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The purpose of this article is to analyse the weaknesses of governance institutions in constraining grand corruption arising from the government procurement of large foreign-funded infrastructure projects in the Philippines. The weaknesses are revealed in the description and analysis of two major scandals, namely, the construction of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant during the Marcos era and the National Broadband Network project of the Arroyo presidency.

This research employs a historical and comparative case approach to explore patterns of grand corruption and their resolution. Primary and secondary data sources including court decisions, congressional records, journal articles and newspaper reports are used to construct the narratives for each case.

Top-level executive agreements that do not require competitive public bidding provide an opportunity for grand corruption. Such agreements encourage the formation of corrupt rent-seeking relationships involving the selling firm, brokers, politicians and top-level government executives. Closure of cases of grand corruption is a serious problem that involves an incoherent and politically vulnerable prosecutorial and justice system.

This paper aims to contribute to research on grand corruption involving the executive branch in the Philippines, particularly in the procurement of large, foreign-funded government projects. It examines allegations of improprieties in government project contracting and the politics of resolving corruption scandals through the justice system.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate how the governments in six Asian countries have dealt with selected grand corruption scandals.

This paper is based on the comparative analysis of 11 corruption scandals examined in the six articles on India, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore included in this special issue of Public Administration and Policy.

The responses of the governments in the six countries depend on the strength of their political will in combating corruption. The responses of the governments in Malaysia, Philippines, India and Japan reflect their weak political will in combating corruption and lack of accountability of the corrupt offenders. By contrast, the strong political will of the governments in Singapore and Macau is reflected in the investigation and punishment of the corrupt offenders without any cover-up of the scandals.

The findings would be of interest to scholars, policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners and activists.

Corruption continues to ravage societies around the world. The fight against corruption can be fruitful only if approached from multiple standpoints. Thus, corruption must also be approached from an academic and educational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to provide a good practice example of how universities and business schools can take actions to align themselves with the international sustainability and anticorruption agenda.

The six principles of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) provide a framework for higher education institutions to address corruption-related issues. This paper presents the case story of the Swiss-based University of Applied Sciences HTW Chur, which developed an academic working agenda on corruption-related topics based on the principles of the PRME.

The case story shares the actions that HTW Chur has taken and the benefits that have resulted from the university’s work. The findings show that to address corruption-related issues, scholars from the university took actions related to four principles in the PRME: method, research, partnership and dialogue. Furthermore, the results indicate that in addition to the university itself, public and private institutions have also profited from the actions taken.

This paper is founded on a single case story; thus, the usual limitations of this research design apply.

It becomes apparent that the needs of the private sector in the fight against corruption could be addressed by engaging in and strengthening partnerships with universities. Thus, it seems beneficial to develop guidelines and standards to facilitate collaborations and dialogue in a participatory and transparent way.

The paper provides a good practice example of how universities can take actions to align themselves with the international sustainability and anticorruption agenda.

This paper aims at comparing and contrasting the Ao Man-long scandal with the Ho Chio-meng case in Macau, drawing lessons from the two events and casting lights on the literature on corruption scandals.

The study used documentary research and interpretative and analytical approaches.

The two cases show considerable administrative discretion on the part of the principal officials involved, and remedial measures along the line of having more rigorous and frequent internal auditing may be necessary.

Original analyses were conducted together with literature review and documentary research. This paper would be of interest to scholars and practitioners concerned with how Macau combats corruption.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the prevalence of corruption in Malaysia since 2004 in relation to political leadership, implementation of anti-corruption measures and the political and business culture based on money politics.

The paper draws from the information and data provided by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Malaysian government, international organisations, media reports, and academic papers.

The paper analyses the perceived extent of corruption in Malaysia by examining how successive governments have dealt with the problem through a wide range of measures. Corruption remains widespread because of ineffective implementation, a culture of money politics based on mutually beneficial crony associations between political actors and business leaders, political interference to frustrate enforcement against corruption offenders, especially prominent personalities, and the mixed impact of corruption prevention measures. The paper concludes that the political and business culture and the nature of political leadership have eroded the political will to combat grand corruption in Malaysia.

This paper builds on previous research on corruption in Malaysia and highlights the combined negative impact of political leadership and a business and political culture that tolerates and espouses corruption, especially through money politics, and the consequent weak political will for tackling grand corruption.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges of Japanese political leadership in combating corruption with an emphasis on the 1970s and 1980s when Tanaka Kakuei and Miki Takeo led Japan.

This paper discusses the perceived extent of corruption in Japan, the importance of Japan’s gift-giving culture, and examines the efforts of Miki Takeo and the consequences of his political reforms for Japanese politics. Comparison is made with his predecessor, Tanaka Kakuei, to highlight the differences in combating corruption between both leaders.

Compared to Tanaka Kakuei, who was highly corrupt, Miki Takeo left a mixed legacy. He managed to revise campaign finance laws but lacked the political will and support from his party. The reforms he implemented failed to reduce money in politics, but they favoured the opposition in the collection of funds.

This paper will be useful to scholars and policy-makers interested in studying the role of leaders in curbing corruption and the challenges of political reform.

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.