INTERNATIONAL APPROACHES TO TACKLING CORRUPTION: WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T?

Abstract

A well-developed set of international anti-corruption tools now exists. These range from broad conventions to focused initiatives in specific policy areas. This article argues that international agreements work best when they are focused and they speak to the common interests of the parties involved. Solutions need to be creative, they need to bring in a broad coalition of stakeholders and they need to be focused on specific problems. International agreements need to help states with good quality institutions of governance focus on developing transparency initiatives, accountability drives and nuanced efforts to tackle particular national variants of “legal corruption.” In countries with patchy institutions of governance the scope for international influence is broader, while in states with serious governance challenges the best international anti-corruption efforts will often have surprisingly little to do with corruption at all. In a state where the rule of law is patchy or non-existent then anti-corruption laws (or indeed laws more generally) mean very little. The challenge here is to improve the basic tools of governance in the knowledge that only then can the issue of corruption be brought on to the agenda.

Keywords

corruption / anti-corruption / UNCAC / OECD / transparency

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Higher Education Press