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The negative consequences of corruption for a country's development have been identified in Chapter 1. Corruption is ubiquitous and is found in “all political systems, at every level of government, and in the delivery of all scarce public goods and services” (Caiden, 1988, p. 6). Corruption is a universal problem, and governments all over the world have introduced measures to tackle this “social pandemic” which has “many faces” and is “the most challenging obstacle to economic development” (Campos & Bhargava, 2007, pp. 1–2).

Chapters 2–6 have dealt in turn with how Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore have been effective in curbing corruption, as manifested in their rankings and scores on the five international indicators of the perceived extent of corruption. In contrast, Chapter 7 focuses on India’s ineffective anti-corruption measures and identifies the lessons which India can learn from their success in fighting corruption. The aim of this concluding chapter is twofold: to describe and compare the different paths taken by these six countries in their battle against corruption; and to identify the lessons which other countries can learn from their experiences in combating corruption. However, as the policy contexts of these six countries differ significantly, it is necessary to begin by providing an analysis of their contextual constraints before proceeding to compare their anti-corruption strategies and identifying the relevant lessons for other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the five mistakes made by political leaders in Asian countries in combating corruption. These mistakes constitute the cycle of failure which must be broken for Asian countries to succeed in fighting corruption.

This paper is based on the comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of the anti-corruption measures adopted by various Asian countries.

The cycle of failure in combating corruption in Asian countries arises from their governments’ reliance on corrupt political leaders and the police, and multiple anti-corruption agencies as attack dogs or paper tigers.

This paper would be of interest to those policymakers, anti-corruption practitioners, and scholars, who are concerned with enhancing the effectiveness of anti-corruption strategies in their countries by breaking the cycle of failure.

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).

This paper aims to critically examine the lie detector test policy of the Nigeria Police Force to determine if the policy is capable of curbing corruption in the Nigerian Police Force.

The analysis took the form of a desk study, which analyzed various documents and reports such as the report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the National Bureau of Statistics titled “Corruption in Nigeria – Bribery: Public Experience and Response,” Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2017, the report by the International Police Science Association and the Institute for Economics and Peace.

This paper determined that the lie detector test policy of the Nigeria Police Force could achieve its desired objectives if the following recommendations are implemented: The Nigeria Police Reform Trust Fund bill should be given accelerated consideration in the Senate and House of Representatives based on its urgency and significance for the new lie detector test policy of the Nigeria Police Force. There is need for the Nigerian Police to have enough funds to conduct trainings for police personnel who are chosen as examiners for the lie detector tests. The Nigerian National Assembly will need to pass an Act to provide for the licensing of detection of deception examiners – commonly known as polygraph or lie detector operators – and regulation of that profession. The act should set forth the conditions under which persons may be admitted to practice detection of deception with a polygraph, the standards they must observe and the types of polygraph devices that they may henceforth be used lawfully. This is what was done in the State of Illinois. The Nigeria Police Force is advised to make use of two examiners for the lie detector test: one in-house examiner and one external examiner. The external examiner may be from another country in which corruption is not at a high rate, and must be someone of high integrity and professional competence. This measure may reduce the risk of bribery and corruption in the system. It will also bring more integrity and transparency into the system. The external examiner may also carry out “on the job training” with the in-house examiner while the polygraph exercise is going on. The Nigeria Police Force must make a new policy that mandates that all transactions relating to the purchase of polygraph machines must be conducted in an open and fair manner that recognizes the need for the transaction to be done directly with the seller, and not through a sales agent. This policy may help prevent a situation where a corrupt sales agent connives with a corrupt police officer to defraud the police unit. An ongoing approach to screening should be considered for specific positions, as circumstances change, or for a comprehensive review of departmental staff over a period. The Nigeria Police Force should have a policy that mandates that the lie detector test should be taken once in five years by all staff of the Nigeria Police Force. For staff in very sensitive positions, the lie detector test should be taken every three years. This will enable the lie detector policy to be more effective. Let us take, for example, a person passes the lie detector test genuinely without any influence of corruption; there is still a possibility that the person may change over time. The temptation to follow current employees to collect bribes is very high. But if the Nigeria Police Force put a policy in place that mandates every police personnel to take the lie detector test every five years starting from the first five years after recruitment, the cankerworm called corruption may be curbed effectively. Imagine if every police personnel knew that they were going to be asked by an examiner, five years after working, to confirm if they ever collected bribe during the time they served in the police force; most employees will desist from taking bribes or engaging in corrupt acts. The above measure will ensure that current employees who are chosen as examiners for the lie detector tests are fit and proper persons for the job.

This paper focuses on the new lie detector test policy of the Nigeria Police Force. It does not address the other anti-corruption policies of the Nigeria Police Force.

This paper offers a critical analysis of the lie detector test policy of the Nigeria Police Force. It will provide recommendations on how the policy could be strengthened. This is the only paper to adopt this kind of approach.

This paper analyses the importance of leadership and culture in combating corruption in Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.

This paper is based on the comparative analysis of the effectiveness of the anti-corruption measures in the studies of six selected countries/regions in this special issue of Public Administration and Policy. The contributors in this special issue were invited because of their publications on combating corruption in the six countries/regions.

The critical variable ensuring the effectiveness of combating corruption is the strong political will of the leadership in changing the culture of corruption in the country/region by implementing a zero-tolerance policy toward corruption, as shown in Singapore and Hong Kong. In New Zealand’s case, leadership plays a less important role because of the population’s emphasis on equality and egalitarianism and its reliance on the Ombudsman and Serious Fraud Office to curb corruption. However, the corrupt leadership of Tanaka Kakuei in Japan, Najib Rajak in Malaysia, and Chen Shui-bian in Taiwan, demonstrates clearly their insidious impact of consolidating their kleptocratic rule in these countries/regions.

As the role of leadership and culture in combating corruption has not been given sufficient attention in the literature, this paper attempts to rectify this neglect by demonstrating that the political leaders in Singapore and Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent, New Zealand, have succeeded in minimising corruption while their counterparts in Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia, have failed to do so.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the analysis of corruption must distinguish between corruption in organizations where this kind of behaviour is widespread and corruption in organizations where it is rare, and must also distinguish between corruption as the outcome of an economic cost-benefit analysis and corruption induced by social-psychological factors.

This is a conceptual paper.

In order to be effective in combating corruption, a fit is needed with the main determinants of corrupt behaviour: first, at the individual level in which either personal morality, social or economic considerations are at stake; second, at the organizational level in which social-psychological factors might be determinative; and third, at the contextual level in which economic prosperity, the nature of the political system and cultural features are important.

Especially in systems where corruption is widespread, policymakers could benefit from theories in social psychology to combat corruption.

To see corruption as the result of an individual cost-benefit analysis or as a lack of morality often misses the point in cases of widespread corruption.

The paper points at the added value of social psychology approach to corruption as compared to the approaches at present dominant in public administration.

In his March 1986 article in Newsweek, Russell Watson exposed “Queen Imelda” Marcos's life of indulgence as the Philippines' First Lady in the opening paragraph:Three thousand pairs of shoes, size eight and a half. Five shelves of unused Gucci handbags, still stuffed with paper, price tags still attached. Five hundred bras, mostly black, and a trunk full of girdles, 40 and 42 inches around the hips. Huge bottles of perfume, vats of Christian Dior wrinkle cream, a walk-in-safe littered with dozens of empty jewelry cases. When the palace of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos was opened to the public as a museum last week, foreigners and Filipinos alike gawked at what the former First Lady had left behind. “It was the worst case of conspicuous consumption I have ever seen,” said an American visitor, Rep. Stephen Solarz. “Compared to her, Marie Antoinette was a bag lady.” (Watson, 1986, p. 14)

This paper analyses the role of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister from June 1959 to November 1990, in minimising corruption by implementing a zero-tolerance policy toward corruption in Singapore.

This paper is based on the analysis of Lee’s beliefs and the policies he introduced to curb corruption in Singapore.

Lee’s disdain for corruption and his beliefs in meritocracy and the importance of good leadership shaped his commitment to a zero-tolerance policy against corruption, which was enforced impartially and sustained in Singapore for the past 62 years.

This analysis of how Lee transformed Singapore into one of the least corrupt countries in the world would be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners and scholars concerned with minimising corruption in their own countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationship between public service motivation (PSM) and corruption theory. This paper further explores the possibility of integrating two theories in order to prevent corruption.

Existing theories on PSM and corruption were briefly reviewed in finding the connection between the two theories. The discussions primarily focus on finding the theoretical and empirical interrelationship between PSM theories and corruption theories.

This paper suggests applying PSM theories in preventing corruption by adding ethical dimension of PSM to corruption theories. In other words, the PSM constructs can be incorporated in developing an anti-corruption strategy. In the context of public administration, the authors find the importance of PSM theory in developing an effective anti-corruption strategy.

Public officials should be encouraged to possess strong ethical standards in public service; highly motivated candidates for public service positions should be sought in order to create a clean and reliable government; and PSM educational programs in the early stages of schooling should be adopted to stimulate ethics for young children.

This study adds contributions to the understanding of theoretical relationship between PSM and corruption theory. The authors suggest that integrating PSM and corruption theory can be beneficial in building new paradigms to prevent corruption in a country such as Korea.