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Corruption and collective action

Increasingly it is argued that anti-corruption efforts have not worked because they are based on inadequate theory, suggesting that collective action theory offers a better understanding of corruption than the principal-agent theory usually used. This paper, published in collaboration with the Developmental Leadership Programme (DLP), argues that both theories are in fact valuable. But both miss out an important third perspective, which is that corruption can serve important functions, solving difficult problems that people face, especially in weak institutional environments. Effective anti-corruption initiatives are so hard to achieve because they often require insights from all three of these perspectives.

(This paper is part of a jointly funded initiative by DLP and U4)

3 March 2015
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Corruption and collective action

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Marquette, H.; Peiffer, C. (2015) Corruption and collective action. University of Birmingham, UK (DLP Research Paper 32, 2015) 16 p.

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Heather Marquette
Caryn Peiffer

Caryn Peiffer is Senior Lecturer in International Public Policy and Governance at the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. She has worked on a wide range of issues relating to anti-corruption, specialising in the impact of anti-corruption messaging, advising organisations such as Transparency International and OECD. Her studies have been conducted in a wide range of countries including Albania, Uganda, Indonesia, Botswana, Zambia, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Twitter: @DrCarynPeiffer

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This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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