations in reform governments, of the corruption of the predecessor regime that was overthrown, literature both to clarify past problems and to legitimize the new civil authority.

At one of Prof. Thompson’s course, there was a specific assignment, that “students will be required to write a substantial paper-between 20 and 40 pages-analyzing vertically the costs of corruption in a particular country or horizontally a particular aspect corruption occurring endemically in a region or in a particular stratum of countries”.

Prof. Thompson has become a watchdog, writing both Op-Eds, books and articles, on corruption as a public issue. His audience has become international as attention to corruption has grown exponentially.

Prof. Thompson has written a biweekly column in the New Straits Times for the last three years, which is often carried by other major papers in Asia, including the Jakarta Post, the Singapore Straits Times, and Hong Kong’s South China morning post. Reports of official corruption, studies of the affects of corruption, and warnings of further corruption in process are a mainstay of the column. In one, for example, he continued to hammer at the growing similarities between the corruption in the current Arroyo administration in the Philippines and that of the corruption-destroyed regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

On Indonesia, Dr. Thompson has tracked the anticorruption efforts of the new elected government and noted one extraordinary symptom of the result. Reference: "Democracy and discipline: the Philippine presidency of Fidel V. Ramos', pub'd 2006, univ. of Santo Tomas press, by W.S. Thompson and Ambassador F. Macaranas (in that order).

He wrote:

"Corruption" as a term suffers rather as the word "time" did with Saint Augustine: he knew what it meant until he had to define it. For corruption is a moving target; what is deemed "corrupt" represents what is unlivable with now, where whatever collectivity feels the gall of its social harness most maddeningly and unjustifiably. It is endlessly an intergenerational battering ram; in Latin societies especially, an instrument of the ideologically excluded against orthodoxy; for journalists, a perpetual dramatizing wedge to be driven into the smooth surface of power.

In other words, corruption was not just an issue of ethics; it was an issue of efficiency. Against the old notion that "pump priming" is a necessity in slow-moving bureaucracies, arose the larger, more powerfully-felt need for transparency. Corruption simply was not paying: the Suharto family may have stolen some $40 billion in a generation, but investigations were to find that they might have retained only a tenth of that – thanks to the pay-offs, lack of scrutiny and competition, and just plain greed. Inefficiency and competition had devoured the corrupt patrons of rent-seekers and coddled oligarchs. The still worse lessons of the Marcos presidency rubbed the Philippines very raw”.

Since 2003 Prof. Thompson has been an Expert Lecturer on Corruption for 'YPO', Young Presidents Organization, American based, membership limited to corporate CEOs under 50. Since then he has given lectures in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Manila and Taipei. For example, his introduction included the following:

“Corruption is a charge on a society of somewhere between 1-3% annual growth, all too often exceeding the actual growth in an economy in the third world. It misallocates resources, and in extracting rents, which are an all-too-obvious form of corruption, rewards often the least efficient sectors of society...”

Prof. Thompson during his years of service as one of the founding member of the White House appointed board of the US Institute of Peace, and within which he was Chair of the Research and Studies Committee, with an annual budget of over $3 million a year. As such he was responsible for the awarding of grants, nationally and internationally, and was responsible for the commissioning of numerous studies on threats to peace and security arising from internal disorder, preeminently including corruption, especially in Africa. The board was responsible annually for its report to the US Congress and enjoyed an unflawed 16 years from congressional criticism during Thompson's service to the Institute.

Dr. Thompson has advised both the Philippine and Indonesian governments on the problems of corruption, and on the recovery of the multi $1,000,000,000s of booty taken by the Marcos regime and that of Suharto. He has also given frequent lectures at the Asian institute of management, where he is a guest professor, directly on the issue of corruption. This is the preeminent business and management school in Southeast Asia, having been set up by the Harvard business school in 1969.