Corruption as an Empty Signifier critically explores the ways in which corruption in Africa has been equated with African politics and political order, and offers a novel approach to understanding corruption as a potentially emancipatory discourse of political transformation.
Why did Albania enjoy some of the most successful anti-corruption programs and institutions along with what appeared to be growing levels of corruption during the period 1998-2005? Looking at corruption through a post-structuralist discourse analysis perspective this book argues that the dominant corruption discourse in Albania served primarily to institute the neoliberal order rather than eliminate corruption. It did so in four interrelated ways. First, blaming every Albanian failure on corruption avoided a critical engagement with the existing neoliberal developmental model. Second, the dominant articulation of corruption as abuse of public office for private gain consigned it to the public sector, transforming neoliberal policies of privatisation and expanding markets into anticorruption measures. Third, international anticorruption campaigns reproduced an asymmetric relationship of dependency between Albania and the international institutions that monitored it by articulating corruption as internal to the Albanian condition. Finally, against corruption international and local actors could articulate a neoliberal order that was free of internal contradictions and fully compatible with democratization. As a rare example of post-structuralist discourse analysis of corruption this book can be useful for future research on discourses of corruption in other countries of the region and beyond.
Leaders of hybrid regimes in pursuit of political domination and material gain instrumentalize both hidden forms of corruption and public anti-corruption policies. Corruption is pursued for different purposes including cooperation with strategic partners and exclusion of opponents. Presidents use anti-corruption policies to legitimize and institutionalize political domination. Corrupt practices and anti-corruption policies become two sides of the same coin and are exercised to maintain an uneven political playing field. This study combines empirical analysis and social constructivism for an investigation into the presidencies of Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005), Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010), and Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014). Explorative expert interviews, press surveys, content analysis of presidential speeches, as well as critical assessment of anti-corruption legislation are used for comparison and process tracing of the utilization of corruption under three Ukrainian presidents.
Corruption is a serious concern, one which can undermine state legitimacy, exacerbate inequality, and affect trust between social groups. Such effects are particularly problematic in societies that have gone through violent conflict, and are struggling to rebuild institutions, restore social trust, and recover economically. While anti-corruption measures are increasingly integrated into post-conflict programs, war-time structures and practices of corruption often prevail. This book explores corruption in post-war societies by focusing on the important issues of power, inequality and trust. To understand post-war power structures, and the extent to which they engrain, challenge, or transform corrupt practices, we need to study what kind of peace has emerged. The empirical cases in this book offer a variety of post-conflict situations, demonstrating how corruption is played out in, depending on the type and extent of international intervention, and in the case of a victor’s peace, a contested peace, a partial peace etc. The chapters illustrate the experiences and perceptions of people on the ground in post-conflict societies, and by giving much space to local dynamics, the book shifts the focus from external intervention and actors to local contexts, striving for greater understanding of the interplay between corruption, power, inequality, and trust in post-war societies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.
This 10th thematic volume of International Development Policy presents a collection of articles exploring some of the complex development challenges associated with Africa’s recent but extremely rapid pace of urbanisation that challenges still predominant but misleading images of Africa as a rural continent. Analysing urban settings through the diverse experiences and perspectives of inhabitants and stakeholders in cities across the continent, the authors consider the evolution of international development policy responses amidst the unique historical, social, economic and political contexts of Africa’s urban development. Contributors include: Carole Ammann, Claudia Baez Camargo, Claire Bénit-Gbaffou, Karen Büscher, Aba Obrumah Crentsil, Sascha Delz, Ton Dietz, Till Förster, Lucy Koechlin, Lalli Metsola, Garth Myers, George Owusu, Edgar Pieterse, Sebastian Prothmann, Warren Smit, and Florian Stoll.
This volume analyzes crises in International Relations (IR) in an innovative way. Rather than conceptualizing a crisis as something unexpected that has to be managed, the contributors argue that a crisis needs to be analyzed within a wider context of change: when new discourses are formed, communities are (re)built, and new identities emerge. Focusing on Ukraine, the book explore various questions related to crisis and change, including: How are crises culturally and socially constructed? How do issues of agency and structure come into play in Ukraine? Which subjectivities were brought into existence by Ukraine crisis discourses? Chapters explore the participation of women in Euromaidan, identity shifts in the Crimean Tatar community and diaspora politics, discourses related to corruption, anti-Soviet partisan warfare, and the annexation of Crimea, as well as long distance impacts of the crisis.
Corruption, often described as all that is rotten in the modern society, has become an increasingly dominant theme in contemporary political discourse, one that is related to specific practices, concepts and evaluations that vary across regions, cultures, spheres of action and disciplines. This volume, through case studies, investigates corruption in the Global South (especially India and Brazil) and West (especially Switzerland) to gain a more nuanced view of the phenomenon. The chapters in this volume are organized into two loosely structured and overlapping parts: the first part consisting of Chapters 2-5 covers conceptual questions related to corruption discourses from different perspectives such as economic ethics, social capital theory and literature; the second part consisting of Chapters 6-11 details the complexity and diversity of corruption practices within and between countries and regions, providing different interpretative frameworks, which in turn flow into discourses on corruption.
Digital Memory in Brazil draws on the results of three case studies to determine the strategies and practices applied by the Brazilian far-right government of Bolsonaro (2019-2023) to construct a negationist digital memory of the Brazilian dictatorship.
Corruption has long been identified as a governance challenge, yet it took states until the 1990s to adopt binding agreements combating it. While the rapid spread of anti-corruption treaties appears to mark a global consensus, a closer look reveals that not all regional and international organizations move on similar trajectories. This book seeks to explain similarities and differences between international anti-corruption agreements. In this volume Lohaus develops a comprehensive analytical framework to compare international agreements in the areas of prevention, criminalization, jurisdiction, domestic enforcement and international cooperation. Outcomes range from narrow enforcement cooperation to broad commitments that often lack follow-up mechanisms. Lohaus argues that agreements vary because they are designed to signal anti-corruption commitment to different audiences. To demonstrate such different approaches to anti-corruption, he draws on two starkly different cases, the Organization of American States and the African Union. Contributing to debates on decision-making in international organizations, this work showcases how global governance is shaped by processes of diffusion that involve state and non-state actors. The book highlights challenges as well as chances linked to the patchwork of international rules. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR theory, global governance, international organizations and regionalism.