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Singapore and Hong Kong are the least corrupt Asian countries according to their rankings and scores on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 2018 and other indicators. This chapter explains why these two city-states have succeeded in minimizing corruption and identifies the four best practices which might serve as lessons for policy-makers in other countries.

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.

In this chapter, the words “big businessmen at the helm” refers to the situation when wealthy and prominent businessmen become prime ministers, ministers, and hold other key political positions in government. Many high political positions in governments around the world are held by big businessmen-turned-politicians. For them the distinction between business and government is blurred and maybe useless. The typical business lobbyists have conquered government. We can no longer expect government to act in the public interests when dealing with powerful companies belonging to government politicians. When big businessmen are at the helm of government, combating corruption becomes an elephantine task.

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).

Lab studies on culture and corruption have led to some puzzling, contradictory results. This chapter begins with a discussion of nonexperimental work in this area and evaluates the experimental findings in the context of earlier research. We sketch out the channels through which culture interacts with corruption (i.e., through institutions and social norms) and argue that discrepancies in experimental results may be due to differences in design (including repetition or unobserved variation in beliefs) or due to differences in the response to punishment across societies. In addition to exploring design-based reasons for previous contradictory findings, avenues for future research include: behavioral responses to different types of externalities; replicating results in different countries; and utilizing the lab to formulate effective anticorruption measures.

Nonaka (1990) makes the distinction between generic knowledge that can be applied in many similar contexts, and local knowledge that can be best applied in a specific local context. Israel (1987) and Fukuyama (2004) point out that “high specificity” tasks (i.e. with clear objectives, and using well-defined technologies) with low transaction volume are more likely to be performed successfully by organizations across a wide range of cultural contexts. In this spirit, Friedman (2005, pp. 313–323) observes that countries can benefit from the “flat world” through a combination of “reform wholesale” and “reform retail”. The former entails market-centered reforms such as privatization, deregulation, reducing trade barriers, and adopting flexible labor laws. A handful of leaders in each country have pushed through such reforms in a wide range of cultural contexts including the developed OECD countries, plus many others such as Brazil, India, Mexico, Russia, China, and other East Asian “tiger” economies. The latter entails upgrading infrastructure, regulatory institutions, and education and health standards. Unlike the former, the latter reforms cannot be instituted by a handful of leaders, but require broad changes at many levels of society. Although the end results in countries successful at “reform retail” have many similarities (e.g. healthy, well-educated citizens) the steps toward achieving the results are very different, depending on culture and other contextual factors.

Can transparency mitigate the trade-distortive effects of nontariff measures (NTMs)? This chapter explores the trade impact associated with promoting greater transparency in NTMs, using a new database of transparency provisions in over 100 Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). The investigation surveys the incidence and scope of transparency provisions in RTAs, and econometrically assesses the trade effects of these instruments on bilateral agricultural and food trade. The findings demonstrate that transparency provisions in RTAs are associated with greater agricultural trade flows, suggesting that transparency should remain an important element of ongoing policy efforts to make NTMs less onerous for trade in agriculture.

This chapter evaluates the effectiveness of the implementation or enforcement of the Anticorruption Law 1971 of the authoritarian New Order regime in combating corruption in the public sector. Thus, the central research question that will be investigated and answered in this chapter is to what extent and for what reasons had the implementation or enforcement of the Anticorruption Law 1971 failed or been ineffective, to some degree, in achieving its legally mandated objective?