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SUMMARYThere are growing calls for religion to be used in the fight against corruption on the basis of the assumption that religious people are more concerned with ethics than with the non‐religious, despite the fact that many of the most corrupt countries in the world also rank highly in terms of religiosity. This article looks at the evidence in the current literature for a causal relationship between religion and corruption and questions the relevance of the methodologies being used to build up this evidence base. This article shows that the new 'myth' about the relationship between religion and corruption is based on assumptions not borne out of the evidence. The article presents findings from field research in India and Nigeria that explores how individual attitudes towards corruption may (or may not) be shaped by religion. The research shows that religion may have some impact on attitudes towards corruption, but it has very little likely impact on actual corrupt behaviour. This is because—despite universal condemnation of corruption—it is seen by respondents as being so systemic that being uncorrupt often makes little sense. Respondents, by using a process that Bandura (2002) calls 'selective moral disengagement', were able to justify their own attitudes and behaviour vis‐a‐vis corruption, pointing towards corruption being a classic collective action problem, rather than a problem of personal values or ethics. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractDonors are increasingly funding projects and programmes that fit under the general rubric of 'civic education'. These tend to address both targeted problems within a country and wider institutional reforms, including, for example, projects aimed at voter education for first time elections within a country, or human rights education in countries coming out of a non‐democratic system. More recently, donors are funding civic education for both adults and children to help fight corruption. This article looks at lessons from two well‐known models for civic education, one of which targets corruption specifically and one which targets wider civic values: the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption's (ICAC) community relations programme, and the US civic education, including programmes funded by USAID in other countries. It argues that both the Hong Kong and US experiences of civic education demonstrate how unlikely it is that donors will produce similar results with a fraction of the budget and in environments characterised by weak institutions, widespread illiteracy, crumbling or non‐existent schools and inadequate training for teachers. It also explores how, in fact in both cases, corruption forms only a very small part of much wider civic education curricula based on citizenship, not corruption, and discusses the implications of this for donors. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper looks at the increasing politicisation of the World Bank through its work on corruption. Historically, the Bank's Articles of Agreement, which forbid it from involving itself in the politics of its recipient countries, have excluded work on corruption. In the 1990s, internal and external demands grew for the Bank to address the problem of corruption, despite earlier reticence. Much research done over the past decade, often commissioned by the Bank or done in-house, has worked to turn corruption into an economic and social issue, rather than a political one, in order to conduct anti-corruption work while evading accusations that it is violating this non-political mandate. Now this pretence is gradually slipping away and the Bank is becoming overtly political, despite its Articles and a lack of international consensus that this is the direction in which it should be heading.

A growing body of research argues that anticorruption efforts fail because of a flawed theoretical foundation, where collective action theory is said to be a better lens for understanding corruption than the dominant principal–agent theory. We unpack this critique and advance several new arguments. First, the application of collective action theory to the issue of corruption has been, thus far, incomplete. Second, a collective action theory-based approach to corruption is in fact complementary to a principal–agent approach, rather than contradictory as is claimed. Third, applications of both theories have failed to recognize that corruption persists because it functions to provide solutions to problems. We conclude by arguing that anticorruption effectiveness is difficult to achieve because it requires insights from all three perspectives—principal–agent theory, collective action theory, and corruption as serving functions—which allows us to better understand how to harness the political will needed to fight corruption.

A growing body of research argues that anticorruption efforts fail because of a flawed theoretical foundation, where collective action theory is said to be a better lens for understanding corruption than the dominant principal–agent theory. We unpack this critique and advance several new arguments. First, the application of collective action theory to the issue of corruption has been, thus far, incomplete. Second, a collective action theory‐based approach to corruption is in fact complementary to a principal–agent approach, rather than contradictory as is claimed. Third, applications of both theories have failed to recognize that corruption persists because it functions to provide solutions to problems. We conclude by arguing that anticorruption effectiveness is difficult to achieve because it requires insights from all three perspectives—principal–agent theory, collective action theory, and corruption as serving functions—which allows us to better understand how to harness the political will needed to fight corruption.