THE CORRUPTION IN
FRAGILE STATES BLOG

Without deliberate attention to sustainability from the outset, even strong technical interventions remain externally dependent and struggle to outlast donor funding.

Lingchi corruption is not just a metaphoric catch-all for corrupt events of a certain magnitude. It is a process, in a double sense, encompassing both ongoing corrupt activities and the longer-term, systemic erosion of governance.

I want to start by saying I didn't go into this work naive. I'd been reading corruption reports for years, citing them in my own papers, nodding along to the usual language about "weak oversight" and "institutional capacity gaps." I thought I knew the shape of the problem before I ever sat down with anyone.

If corruption persists despite legal and institutional reforms, the explanation lies elsewhere. The decision to explore social norms was not theoretical abstraction but an empirical necessity.

Whether you call it conscious bias or unconscious bias [….] procurement is still male dominated. The leaders are still men, decision-makers are men and procurement officials will find every reason to give a contract to a man, even though there's no objective reason.

For nearly half a century, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has made it illegal for U.S. citizens and companies to bribe foreign officials. Since 1998, that has been the case for foreign companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges or acting in the U.S., too.

Political will is widely heralded as the spark behind the success of a successful anti-corruption project. Yet it is difficult to ignite and even harder to retain. Might South Africa be offering us a rare success story…

The reasons this critically toxic nexus receives so little attention gurgled to the fore during The Corruption and Organized Crime Across the Conflict Cycle panel –– one of the four side events (out of 125!) giving it attention at CoSP11.

The anti-corruption field could not avoid being heavily hit by the slew of brutal executive orders of the new US administration. Around the world, programs were being slashed, heads were rolling, and livelihoods were being endangered. Apart from the termination of our Ugandan social norms change program, many of our partners and colleagues were also waking up to all forms of cancellations, terminations and freezing.

It is clear that if anti-corruption efforts ignore gender norms, they risk missing what animates so much corrupt behavior and what prevents people from resisting it. We now have better evidence, frameworks, and tools to understand and treat gender norms as core corruption drivers — not just as an obligatory add-on.

The Trump administration’s policy process is idiosyncratic and fluid by design. More seriously, anti-corruption practitioners at home and abroad have criticized Trump and other officials for intentionally diminishing anti-corruption efforts or being corrupt themselves, with charges ranging from conflicts of interest to bribery.

Donor decisions made without attention to conflict dynamics or internal vulnerabilities can deepen corruption risks.