Public or private corruption?

This is a summary of some of the main arguments and findings of the book ¿Corrupción pública o privada? La dimensión ideológica de los discursos anti-corrupción en Colombia, Ecuador y Albania (Bogotá: Tirant lo Blanch, 2020). The book compares the official anti-corruption discourses of president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) in Colombia, president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) in Ecuador and prime minister Edi Rama (2013-present) in Albania. It shows that although these three countries face very similar levels and perceptions of corruption their governments articulate this phenomenon differently due to their distinct ideological positions. While the neoliberal governments of Santos and Rama defined corruption primarily as abuse of public office and locate it mainly in the public sector, or in its interaction with the private one, the government of Rafael Correa, which embraced the 21st Century Socialism, defined corruption primarily as a problem of the private sector that captures and distorts the public sector.

Populism in Moldova’s Informal Political System

The 2020 presidential and 2021 parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova saw a clear victory of the populist Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) of the newly elected president Maia Sandu over the pro-Russian coalition led by former presidents Igor Dodon and Vladimir Voronin. These results testify the citizens’ will to change a country with an ever-widening gap between politicians and populace. Since 2015, the political debate is centred on corruption, but the cases described draw the picture of a political landscape where practices go beyond the traditional understanding of the term. In fact, their analysis demonstrates the existence of a system of Soviet political culture which relies on informal practices of the elite, arguing that some of these practices have clear Soviet roots while others are an adaptation of the Soviet mentality to the new liberal democratic setting. The paper also highlights differences between the populist parties born either as a reaction to the system or as an adaptation of the elite response to perceived expectations of the electorate. This research took place between 2020 and 2021 utilising participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Moldovan political experts. The paper concludes that future research on Moldovan politics should incorporate analysis of this informal dimension to state politics which is core to public debate on corruption and the integrity of state institutions in Moldova.

Guilty Until Proven Guilty

The journey to understand technological and digital policing requires a re-engagement with the most basic and widely used technology – paper-based registers for preventive policing. In the name of preventive policing, people from ex-untouchable castes, indigenous populations, and immigrants (in the city) are put under surveillance and recorded in registers. In the process, they earn criminal records for petty crimes, but also for no crimes at all. The registers enable a very ‘visible’ surveillance, where the ‘suspects’ are watched, followed and asked to come for mandatory attendance at the stations. Keeping in mind the segregated nature of the urban landscapes of cities in India, this is only possible for people who belong to certain strata of society and who do not have the privilege of escaping the prying eyes of the police. Researchers have argued that this form of policing is anti-poor or anti-marginalised. However, in this article, I argue that this form of preventive policing is better understood as being anti-caste. I demonstrate how police manuals, including guidelines for police record keeping and surveillance practices, reproduce and imitate the caste based social structure of India by using legacy practices from some still operational and some defunct laws. The paper-based registers maintain an illusion of objectivity – while the police can simply claim to be obeying the manuals. However, by enabling the recording of only those able to be visibly surveilled, those arrested for petty crimes, or those unable to escape the criminal justice system because of lack of money or social support or both, the paper-based registers become a vehicle of policing caste. By marking those thus recorded as habitual offenders, these registers propagate the caste-based understanding that defines crime as an inherent/hereditary trait of the lower castes. Prediction becomes nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Anarchist Criminology

Anarchist criminology is not a new approach to the critical study of harm, crime, and criminalization, but it has been largely overlooked and gained serious impetus only in recent years. This interview features two scholars who have been at the forefront of this development. Mark Seis co-edited the volumes Contemporary Anarchist Criminology (Nocella, Seis and Shantz 2018) and Classic Writings in Anarchist Criminology (Nocella, Seis, and Shantz 2020), which bring together some of the key texts that utilize anarchist theorizing to challenge the status quo, both in society and in criminology. Stanislav Vysotsky has recently published his book American Antifa (Vysotsky 2021), where he explores, inter alia, militant antifascism as informal policing. The interview emerged somewhat unconventionally. Stanislav was interviewed first on March 22, 2021. The resulting transcript was edited and sent to Mark who was unable to join the online meeting due to technical difficulties. I received his answers on May 24. The following is a slightly shortened and edited version of the interview.

Underneath the Promise of Safety and Security in a ‘Smart City’

In this article, we explore the promises of security that are embedded in the smart city technologies and algorithms and their potential implications for creating social inequality and discrimination. Our ethnographic case study is the Living Lab Stratumseind, a popular nightlife street in Eindhoven where smart technologies and algorithms are being tested with the aim of increasing security in the street. First, we introduce the context in which the Living Lab Stratumseind was developed and trace this development and the multiple forms of governance that characterise it and highlight the main ‘smart technologies’ that can be found there. Second, we focus our attention on the ways in which smart technologies and algorithms promise to enhance public security by directly and uncritically translating technological rationales and discourses into social domains. Third, we argue that the smart city technologies and algorithms risk to create, reproduce and reinforce social inequalities and discrimination, and that it is unclear who is responsible for these unanticipated consequences.

Assessing Creditworthiness in the Age of Big Data

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, we show how algorithms have become increasingly central to financial credit scoring; second, we draw on this to further develop the anthropological study of algorithmic governance. As such, we describe the literature on credit scoring and then discuss ethnographic examples from two regulatory and commercial contexts: the US and Denmark. From these empirical cases, we carve out main developments of algorithmic governance in credit scoring and elucidate social and cultural logics behind algorithmic governance tools. Our analytical framework builds on critical algorithm studies and anthropological studies where money and payment infrastructures are viewed as embedded in their specific cultural contexts (Bloch and Parry 1989; Maurer 2015). The comparative analysis shows how algorithmic credit scoring takes different forms hence raising different issues in the two cases. Danish banks seem to have developed a system of intensive, yet hidden credit scoring based on surveillance and harvesting of behavioural data, which, however, due to GDPR takes place in restricted silos. Credit scores are hidden to customers, and therefore there has been virtually no public debate regarding the algorithmic models behind scores. In the US, fewer legal restrictions on data trading combined with both widespread and visible credit scoring has led to the development of a credit data market and widespread use of credit scoring by ‘affiliation’ on the one hand, but also to increasing public and political critique on scoring models on the other.

Can Computers Automate Welfare?

Information-driven automated systems that deliver services proactively to citizens in need are heralded as the next level of digital government. There is, however, concern that such systems make welfare services less accessible to some citizens. This study uses the case of Norway’s child benefit system to discuss the general obstacles to having welfare policies implemented by proactive digital systems. Norway’s automated child benefit system uses data from Norway’s national resident register to award this benefit to eligible parents whom the system identifies. As such, it is representative of many government systems that use registry data to perform tasks previously done by caseworkers. While the eligibility rules for child benefits are simple, and the register has sufficient data to automate most cases, many parents are not awarded the benefit automatically. This article argues that when developing automated digital services, public administrators are faced with a trilemma. Ideally, proactive automation should be (1) precise in its delivery, (2) inclusive of all citizens, and (3) still support welfare-oriented policies that are independent of the requirements of the digital system. However, limitations with each requirement prevent all three from being realized at the same time. Only two can be simultaneously realized: a public administrator must decide which of them to forego. Consequently, automated services cannot meet all the expectations of policymakers regarding the benefits of digital government. Instead, governments need to find ways of utilizing the benefits of public digitalisation without infringing on citizens’ right to be treated equally and fairly by the government.