All societies develop their own norms about what is fair behaviour and what is not. Violations of these norms, including acts of corruption, can collectively be described as forms of 'grabbing'. This unique volume addresses how grabbing hinders development at the sector level and in state administration. The contributors - researchers and practitioners who work on the ground in developing countries - present empirical data on the mechanisms at play and describe different types of unethical practices.
The book's sixteen case studies explore why certain practices constitute forms of grabbing, what implications they have for the achievement of development goals, and how policy options should take the characteristics of grabbing into account.
First published in 1963, this study of corruption in the developing countries of Africa takes as its point of comparison Britain, pre-1880, as the authors question whether Britain’s experience in overcoming corruption can throw any light the means of overcoming corruption in contemporary developing countries.
Corruption, for most of us, almost immediately evokes images of the third world especially countries like Nigeria, Mexico and India. Whilst we may concede that corruption exists in developed countries it is generally thought to be under control. Despite such widely-held views there is very little hard evidence on the actual extent of corruption in any country. This book strives to look behind impressions in an attempt to determine what factors underlie the high profile of corruption in UDCs. For an adequate understanding of the phenomenon the global character of corruption is emphasized as well as the necessity of locating within a broader process of economic and social change.
Despite recent corporate scandals, the United States is among the world’s least corrupt nations. But in the nineteenth century, the degree of fraud and corruption in America approached that of today’s most corrupt developing nations, as municipal governments and robber barons alike found new ways to steal from taxpayers and swindle investors. In Corruption and Reform, contributors explore this shadowy period of United States history in search of better methods to fight corruption worldwide today. Contributors to this volume address the measurement and consequences of fraud and corruption and the forces that ultimately led to their decline within the United States. They show that various approaches to reducing corruption have met with success, such as deregulation, particularly “free banking,” in the 1830s. In the 1930s, corruption was kept in check when new federal bureaucracies replaced local administrations in doling out relief. Another deterrent to corruption was the independent press, which kept a watchful eye over government and business. These and other facets of American history analyzed in this volume make it indispensable as background for anyone interested in corruption today.
In many countries, public sector institutions impose heavy burdens on economic life. As a consequence of predatory policies, entrepreneurship lingers and economies stagnate. The authors of this collection describe many of these pathologies of a "grabbing hand" government, and examine their consequences for growth.
Sustainable Development Goal 16 is explicitly committed to measuring aspects of corruption over time, and the identification of robust indicators to do so is an important endeavor. This paper critically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of various objective and subjective indicators of corruption, using the standard criteria of validity and reliability to identify indicators most salient to measuring Sustainable Development Goal 16. Consistent with the large literature in the field, the paper finds that the aggregate survey-based indicators of corruption, especially the Corruption Perceptions Index and the World Bank's Control of Corruption indicator, despite some important reservations and limitations, are the most valid measures of the magnitude of overall corruption in many country contexts. However, in every case, the initial results using one indicator should be cross checked with the use of the other indicator, as there are some minor differences between how the two indicators are constructed, and in practice it is difficult to establish a priori which indicator is marginally more efficient. Furthermore, whenever possible, subjective indicators should be cross checked with objective indicators, even when the latter may be of a more narrow scope and time limited availability.
Political corruption has traditionally been presented as a phenomenon characteristic of developing countries, authoritarian regimes, or societies in which the value system favored tacit patrimony and clientelism. Recently, however, the thesis of an inverse correlation between corruption and economic and political development (and therefore democratic "maturity") has been frequently and convincingly challenged. Countries with a long democratic tradition, such as the United States, Belgium, Britain, and Italy, have all experienced a combination of headline-grabbing scandals and smaller-scale cases of misappropriation. In "Corrupt Exchanges," primary research on Italian cases (judicial proceedings, in-depth interviews, parliamentary documents, and press databases), combined with a cross-national comparison based on a secondary analysis of corruption in democratic systems, is used to develop a model to analyze corruption as a network of illegal exchanges. The authors explore in great detail the structure of that network, by examining both the characteristics of the actors who directly engage in the corruption and the resources they exchange. These processes of degeneration have caused a crisis in the dominant paradigm in both academic and political considerations of corruption. The book is organized around the analysis of the resources that are exchanged and of the different actors who take part. Politicians in business, illegal brokers, Mafia members, protected entrepreneurs, and party-appointed bureaucrats exchange resources on the illegal market, altering the institutional system of interactions between the state and the market. In this complex web of exchanges, bonds of trust are established that allow the corrupt exchange to thrive. The book will serve both as a theoretical approach to a political problem of large bearing on democratic institutions and a descriptive warning of a system in peril.
This book provides a fresh and extensive discussion of corruption issues in natural resources sectors. Reflecting on recent debates in corruption research and revisiting resource curse challenges in light of political ecology approaches, this volume provides a series of nuanced and policy-relevant case studies analyzing patterns of corruption around natural resources and options to reach anti-corruption goals. The potential for new variations of the resource curse in the forest and urban land sectors and the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies in resource sectors are considered in depth. Corruption in oil, gas, mining, fisheries, biofuel, wildlife, forestry and urban land are all covered, and potential solutions discussed.
Why has China grown so fast for so long despite vast corruption? In China's Gilded Age, Yuen Yuen Ang maintains that all corruption is harmful, but not all types of corruption hurt growth. Ang unbundles corruption into four varieties: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money. While the first three types impede growth, access money - elite exchanges of power and profit - cuts both ways: it stimulates investment and growth but produces serious risks for the economy and political system. Since market opening, corruption in China has evolved toward access money. Using a range of data sources, the author explains the evolution of Chinese corruption, how it differs from the West and other developing countries, and how Xi's anti-corruption campaign could affect growth and governance. In this formidable yet accessible book, Ang challenges one-dimensional measures of corruption. By unbundling the problem and adopting a comparative-historical lens, she reveals that the rise of capitalism was not accompanied by the eradication of corruption, but rather by its evolution from thuggery and theft to access money. In doing so, she changes the way we think about corruption and capitalism, not only in China but around the world.
