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This chapter aims to contribute to the literature on public governance and its link to corruption. In particular, the chapter presents conceptual arguments for better understanding the ways in which public governance choices may affect corruption levels, thus identifying governance policies, mechanisms, and roles that can contribute in fighting and preventing corruption at macro-, meso- and micro-levels of analysis.

Starting from a macro-, meso- and micro-perspectives, this chapter is based on a literature review in order to understand connections between public governance and corruption.

Even if literature on the causes of public corruption are analysed from the macro-, meso-, and micro-perspectives, contributions of public governance scholars in relation to anticorruption efforts are mainly concentrated on a macro-perspective of analysis, while only a limited number of scholars offer a reflection on the possible interdependencies among governance policies and instruments and anticorruption efforts at the organizational level.

Despite the importance of the meso- and micro-perspectives, the literature review presented in this chapter shows us an important gap on the definition of which governance mechanisms and instruments or organizational policies are important to carry out in order to prevent or fight corruption, thus highlighting the need to improve research on this important field.

The above quotations highlight the adverse consequences of corruption in many countries around the world today. Indeed, the research taboo on corruption, which Gunnar Myrdal identified in 1968, no longer exists, and the silence on the “C” word (corruption) in the World Bank was broken by James Wolfensohn in his famous October 1996 speech, which focused on the negative consequences of the “cancer of corruption” on the World Bank's aid programs.

Willard A. Hanna's astute observation above about the institutionalization of corruption in Indonesia was published in August 1971, five years after President Soeharto assumed power. The origins of corruption in Indonesia can be traced to the Dutch colonial period as bribery was rife among the lowly paid personnel of the Dutch East India Company (Day, 1966, pp. 100–103). However, corruption became institutionalized during President Soeharto's 32-year reign as his cronies and family “made an art form of creaming off many of Indonesia's most profitable ventures … while being protected by monopoly regulations and their relationship to the president” (Kingsbury, 1998, p. 202). Raymond Bonner (1988, p. 80) has used the euphemism “the family business” to describe “the corruption surrounding members of the Suharto family,” which was “a public secret” in 1988.

The primary aim of this chapter is to offer an overview of corruption and state capture in Albanian public administration and to describe the solutions adopted to fight corruption by the government since 1998. Conflict of interest is a new aspect of concern in the policy agendas. OECD countries have recently adopted some guidelines for managing the phenomenon, which will be then transferred to eastern European countries. Given this novelty, this chapter does not deal directly with conflict of interest situations. Corruption is rarely treated as a management problem, in part because for obvious reasons as data are scarce and also because the literature is thin and tentative, with few theoretical frameworks. Also rare is analysis of how corruption has been or might be reduced. The state of research on corruption is such that there is little inductive theory or statistical evidence about the kinds of policies that work under particular conditions.

The study of corruption was slow to take root in the social sciences, but has produced a notably more complete and precise understanding of why corruption persists around the world. This chapter begins with an exploration of some of the most robust findings of the corruption literature in business-related fields. Central to these early studies is the establishment of the role of institutions in shaping behavior within specific geographies and the lasting impact of activity within those geographies on firms that subsequently invest outside of them. The chapter also depicts the inherent challenges of the development context of many of the largest known incidents of government corruption with an exploration of the TSKJ (Technip, Snamprogetti, KBR, Japan Gas) case in Nigeria. The chapter concludes with a summary of the most informative findings of this area of research and a call for the most productive future areas of research.

In nature, the adaptable survive best. In human affairs, elites do better than others, much better when they take advantage of both fair and foul means to exercise public authority and influence. Where absolutism prevails, the disadvantaged cannot make much headway unless their betters make concessions to share communal treasures, govern responsibly and accountably, and refrain from abusing social norms. The evolution of the welfare democracy has brought about the greatest success in making communal benefits more accessible and attainable to all, recognizing the universal dignity and rights of every individual, and, above all, curbing corrupt institutions and practices wherever revealed. Although the ideals of the welfare democracy have been confined to relatively few countries, they illustrate what is achievable. They also have been active in convincing the international community to recognize two landmark United Nations conventions concerning both private and public sectors to strive for greater global success in combating corruption, despite unpromising circumstances and the many obstacles that still favor the corrupt and corrupted at everyone’s cost. Context is the most important variable. Success in curbing corruption requires the adaptation of reforms to the specific context. It cannot be imposed without thorough knowledge of the circumstances and devoted agents on the ground.

Corruption is a fundamental concern for all political regimes, but particularly for republics where power is vested primarily in a legislative body. While political thinkers across times and places have grappled with this perennial problem, this chapter focuses on the modern American republic and its founders. The authors begin with a brief historical sketch that illustrates the continuity and evolution of corruption discourse, spanning the distance between ancient political philosophy and modern political science. Turning to the American founding, and focusing particularly on the debates at the Constitutional Convention and the essays of The Federalist, the authors show how the framers of the US Constitution engaged with this tradition as they confronted the threat of corruption head on. Although these early American documents provide an ambiguous definition of corruption, the authors endeavor to parse the separate but intertwined meanings of corruption: constitutional, institutional, and moral. While the framers' system draws upon both ancient and modern approaches, their final position is that correct institutional design can provide the solution to political corruption. Ultimately for the framers, this comes down to the design of the legislature and its relationship to the other branches. The authors suggest that while contemporary readers may find much to be dissatisfied with in the framers' proposed solutions, their subtle and wide-ranging conceptualization of the problem of corruption might usefully inform contemporary theory building in this area.

During a press conference at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi on 13 March 2001, the Internet news site, Tehelka.com, showed secret video footage of senior politicians, bureaucrats, and army officers accepting money in a fake defense deal. Two journalists from Tehelka, Anirudha Bahal and Mathew Samuel, posed as arms dealers from a fictitious arms company called West End International to sell nonexistent handheld thermal cameras to senior officials of the Ministry of Defense (MOD) in India. Bahal and Samuel paid bribes to politicians, civil servants, and army officers to procure government contracts. The journalists used three hidden cameras to videotape the corrupt politicians and officials accepting the bribes, with the most dramatic video clip showing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President, Bangaru Laxman, accepting a wad of currency notes from them. Laxman later claimed that he was not guilty of wrongdoing for accepting Rs. 100,000 (US$2,170) as a donation for the BJP. Describing the episode as “concocted,” he added that he had given the donation to the BJP's treasurer (BBC News, 2001a).

Extensive corruption and civil wars are two different symptoms of state failure, but have most of the time been studied separately. This article systematically compares the organizational characteristics of the two phenomena as well as the various research efforts into them, with a focus on economic explanations. It argues that it is unreasonable to believe that economic motivation may become an important trigger for the recruitment of rebel leaderships in countries ridden by corruption, except when their access to the state's pots is blocked. The article examines in various other ways the implications of research carried out in each field for the other.

We review the existing laboratory experimental studies on corruption that have generated results with clear policy implications. We present and discuss experimental findings on the role that both monetary incentives and nonmonetary motivations may play in corruption decision-making, and, hence, in the fight against corruption.