Mobilization from Above and Below: Corruption Narratives of Latin American Free-Market Think Tanks and Colombian Farmers

• In Event: The Sociology of Corruption.

Abstract

How do differently positioned social actors mobilize corruption narratives to understand a changing world, figure out how to relate to the state, and advance their political interests? In this article, based on ethnographic and interview data, we analyze the corruption narratives and related political action of two distinct groups: marginalized Colombian rural farmers and Latin American free-market think tank elites. Rural farmers draw on corruption to understand a state that has simultaneously become increasingly consequential to their lives and failed to fulfill many of its promises. For these farmers, who access the state through disempowering vertical networks, the corruption narrative both directs and justifies a private-interest politics through which they use dishonesty and clientelist relationships to access the meager share of public resources left to them by corrupt elites. Think-tank elites, on the other hand, describe this private-interest politics as part of a populist mentality that has allowed corrupt left-wing politicians to reach power. With close relationships to influential politicians, they describe themselves as engaging in a hegemonic struggle against leftist populism and corruption, mobilizing corruption narratives to attack their opponents and even explain away the failed policies of their allies. Based on the comparison, we argue that narratives of corruption 1) allow actors to make sense of secretive practices, changing conjunctures, and the state itself; (2) emerge from the actors’ embeddedness in the networks of power through which they access the state to inspire and justify specific types of political engagement; and (3) help divert moral attention to their political opponents.

Authors

• Alex Diamond, Oklahoma State University

• Tomas Gold, University of Southern California