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Rethinking Corruption: Hocus-Pocus, Locus and Focus
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Although there has been a significant increase in research on the phenomenon of corruption over the last quarter-century, there is little evidence that this has resulted in effective policy interventions, nor in any significant reduction in its scope and extent.This article argues that three main reasons account for this failure to develop effective anti-corruption measures.First, the dominance of economistic analyses of the role of incentives in decision-making has given rise to proposed institutional fixes that are too abstracted from reality to gain purchase.That dominance was partly prompted by a misplaced assumption that market-based liberal democracies would become the modal regime type following the collapse of communism.Second, an emphasis on the nation state as the primary unit of analysis has not kept pace with significant changes in how some forms of corruption operate in practice, nor with the changing nature of states themselves.Third, different types of corruption are insufficiently disaggregated according not just to kind and form, but also to the locations in which they occur (sectoral, organisational, geographical), the actors involved, and the dependencies that enable them.This reflects an overuse of the term 'corruption' in both academic literature and policy recommendations; insufficient attention is paid to what exactly is being addressed and ultimately, the notion of corruption, without adjectives, is a poor guide both to analysis and to policy prescription.
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“and the need of understanding how different forms of corruption operate in practice at macro (cross‐country), meso (country/nation‐state) and micro (individual) level (Heywood, 2017: 9).”
From Public sector reforms and their impact on the level of corruption: A systematic review (2021) · cites this paper as Heywood, 2017: 9
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References 34 · Cited by 111
Research works printed but not linked: 41
- For a good discussion, see Amy Linch, 'Introduction. Postcommunism in a New Key: Bottom Up and Inside Out', in Jan Kubik and Amy Linch (eds), Postcommunism from Within (New York and London: New York University Press, 2013), pp.18-39; also, Part Four of the volume, on 'Corruption', pp.310-400.
- For excellent recent overviews of the core debates, see Mark Philp, 'The definition of political corruption', and Oskar Kurer 'Definitions of corruption', in P.M. Heywood (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Political Corruption (London: Routledge, 2015), pp.17-29 and 30-41.
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- Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
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- Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Harvard University Press, 1995), p.ix. Preference falsification differs from the classic Marxian notion of false consciousness, in that its subjects are fully aware of the falsification they are engaging in and knowingly hide their true feelings.
- Similarly, the so-called 'colour revolutions' of the early 2000s -notably in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004) -were prompted in part by anti-corruption sentiments, even if the proximate stimulus was usually disputed elections. See Donnacha Ó Beacháin and Abel Polese (eds), The Colour Revolutions in the Former Soviet Republics (London: Routledge, 2010). 24 World Protests 2006-13 http://policydialogue.org/files/publications/World_Protests_2006-2013- Executive_Summary.pdf.
- Ivan Krastev, 'Corruption, Anticorruption Sentiments and the Rule of Law', in Shifting Obsessions. Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004), p.43.
- Writing about post-communist Russia, Varese has commented that where corruption is an all-pervasive norm, the very notion of corruption becomes meaningless: Federico Varese, 'Pervasive Corruption in Economic Crime in Russia', in A. Ledeneva and M Kurkchiyan (eds), Economic Crime in Russia (London: Kluwer Law International, 2000), pp.99-100.
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- Syed Hussain Alatas, Corruption: its Nature, Causes and Consequences (Aldershot: Avebury, 1990), ch.1. 38 Michael Johnston, Syndromes of Corruption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
- Bussell, 'Typologies of corruption', p.24. 40 Bussell, 'Typologies of corruption', pp.37-41.
- Robert Neild, Public Corruption. The Dark Side of Social Evolution (London: Anthem Press, 2002), p.5.
- For good discussions of the growth and contradictions of such studies, see Bo Rothstein, The Quality of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), ch2; Mlada Bukovansky, 'Corruption Rankings', in Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder (eds), Ranking the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- Sheheryar Banuri and Catherine Eckel, 'Experiments in Culture and Corruption. A Review', World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 6064 (2012), p.2. 44 Alexander Cooley, 'The emerging politics of international rankings and ratings', in Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder (eds), Ranking the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p.9. 45 Cooley, 'The emerging politics', pp.7-8.
- Robert Cooper, The post-modern state and the world order (London: Demos, 2000); see also Rob Atkinson, 'Globalisation, New Technology and Economic Transformation', in Olaf Cramme and Patrick Diamond (eds), Social Justice in a Global Age (Oxford: Polity, 2009), pp.154-75.
- Louise I. Shelley, Dirty Entanglements. Corruption, Crime and Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp.66,68.
- Nick Vanston, 'Trust and reputation in financial services', Driver Review DR30 (Foresight, Government Office for Science, 2012).
- Geoffrey Hosking, Trust -A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
- European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Life in Transition. After the Crisis (EBRD, 2011) -see chapter 4, 'Corruption and trust', pp.36-47. 56 Bukovansky, 'Corruption rankings', p.64.
- Michael G. Findley, Daniel L. Nielson and J.C. Sharman, Global Shell Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
- Findley et al., Global Shell Games, pp.2-3.
- On the increasingly complex nature of the relationship between major corporations and nation states, see Stephen D. Cohen, Multinational Corporations and Foreign Direct Investment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); see also, Parag Khanna, 'These 25 Companies and More Powerful Than Many Countries', Foreign Policy (March/April 2016), available at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/15/these- 25-companies-are-more-powerful-than-many-countries-multinational-corporate-wealth-power/.
- Michael Johnston, 'Reflection and reassessment', in P.M. Heywood (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Political Corruption (London: Routledge, 2015), p.280.
- Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, The Quest for Good Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p.129. The reference to Denmark is from her influential article, 'Becoming Denmark: Historical Designs of Corruption Control', Social Research 80(4), 1259-86.
- Jong-sung You, Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- See Mungiu-Pippidi, Quest for Good Governance, pp.183-5.
- See Elitza Katzarova, 'The World is Broken: The Social Construction of a Global Corruption Problem', unpublished PhD dissertation, School of International Studies, University of Trento (2015)
- Rothstein, Quality of Government. 83 Rothstein, Quality of Government, ch. 9, pp.193-206.
- Mungiu-Pippidi, Quest for Good Governance, chs.3-5, pp.57-160.
- See Jack Goldstone, Eric P Kaufmann, and Monica Duffy Toft (eds), Political Demography. How Population Changes are Reshaping International Security and National Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012);
- Jean Cartier-Bresson, 'Corruption Networks, Transaction Security and Illegal Social Exchange', in Paul Heywood (ed.), Political Corruption (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
- Alena Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
- Alena Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works (Cornell University Press, 2006);
- Alena Ledeneva, Can Russia Modernise? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
- For a recent example of the continued prevalence of such an approach, see Benjamin A. Olken and Rohine Pande, 'Corruption in Developing Countries', Annual Review of Economics, Vol.4 (2012), pp.479- 509: 'we find fairly robust evidence that corrupt behavior can be modeled in line with a few general economic principles: corrupt officials respond to monitoring and punishments as one would expect from basic incentive theory, and standard market forces influence the level of bribes.' For an alternative approach, see Ajit Mishra, 'Incentives, norms and the persistence of corruption' Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics, no. 161 (2004), University of Dundee.
- William L Miller, Ase B Grodeland and Tatyana Y Koshechkina, A Culture of Corruption? (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001).
- Davide Torsello, Maria Giulia Pezzi, Elena Denisova-Schmidt, Nita Luci, Zaira Tiziana LoFranco, Muhittin Acar, and Claudia Baez-Camargo, 'Outcomes of ethnographic research conducted in Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Turkey, Kosovo, Russia, Tanzania, Mexico' (ANTICORRP Deliverable WP4.2) 2015, available at: http://anticorrp.eu/publications/outcomes-of-ethnographic-research/. See also, Davide Torsello (ed.), Corruption in Public Administration (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016).
- Dieter Zinnbauer, '"Ambient Accountability" -Fighting Corruption When and Where it Happens', SSRN electronic journal (2012) available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2168063.
- Marina Zaloznaya,' The Social Psychology of Corruption: Why It Does Not Exist and Why It Should', Social Compass 8/2 (2014), pp.187-202.
Metadata
- Authors
- Heywood, P. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Paul M. Heywood
- ORCID
- Paul M. Heywood
- Venue
- The Slavonic and East European Review
- Publisher
- Project MUSE
- Published
- 2017
- Volume
- 95
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 21
- ISSN
- 0037-6795 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2584659813
- Cited by
- 111
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 21.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Slavonic and East European Review (publishedVersion)
- Repository@Nottingham (University of Nottingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Department for International Development
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Corruption and Economic Development
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Taxation and Compliance Studies
- Keywords
- corruption, anti-corruption policy, post-communist transition, nation-state, types of corruption
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