Daily life in Africa is governed by the 'petty' corruption of public officials in services such as health, transport, or the judicial system. This remarkable study of everyday corruption in three African countries investigates the reasons for its extraordinary prevalence. The authors construct an illuminating analytical framework around the various forms of corruption, the corruptive strategies public officials resort to, and how these forms and strategies have become embedded in daily administrative practices. They investigate the roots of the system in the growing inability of weakened states in Africa to either reward their employees adequately or to deliver expected services. They conclude that corruption in Africa today is qualitatively different from other parts of the world in its pervasiveness, its legitimations, and its huge impact on the nature of the state.

This new edition of a 1999 classic shows how institutionalized corruption can be fought through sophisticated political-economic reform.

This book offers a new understanding of the workings of the everyday Ethiopian state through analysis of the everyday politics of state-society relations.

Economic growth's effects on government efforts to combat citizen-facing, public-service corruption varies in a puzzling way across services. Over two high-growth decades in India, those services undergoing the largest increases in demand, and therefore in rent-extraction opportunities, saw more robust anti-corruption reforms than did services experiencing weaker or even negative demand growth. In this paper, the authors build theoretical models that can explain why growth induced the state to more aggressively shut down its fastest-growing rent opportunities. They show that the net effect of growth on anti-corruption efforts in a service depends upon the balance of three growth-induced outcomes - two negative and one positive. Exit of richer, high-voice citizens from the service reduces public pressure for reforms, while entry of poorer low-voice citizens enhances opportunities for rent extraction without increasing accountability. Conversely, growth empowers existing service users to demand anti-corruption reforms. The balance between exit, entry and empowerment forces explains why growth leads government to clean up corruption in services that the middle classes and rich continue to use, and concentrates corruption in the services they leave behind. By inducing stronger anticorruption efforts in the services used by richer citizens, growth makes everyday corruption more of a “tax on the poor”. We illustrate how growth disproportionately empowered richer citizens to successfully demand reforms by analyzing changes to the passport service and the railway reservation system. We also validate the model's main mechanisms statistically through a case study of India's rural elementary schools, where anti-corruption reforms have lagged. These results suggest that designing services to discourage exit by their richer users could help to harness the anti-corruption benefits of growth for the rest. - Keywords: Corruption, Economic Growth, Public Services, Voice, Exit, Entry, Anti-corruption reforms, Accountability, State Institutions, Passport issuance, Railway Reservation, Teacher Absenteeism. - JEL Codes: H11, H42, D73, O12, O17.

E-mails proposing an "urgent business relationship" help make fraud Nigeria's largest source of foreign revenue after oil. But scams are also a central part of Nigeria's domestic cultural landscape. Corruption is so widespread in Nigeria that its citizens call it simply "the Nigerian factor." Willing or unwilling participants in corruption at every turn, Nigerians are deeply ambivalent about it--resigning themselves to it, justifying it, or complaining about it. They are painfully aware of the damage corruption does to their country and see themselves as their own worst enemies, but they have been unable to stop it. A Culture of Corruption is a profound and sympathetic attempt to understand the dilemmas average Nigerians face every day as they try to get ahead--or just survive--in a society riddled with corruption. Drawing on firsthand experience, Daniel Jordan Smith paints a vivid portrait of Nigerian corruption--of nationwide fuel shortages in Africa's oil-producing giant, Internet cafés where the young launch their e-mail scams, checkpoints where drivers must bribe police, bogus organizations that siphon development aid, and houses painted with the fraud-preventive words "not for sale." This is a country where "419"--the number of an antifraud statute--has become an inescapable part of the culture, and so universal as a metaphor for deception that even a betrayed lover can say, "He played me 419." It is impossible to comprehend Nigeria today--from vigilantism and resurgent ethnic nationalism to rising Pentecostalism and accusations of witchcraft and cannibalism--without understanding the role played by corruption and popular reactions to it. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Public Corruption in the United States provides a comprehensive view of public corruption, including discussion on its types, methods, trends, challenges, and overall impact. It is the first book of its kind to examine in plain language the breadth of criminal public corruption in the United States, not just at a superficial level, but in a deeper context. By critically examining acts of corruption of elected, appointed and hired government officials (legislators, law enforcement, judges, etc.) at the local, state, and federal levels, the reader gains insight into the inner workings of corruption, including its relationship to terrorism and organized criminal networks. Using simple language and easy-to-understand examples, this book is about empowering investigators, compliance professionals, educators, public officials, and everyday citizens who seek to better serve, support, and protect their communities and their country.

Corruption is one of the biggest global issues, ahead of extreme poverty, unemployment, the rising cost of food and energy, climate change, and terrorism. It is thought to be one of the principal causes of poverty around the globe. Its significance in the contemporary world cannot be undervalued. In this Very Short Introduction Leslie Holmes considers why the international community has only highlighted corruption as a problem in the past two decades, despite its presence throughout the millennia. Holmes explores the phenomenon from several different perspectives, from the cultural differences affecting how corruption is defined, its impact, and its various causes to the possible remedies. Providing evidence of corruption and considering ways to address it around the world, this is an important introduction to a significant and serious global issue. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.