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Crime Law Soc Change (2015) 64:2335
DOI 10.1007/s10611-015-9585-3
Serena Verdenicci1 & Dan Hough1
Published online: 18 September 2015# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract In recent years there has been an ever expanding body of work that advocates putting the citizen at the centre of attempts to tackle corruption. The task of anti-corruption policy, so the argument goes, is to empower citizens to act against those who behave in a corrupt fashion. This article illustrates that whilst there is much to be said for encouraging citizens to move against corrupt officials, and citizen-centred anti-corruption ideas subsequently appear attractive in theory, implementing these notions (as they currently stand) in practice is problematic. Attacking corruption may well often be done most successfully by not openly claiming that that is the aim, and by embracing more indirect reform paths. The article concludes that without buy-in from not just citizens, but also from governments and external agents, citizen-centred anti-corruption mechanisms become limited, potentially irrelevant or even damaging as citizen apathy and frustration increases.
Introduction
Corruption, it would appear, is one of the great evils of our time. Citizens are appalled by it, international organisations have created reform agendas to tackle it and politicians earnestly claim to want to reduce it. Even the world of business has embraced the notion that it could well be in its interests to work alongside regulators and policy-makers with a view to cleaning up the environment where trade takes place. Given the increased salience of corruption in the modern world, it comes as little surprise that in recent times social scientists have also conducted ever more analysis of corruptions underlying causes, its effects, and naturally what policy-makers have tried to do (and indeed should attempt to do) to counteract it. Working to reduce the underlying negative effects of corruption therefore seems to be very much the order of the day.
* Dan [email protected]; http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/157318
1 University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK
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24 Verdenicci S., Hough D.
Popular though the idea of anti-corruption now...