Corruption and Global Justice Gillian

Brock
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Corruption and Global Justice
Corruption and
Global Justice
GILLIAN BROCK
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 Contents

Preface vii
1. Corruption, Responsibilities, and Global Justice: An Introduction 1
2. Corruption and Global Injustice 30
3. Justice, State Responsibilities, and Human Rights 51
4. Reducing Corruption: The Many Dimensions 65
5. Contemporary Corruption-curbing Tools 86
6. Abusive Tax Avoidance and Tax Professionals’ Responsibilities 108
7. Sharing Responsibilities for Action 135
8. Addressing Common Challenges and Future Directions 164

Appendix: Is a Comprehensive Account of Corruption Available?

Some Difficulties 179

Bibliography 197
Index 211
 Preface

Citizens across the world regularly rank corruption as one of the most pressing
problems facing their country.¹ While corruption is pervasive in some places,
given its multiple forms, corruption reaches every corner of the globe. Those
interested in philosophical issues related to global justice have been concerned
with a broad range of topics including climate change, terrorism, humanitarian
intervention, global democracy, global poverty, and nationalism. Curiously, cor-
ruption has not yet been the focus of any books by philosophers working on global
justice topics.² This is surprising for several reasons. Corruption is a pervasive
problem across the globe and is regularly ranked as among the greatest global
challenges. Furthermore, considering the role that corruption plays in exacerbat-
ing deprivation and fueling social tension, peaceful and just societies are unlikely
to come about without tackling corruption. Addressing corruption should be a
high priority for those concerned with global poverty eradication, peace, security,
and justice. This book aims to address such matters and remedy the neglect.
I take a constructive approach that I hope will be helpful to those across the
world dealing with corruption at a theoretical and policy level, along with citizens
and civil society groups hoping to make reforms in practice. I offer a normatively
justified account of how to allocate responsibilities for addressing corruption
across the many agents who can and should play a role. In order to know who
should take responsibility and how they should do so, we need to understand the
multiple forms corruption can take, the corruption risks associated with various
activities, and the interventions that tackle corruption effectively, all topics I cover.
I believe this book addresses a significant global problem in a comprehensive way.

¹ For the most up to date analysis, check the Ipsos website which seems to do a monthly survey titled
“What worries the world” at: https://www.ipsos.com/en/what-worries-world-july-2022. The February
2022 data suggests that corruption was once again a top concern, before the invasion of Ukraine and
inflation became even more prominent. For slightly older data see also WIN/Gallup International,
Corruption Tops the List as the World’s Most Important Problem According to WIN/Gallup
International’s Annual Survey (Bulgaria: Gallup International Center for Public and Political
Studies, 2014) available here: https://www.gallup-international.bg/en/32507/corruption-tops-the-
list-as-the-worlds-most-important-problem-according-to-win-gallup-internationals-annual-poll/; Eliza
Katzarova, The National Origin of the International Anti-Corruption Business. (Montreal:
International Studies Association Annual Convention, 2011).
² As the investigation proceeds I discuss those global justice theorists who have made contributions
in putting corruption on the normative map. But, as will also be clear, none have treated the topic in the
ways I do, putting the phenomenon itself front and center and connecting it with global justice debates
in a focused way.
viii 

I hope it will provide some momentum for progressive reforms as we collaborate

to tackle this global scourge.
For institutional support, I am very grateful to the Edmond J. Safra Center for
Ethics at Harvard University that awarded me several fellowships in the period
2013 to 2018. This association was tremendously stimulating, introducing me to a
wealth of disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on combating corruption
effectively, and connecting me with a network of scholars and practitioners at the
cutting edge of the field. I am also grateful for funding from several universities to
attend workshops and conferences or to present papers, including the University
of Auckland, Harvard University, the Humboldt Foundation, the University of
Oslo, and the University of Pavia.
I have discussed corruption or parts of this book with many esteemed
colleagues at conferences, workshops, seminars, and in congenial cafes. For very
helpful discussions on corruption or comments on this work I thank Arthur
Applbaum, Michele Bocchiola, Emanuela Ceva, Alex Cobham, Michael Blake,
Stephen Davies, Peter Dietsch, William English, Nir Eyal, Maria Paola Ferretti,
Greg Fields, Nicole Hassoun, Alison Jaggar, Nik Kirby, Mark Knights, Lawrence
Lessig, David Magnus, Carla Miller, David Miller, Richard Miller, Darrel
Moellendorf, Margaret Moore, Mathias Risse, Thomas Rixen, Miriam Ronzoni,
Bo Rothstein, Hamish Russell, Sergio Sismondo, Mathew Stephenson, Dennis
Thompson, Leif Wenar, Jonathan Wolff, Lea Ypi, and three anonymous reviewers
for Oxford University Press. I am grateful for the excellent research assistance
provided by Kiraan Chetty and Hamish Russell. I thank Peter Momtchiloff for
being so supportive of this project when I first floated the idea of it several years ago.
Once again, Stephen Davies, Nancy Fisher, and Anne Stubbings deserve special
thanks for helpful conversations and supportive cheer in Covid times.
 1
Corruption, Responsibilities, and
Global Justice
An Introduction

1.1 Introduction

On the evening before Mohammed Bouazizi lit a fire that would burn
across the Arab world, the young fruit vendor told his mother that the
oranges, dates and apples he had to sell were the best he had ever seen.
“With this fruit,” he said, “I can buy some gifts for you. Tomorrow
will be a good day.”
For years, Bouazizi told his mother stories of corruption at the fruit
market, where vendors gathered under a cluster of ficus trees on the
main street of this scruffy town, not far from Tunisia’s Mediterranean
beaches. Arrogant police officers treated the market as their personal
picnic grounds, taking bagfuls of fruit without so much as a nod
toward payment – fining them, confiscating their scales, even order-
ing them to carry their stolen fruit to the cops’ cars.¹

The day Bouazizi had hoped for went rather differently. Police officials visited his
stall and demanded bribes. He had no funds that day, so an official slapped and
spat at him, before confiscating his weighing scales and dislodging his produce
cart. Bouazizi tried to reclaim his property at the municipal building but was
beaten once more. So he set out to the governor’s office where he was denied
access to plead his case. Surrounded by corruption and unresponsiveness to his
plight, feeling that the future held no hope of change, on December 17, 2010,
Mohammed Bouazizi, poured gasoline over his body and set himself on fire. His
act inspired many civilians to protest across North Africa and the Middle East,
leading to a movement, the Arab Spring, in which millions of citizens under
autocratic rule began challenging governmental abuse of power and unrespon-
siveness to citizens’ needs.

¹ Marc Fisher, “In Tunisia, Act of One Fruit Vendor Sparks a Wave of Revolution through Arab
World,” Washington Post, March 26, 2011.

Corruption and Global Justice. Gillian Brock, Oxford University Press. © Gillian Brock 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198875642.003.0001
2    

While long-suppressed victims of corruption can eventually take action if

sufficiently outraged, demands for bribes rarely result in such a dramatic chain
of events. More frequently, they elicit reluctant compliance. The daily lives of the
poor in developing countries are rife with facilitation payment expectations,
presenting real costs to some of the world’s most vulnerable. Corruption can
interfere massively with people’s abilities to meet their basic needs, such as for
healthcare or education. Many of the poor across the world report having to pay
bribes in order to secure provision of a public service to which they are entitled.
A study of several African countries revealed that 44 percent of parents had paid
bribes to teachers to place their children in schools and that without such
payment, access would have been denied.² Similar results are common in many
countries.³ A global study found that 1.6 billion people annually are forced to pay
bribes to get public services. Health care is the worst affected sector. One-tenth of
all Global Corruption Barometer respondents across the world report having had
to pay a bribe within the last year to a healthcare worker.⁴
Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. Corruption has existed since historical
records have been kept. While the forms of corruption and its scale might vary, it
appears to exist in all societies at all stages of development. Given the pervasive
nature of corruption and its many forms, it is little surprise that corruption
features as one of the most pressing concerns across the globe.⁵ Prior to the
Covid-19 pandemic, corruption was the most frequently discussed topic globally

² Arbache, Jorge Saba, Habyarimana, James, and Molini, Vasco. Silent and Lethal: How Quiet
Corruption Undermines Africa’s Development Effort (English). Africa Development Indicators
(Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2010). Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/
en/316051468009960660/Silent-and-lethal-how-quiet-corruption-undermines-Africas-development-efforts.
³ Transparency International, “Global Corruption Barometer: Overview,” Transparency
International, 2017. Available at: https://www.transparency.org/en/gcb/global/global-corruption-
barometer-2017; Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer: Asia 2020 (Berlin:
Transparency International, 2020); Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer:
Middle East and North Africa 2019 (Berlin: Transparency International, 2019); Transparency
International, Global Corruption Barometer: Africa 2019 (Berlin: Transparency International, 2019);
Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer: Latin America and the Caribbean 2019
(Berlin: Transparency International, 2019); Transparency International, Global Corruption Report:
Education (New York: Routledge, 2013). All the Global Corruption Barometer Reports can be found
at: https://www.transparency.org/en/gcb.
⁴ Richard Rose and Aranzuzu Montero, Reducing Bribery for Public Services Delivered to Citizens
(Bergen: U4 Brief, 2015), 2. Available here: https://www.cmi.no/publications/5663-reducing-bribery-
for-public-services-delivered-to#pdf.
⁵ United Nations, “Opening Special Session on Corruption, General Assembly Adopts Political
Declaration with Roadmaps to Help Countries Tackle Bribery, Money-Laundering, Abuse of Power,”
United Nations, June 2, 2021. Available here: https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/ga12329.doc.htm. For
the most up-to-date results check the IPSOS website which runs monthly surveys titled “What Worries
the World,” available at: https://www.ipsos.com/en/what-worries-world-july-2022. The February 2022
data suggest that corruption was once again a top concern, before the invasion of Ukraine and
inflation became even more prominent. Corruption still features in the list of top problems, despite
these developments. For older data see also Leslie Holmes, Corruption: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), xiii; and WIN/Gallup International, Corruption Tops the List
as the World’s Most Important Problem According to WIN/Gallup International’s Annual Survey
 , ,    3

and often identified as the world’s top problem.⁶ It is so widespread that those
seeking public office often campaign on an anti-corruption platform, claiming that
they would herald a new dawn. However, citizens are often disappointed to find
they do not seem to escape the scourge of corruption and that the newly elected fare
no better than their predecessors, perhaps even exacerbating the problems.
What, if anything, successfully addresses corruption? And assuming we can
identify some effective solutions, what ought to be done to address corruption
here and now? How should we assign responsibilities in connection with addres-
sing corruption? In this work I explore the issue of what ought to be done about
this grave problem, who ought to do it, and the justification for fair responsibility
assignments. I offer specific suggestions about particular parties’ responsibilities
and the normative basis for these views. My focus in this book is on the normative
issues. However, to do this work well we need to understand the phenomenon
of corruption and the kinds of strategies that are successful in reducing the risks
of its occurrence. Studying corruption comprehensively is a multi-disciplinary
endeavor. We need to understand some of the complex facilitators of corruption
to have any hope of reducing it. In this chapter we begin our understanding by
first getting a sense of the many forms corruption can take (in Sections 1.2, 1.3,
and 1.4). Section 1.5 begins to explore some of the drivers of corruption while
Section 1.6 provides maps of how we will navigate this complex terrain. I offer two
kinds of maps, a “big picture” version and a more granular overview of each
chapter that summarizes some key themes from each. Section 1.7 clarifies why
normative theorists should find my project valuable, highlighting several original
aspects to my book. Section 1.8 clarifies my position on the complex conceptual
issues about corruption, some of which must be relegated to future research, given
the enormous normative project that is my focus here. Section 1.9 concludes and
once again draws attention to our main concern in this book, namely, the kinds of
corruption that thwart efforts to reduce global injustices. Linking to the next
chapter, I introduce the case of corruption in the water sector, a case that we
explore in Chapter 2.

1.2 Forms of Corruption: An Introduction

A broad assortment of activities can rightly be described as corrupt, including

nepotism, inappropriate favoritism for associates, fraud, extortion, kickbacks,

(Bulgaria: Gallup International Center for Public and Political Studies, 2014) available here: https://
www.gallup-international.bg/en/32507/corruption-tops-the-list-as-the-worlds-most-important-problem-
according-to-win-gallup-internationals-annual-poll/.
⁶ For more sources see the previous footnote. The IPSOS website has a rich database of monthly
surveys titled “What Worries the World,” available at: https://www.ipsos.com/en/what-worries-world-
july-2022.
4    

election rigging, vote buying, bribery, state capture, cronyism, and influence
peddling. Some of the prominent forms of corruption that are most troubling
are those in which agents use public office or professional roles, typically for some
personal or political gain, in ways contrary to the purpose of that office or role,
thereby abusing their entrusted power.⁷ These kinds of inappropriate uses of
public office or professional roles will be my primary concern in this book.
Because agents can be engaged in a range of inappropriate activities in these
roles, we will be concerned with a diverse set of activities.
While having to make facilitation payments in the form of bribery or tea money
may be a common and highly visible form of corruption that infects poor people’s
everyday lives, other equally pernicious types are rampant even when they are less
visible. State capture, for instance, involves networks or groups gaining control of
the state’s decision-making capacities, thereby ensuring policies are favorable to
their interests. This can engender regulations or resource flows that consistently
prioritize their interests, often at the expense of the interests of others with whom
the state should be concerned. A distinction is also frequently drawn between
petty and grand corruption. Ordinary citizens often encounter petty corruption in
their everyday lives, such as when faced with police demanding bribes or an
administrator expecting a facilitation payment before allowing access to health-
care. Grand corruption often occurs at a higher level, for instance when a minister
authorizes a project in return for bribes or other favors.
Having begun this chapter by noting the prevalence of bribery and corruption
in some of the world’s poorest regions, it is important to acknowledge that
corruption is found in the most affluent nations as well, of course. Indeed, some

⁷ This is my brief statement of the kind of corruption that is among the most troubling and it draws
on critical reflections from the literature. I discuss some of the conceptual issues in the Appendix.
Important early accounts include those of Joseph Nye, “Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-
Benefit Analysis,” American Political Science Review 61 (1967): 417–27; Robert Klitgaard, Controlling
Corruption (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Mark Philp, “Defining Political
Corruption,” Political Studies 45 (1997): 436–62) doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00090; Jeremy Pope,
National Integrity Systems: The TI Source Book (Berlin: Transparency International, 1997); Susan
Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences and Reform (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999); Dennis Thompson, Ethics in Congress: From Individual to
Institutional Corruption (Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 1995); Mark Warren, “What Does
Corruption Mean in a Democracy,” American Journal of Political Science, 48(2): 328–43. doi:10.2307/
1519886; Lawrence Lessig, “Institutional Corruptions,” Edward J. Safra Working Papers 1 (2013): 1–20,
doi:10.2139/ssrn.2233582; Seumas Miller, Institutional Corruption: A Study in Applied Philosophy
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017) doi:10.1017/9781139025249; Bo Rothstein and
Aiysha Varraich, Making Sense of Corruption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
doi:10.1017/9781316681596; Emanuela Ceva and Maria Paola Ferretti, “Political Corruption,
Individual Behavior and the Quality of Institutions,” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 17 (2018):
216–31 doi:10.1177/1470594X17732067; and Emanuela Ceva and Maria Paola Ferretti, Political
Corruption: The Internal Enemy of Public Institutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).
I have also found ideas from International Non-Governmental Organizations such as Transparency
International particularly clear and useful as well. For excellent further reading see for instance,
Emanuela Ceva and Maria Paola Ferretti, “Political Corruption,” Philosophy Compass 7 (2017): 1–10.
doi:10.1111/phc3.12461; Seumas Miller, “Corruption,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ed Zalta
(ed.), September 21, 2018. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/corruption.
 , ,    5

of the most worrying forms are to be found in the world’s richest nations. To
illustrate, and to get a sense of corruption’s scale, reach, and complexity, in the
next two sections I discuss sample forms of institutional corruption common in
western developed countries. In these sections we cover two concerning areas that
have ripple effects throughout the globe. These are:

(i) An improperly close inter-dependence between business and government,

especially the US Congress’s improper dependence on campaign
contributions;
(ii) The pharmaceutical industry’s improperly influential role in healthcare
practice, policy, medical research, and in the production of knowledge.

1.3 An Improperly Close Inter-dependence between

Business and Government

There are at least three relationships between business and government that
facilitate business-friendly regulation and legislation. These include the provision
of funding for campaigns to elect candidates, an intense lobbying industry that
targets those with decision-making and rule-writing power, and the so-called
revolving door between government and private sector employment. These rela-
tionships facilitate businesses having better access to public decision-makers, so
that these decision-makers bend in the direction of promoting their interests.

1.3.1 Campaign Contributions

How effective are campaign contributions at securing business-friendly policies?

The short answer is that they can be very effective. American Crystal Sugar
contributed $1.8 million (US) during 2013 and 2014, while it received $280
million in sugar subsidies over that period.⁸ Altria, formerly called Philip
Morris, is one of the largest contributors to election campaigns. There has been
a long history of struggling to regulate the sale of tobacco products. During the
period 2007 to 2012, Goldman Sachs contributed $16.5 million to fund political
campaigns, spent $12.4 million on lobbying and was awarded total federal con-
tracts and support worth $229.4 million. Lockheed Martin gave $8.6 million in
political contributions, spent $84.1 million on lobbying, and received $332 million

⁸ Malcolm Salter, “Crony Capitalism, American Style: What Are We Talking About Here?” Edmond
J Safra Working Paper 50 (2014): 1–47. Available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=2513352.
6    

in federal contracts and support.⁹ Are such facts merely coincidence or a sign of
something more disturbing?
Many industries have benefited greatly from government favoritism following
generous campaign contributions and lobbying. But do such patterns necessarily
indicate crony capitalism is in play, rather than a fair exchange or legitimate
bargaining?¹⁰ Particular cases may suggest one interpretation rather than another.
Whatever we think of the merits of individual policy decisions favoring particular
donors, there are three other noteworthy aspects of the system of campaign
contributions that corrupts the way the institutions of government work.

1). Time distortion: There is the need to engage in continuous fundraising that
distracts members of Congress from what you might think are some of
their core purposes, such as deliberating about policies and legislation or
tending to constituents. Studies show that members of Congress spend
30–70 percent of their time on fundraising.¹¹
2). Agenda distortion: Campaign contributors get preferential access to mem-
bers of Congress and are thus disproportionately able to influence beliefs
and agendas. This often results in a gap between how representatives
actually spend their time and what the people think are important issues.
A distortion creeps in. As Larry Bartels’ research shows “senators appear to
be vastly more responsive to the views of affluent constituents than to
constituents of modest means”.¹²
3). There is a huge loss of trust in the political system.¹³ Fewer citizens
therefore engage in practices of democracy enabling further opportunities
for funders to have disproportionate influence in determining political
outcomes. Alternatively, disillusioned and angry citizens don’t just get
mad, they sometimes register that disapproval in ways that punish anyone
identified with the status quo in favor of change, however ill-defined.¹⁴

When large campaign contributions are standardly required to be elected to

office, we should not be surprised to discover that government policies bend in the

⁹ For more on such data see Laurence Cockcroft and Anne-Christine Wegener, Unmasked:
Corruption in the West (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017).
¹⁰ Salter, “Crony Capitalism, American Style: What Are We Talking About Here?” 5.
¹¹ Brent Ferguson, “Congressional Disclosure of Time Spent Fundraising,” Cornell Journal of Law
and Public Policy 23(1) (2013).. Available at: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cjlpp/vol23/iss1/1.
¹² Larry Bartels, “Economic Inequality and Political Representation,” in Lawrence Jacobs and
Desmond King (eds.), The Unsustainable American State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),
187. Available here: DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392135.003.0007.
¹³ Lawrence Lessig, Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop it (Boston:
Hachette, 2011); Lawrence Lessig, America, Compromised (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2018).
¹⁴ See, for instance, Finn Heinrich, “Corruption and Inequality: How Populists Mislead People,”
Transparency International, January 24, 2017.
 , ,    7

direction of their major funders.¹⁵ Those who are elected are pressured by
generous funders to reciprocate favors, at least in being well disposed to promote
their funders’ interests. The psychological processes in play run deep in our
human dispositions to reciprocate.¹⁶

1.3.2 Corruption Based on Lobbying

The very purpose of lobbying is to influence government toward the lobbyist’s

position. Business groups employ the most lobbyists and vastly outspend other
interest groups. Lobbying to stop business-unfriendly policies from progressing is
just as common as lobbying to promote business-friendly decisions. Big Pharma
spent $116 million on lobbying “to keep Congress from authorizing Medicare to
bargain down prescription drug prices” and “saved $90 billion in future profits,
representing a return on investment of 77500 percent.”¹⁷ The scale and deep
pockets that can support lobbying activity means that the public interest can be
seriously subverted.

1.3.3 Corruption Based on the Revolving Door

The steady traffic from government service to private sector employment has
corrupted the political process in several ways. A large number of people go
through the revolving door, including those congressional employees who have
vast legislation and regulative experience. The salary increase moving from gov-
ernment to other sectors can be quite significant, especially for staff and legislative
assistants.¹⁸ The pharmaceutical, bioscience, and financial industries are frequent
recruiters. There are two ways in which these transitions compromise the demo-
cratic process. First, the prospect of future lucrative employment in the private
sector can influence the decisions of those currently in government service jobs

¹⁵ For more on regulatory capture see George Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell
Journal of Economics and Management Science 2 (1971): 12.
¹⁶ Lawrence Lessig, Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop it (Boston:
Hachette, 2011).
¹⁷ Salter, “Crony Capitalism, American Style: What Are We Talking About Here?” 27. Available at:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2513352. Citing research done by Aimee Duffy,
“Should Companies Do More to Disclose their Lobbying Efforts?” The Motley Fool, April 5, 2014.
Available at: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/05/should-companies-do-more-to-disclose-
their-lobbyin.aspx.
¹⁸ In the USA, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act is supposed to constrain this
pattern, as it imposes restrictions of 1–2 years on senators and House staff being able to engage in
lobbying straight after leaving office. How well it actually works in practice to constrain anyone is
another matter and, of course, it only applies to those in the USA so the troubling phenomenon
continues across the world.
8    

who see no need to antagonize future employers.¹⁹ Second, insiders have specific
knowledge of how government works that can considerably assist companies or
industry associations in promoting policies favorable to their interests at the
expense of the public. Public awareness of the problem fuels further distrust and
anger in the political system.

1.4 Corrupting Healthcare and Medical and Health Knowledge

In this section I discuss some of the ways in which pharmaceutical companies

have corrupted the practice of healthcare in the US. Patients commonly assume
that health care personnel use the best medical knowledge to treat conditions and
illnesses. But the reality falls troublingly short of this assumption. I begin with the
capture of Key Opinion Leaders, a practice that is widespread in the health sector.
They are an integral part of pharmaceutical companies’ commercially driven
efforts to shape the medical knowledge that physicians use in making their clinical
decisions. We are then well positioned to understand how drug companies
corrupt our knowledge about the products they sell.

1.4.1 The Capture of Key Healthcare Professionals

In Sergio Sismondo’s revealing exposé of pharmaceutical industry tactics, he

documents the insidious ways in which the industry has infiltrated healthcare at
every level.²⁰ Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs henceforth) in the healthcare profession
are carefully managed as key agents in disseminating product-friendly informa-
tion at continuing medical professional development seminars, and shaping what
counts as medical knowledge. KOLs are critical personnel in marketing and sales
strategies.²¹ KOLs can be very effective at generating sales. A Merck study revealed
that KOL-led meetings with physicians almost doubled their return on investment
than when meetings were led by sales representatives.²² So it is worth the

¹⁹ There is also a not insignificant flow from the private sector to government in the so-called reverse
revolving door. For instance, industry veterans from the healthcare sector wrote much of the final
wording of the Affordable Care Act. The movement of influential industry veterans into government
positions strengthens personal, financial, and ideological ties. It can also lead to regulatory capture,
privileged access, and a perception that public decision making is overly influenced by the private
sphere. Consider how, for instance, over the last forty years ten Treasury secretaries came from the
business community; the flow from Goldman Sachs in particular is noteworthy. It should be no
surprise when the Wall Street worldview overly influences public policy. For more, see Salter, “Crony
Capitalism, American Style”.
²⁰ Sergio Sismondo, “ ‘You’re Not Just a Paid Monkey Reading Slides:’ How Key Opinion Leaders
Explain and Justify Their Work,” Edmond J. Safra Working Paper 26 (2013): 1–29.
²¹ Sismondo, “You’re Not Just a Paid Monkey Reading Slides”.
²² Sismondo, “You’re Not Just a Paid Monkey Reading Slides”.
 , ,    9

industry’s time to train physicians, convert them into product champions, and pay
them to give promotional lectures. Physicians are paid well for giving promotional
talks for pharmaceutical companies.²³ Physicians report further motivational
reasons for taking on this work, including increased status or respect, the oppor-
tunities to network with other physicians, the potential for referrals, being at the
forefront of their fields, and learning about new products.
Companies typically screen KOLs’ talks. Some even provide the scripts and
slides to be used that present their products in the best light. While KOLs might be
aware of conflicts of interest, they talk as if they can be entirely trusted to manage
these themselves. However, we are not good judges of what affects us in decision-
making when conflicts of interest are in play. As one example, Genevieve Pham-
Kanter reviewed the voting patterns and financial interests of about 1400 Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee members who participated
in decisions for the Center for Drug and Evaluation Research from 1997 to 2011;
she monitored over 15 739 votes and found a clear patterns of bias.²⁴ The scale of
the problem may not be widely recognized. In 2007, “94 percent of physicians in
the United States had such relationships. More than 80 percent of doctors had
accepted gifts, and 28 percent had received payments for consulting or research.
Sixty percent of those physicians were in medical education and 40 percent were
involved in writing practice guidelines.”²⁵
By sponsoring events and travel, pharmaceutical companies can create a sense
of goodwill towards physicians. Physicians often have their travel to luxury resorts
sponsored by drug companies, ostensibly for continuing education on new drugs.
While most physicians believe that such arrangements do not influence them, data
suggest otherwise. One study showed that prescriptions for particular drugs
plugged by the drug companies sponsoring a meeting nearly tripled soon after
that meeting.²⁶ Other studies have shown that physicians who accept drug com-
pany gifts request that their drugs be added to hospital formularies more fre-
quently than average.²⁷

²³ For instance, more than 2500 physicians in the U.S. were paid at least $500 000 each year for
giving promotional talks, during the period 2014–2019. Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber and Ryan
Grochowski Jones, “We Found Over 700 Doctors Who Were Paid More than a Million Dollars by Drug
and Medical Device Companies,” ProPublica, October 17, 2019. Available here: https://www.
propublica.org/article/we-found-over-700-doctors-who-were-paid-more-than-a-million-dollars-by-
drug-and-medical-device-companies.
²⁴ Genevieve Pham-Kanter, “Revisiting Financial Conflicts of Interest in FDA Advisory
Committees,” The Milbank Quarterly 92 (2014): 446–70. She also notes that “FDA Center for Drug
Evaluation and Research advisory committee members who have financial ties solely to the firm
sponsoring the drug under review are more likely to vote in ways favorable to the sponsor,” at 446.
Furthermore, in about half of all FDA meetings in 2013, at least one participant had some financial
interest at stake, such as consulting, advising, or an ownership interest.
²⁵ Pham-Kanter, “Revisiting Financial Conflicts of Interest in FDA Advisory Committees,” 2.
²⁶ Aaron E. Carroll, “Doctors’ Magical Thinking About Conflicts of Interest” The New York Times,
Sept 8, 2014.
²⁷ Carroll, “Doctors’ Magical Thinking About Conflicts of Interest”.
10    

Patients also think gifts are less appropriate and more influential than doctors
do. Public sentiment about the improprieties fueled bipartisan support for the
Physician Payments Sunshine Act that began to apply in 2013. It requires that
most payments to physicians from industry be reported in a public database,
including meals, travel expenses, speaker fees, and research grants, along with any
ownership stakes in companies. The idea is that by making these types of relation-
ships public, bias can be managed.
The Act has resulted in some changes in behavior, with doctors limiting
acceptance of invitations and gifts from drug companies, but the practice con-
tinues nevertheless. Physicians opposed to the Sunshine Act argue that physicians
should self-regulate. But research on conflicts of interest reveals contrary evidence
about how reliable this would be. One study of radiation oncologists found that
only 5 percent of them thought that they might be affected by gifts. However, a
third thought that other radiation oncologists would be affected. Similar studies
have been done on other healthcare professionals, such as medical residents.
While more than 60 percent said that gifts would not influence their decisions,
only 16 percent believed that other residents would be uninfluenced.²⁸ Such
“ ‘magical thinking’ that somehow we, ourselves, are immune to what we are
sure will influence others is why conflict of interest regulations exist in the first
place. We simply cannot be accurate judges of what’s affecting us.”²⁹
Acknowledging the reality of conflicts of interest and how they influence us is
an important part of trying to deal with them.

1.4.2 Corruption in Our Knowledge of Drug Efficacy

Drug companies corrupt healthcare in several other important ways. Donald

Light, Joel Lexchin, and Jonathan Darro document at least three important
problems.³⁰ First, is a lack of integrity in the drug trials they conduct.

1.4.2.1 Corruption of the Drug Trials

Drug companies are responsible for testing their own products and this has led
them to design trials that will put their brands in the most favorable light.³¹ Design
flaws include not testing appropriately for harms but rather ensuring the collec-
tion of data that suggest greatest benefits. Drug companies also decide who should
be accepted on to a drug trial, which means they have large incentives to include

²⁸ Carroll “Doctors’ Magical Thinking About Conflicts of Interest”.

²⁹ Carroll “Doctors’ Magical Thinking About Conflicts of Interest”.
³⁰ Donald Light, Joel Lexchin, and Jonathan Darro, “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals
and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs,” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, 41 (2013): 590–600.
³¹ See also Marc Rodwin, Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Medicine: The United States, France
and Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
 , ,    11

only those most likely to benefit and to exclude patients likely to have adverse
reactions. The result is data that suggest the drugs are much more effective and
safer than less biased tests would show. Harmful side effects are an especially
important consideration when testing new drugs. Up to 2.7 million hospitalized
Americans each year have experienced a serious adverse reaction.³² Adverse drug
reactions cause approximately 128 000 deaths in hospitalized patients, “matching
stroke as the 4th leading cause of death.”³³ Yet many trials do not even seek to
gather data about these negative side effects. All in all, through corruption of the
drug trial process, pharmaceutical companies are misrepresenting efficacy evi-
dence of new drugs.

1.4.2.2 Corruption of the Journal Publication Process

The second notable form of pharmaceutical company corruption I discuss here is
in the journal publication process, with the result that the medical literature
becomes distorted in favor of pharmaceutical companies’ products. Companies
seem to treat drug trials along with journal publication as part of the marketing
process.

They design trials to produce results that support the marketing profile for a drug
and then hire “publication planning” teams of editors, statisticians, and writers to
craft journal articles favorable to the sponsor’s drug. Articles that present the
conclusions of commercially funded clinical trials are at least 2.5 times more
likely to favor the sponsor’s drug than are the conclusions in articles discussing
non-commercially funded clinical trials. Yet, journal approval is deemed to
certify what constitutes medical knowledge. Published papers legitimate the
pharmaceutical products emerging from the R&D pipeline and provide the key
marketing materials. . . . Furthermore, companies are much less likely to publish
negative results, and they have threatened researchers who break the code of
secrecy and confidentiality about those results. Positive results are sometimes
published twice – or even more often – under different guises. This further biases
meta-analyses – a method of statistically combining the results of multiple
studies – and clinical guidelines used for prescribing.³⁴

To improve integrity in the production of knowledge about drugs, Light et al.

advocate for a model in which research companies play no role in testing drugs.
The FDA would be transformed into a taxpayer-funded body clearly there to serve

³² Light, Lexchin, and Darro, “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and
Effective Drugs”.
³³ Light, Lexchin, and Darro, “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and
Effective Drugs,” 593.
³⁴ Light, Lexchin, and Darro, “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and
Effective Drugs,” 595.
12    

the public interest.³⁵ An independent institute could test drugs in trials that are
better designed and manage conflicts of interests better.
To conclude Section 1.4, pharmaceutical company-related corruption occurs at
three notable levels. First, the pharmaceutical industry has engaged in large-scale
lobbying and political contributions, influencing Congress to pass legislation that
promotes their interests, often at the expense of public interests. The FDA has
been compromised in the process and has limited ability to oversee drug safety,
given that pharmaceutical companies have corrupted medical research. Second, by
commercializing the role of physicians in marketing drugs, this has undermined
physicians’ ability to provide independent, trustworthy advice to patients. Third,
drug companies’ role in biasing drug trial information further distorts our medical
knowledge about treating illnesses, undermining the quality of advice patients
receive and their actual health outcomes.³⁶

1.5 What Drives Corruption?

So far we have seen that corruption can occur in some of the poorest and the
richest regions of the world. Given its reach we might wonder, what are the drivers
of corruption? There are many considerations that facilitate corruption and
explanations for why corruption occurs. It is hard to separate out the factors
that drive rather than facilitate corruption, so for the purposes of this introductory
discussion I do not draw a tight distinction between primary drivers and facil-
itating ones. While almost any human motivator can drive corruption, there are
also some common elements that are worth some discussion.³⁷
One commonly observed pattern, operating especially in developing countries,
is the need for survival within a particular context in which wages are low and
bribes are an expected part of everyday life. The pay structures might be set at a
low level on the assumption that salaries can be supplemented with facilitation

³⁵ Light, Lexchin, and Darro, “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and
Effective Drugs,” 590-600; see also John Ionnidis, “How to Make More Published Research True,”
PLOS Medicine 11 (2014): 1–6.
³⁶ Marc Rodwin, “Institutional Corruption and Pharmaceutical Policy” Journal of Law, Medicine
and Ethics 41 (2013): 544–52.
³⁷ My treatment in this section aims to be concise and summarize a great deal of material. For
further discussion that also provides accessible overviews see Lawrence Cockcroft, Global Corruption:
Money, Power and Ethics in the Modern World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012); Laurence Cockcroft and
Anne-Christine Wegener, Unmasked: Corruption in the West (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017); Leslie
Holmes, Corruption: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Robert
Rotberg, The Corruption Cure: How Citizens and Leaders can Combat Graft (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2017). Rotberg and Holmes’ books contain further reading references for those who
want to dig deeper. For a real treasure trove of references on all aspects of corruption see Mathew
Stephenson’s regularly updated bibliography on corruption. Type key words (for instance, in this case,
“causes”) into the searchable database and the reader will find much material. The bibliography can be
found here: https://scholar.harvard.edu/mstephenson.
 , ,    13

payments, and this often occurs with the wages of police, healthcare workers, or
local government employees. Those who need services provided feel forced to
comply with bribery requests while those who levy them may feel forced by
circumstances to do so.
Once the precedent has been set that bribes are an expected part of transactions,
the practice may gain momentum. When people see how easy it is to extract
money from others when in positions of power, they may be spurred on to extend
corrupt practices, so a further factor can be greed. Like all the other factors
discussed in this section, greed can function effectively as a driver only in
an unregulated context, so it is greed conjoined with contexts lacking adequate
regulation or oversight that can be a driver. Weak institutions and lack of
appropriate oversight can certainly facilitate corruption.
In some cases it is not just a lack of oversight, but rather deliberate orchestra-
tion from members higher up in an organization that drives corruption. Each
person lower in the hierarchy may be expected to bring in a certain amount of
revenue everyday by those higher in the group. Such schemes can frequently be
initiated by Port Authorities, a Chief of Police, or others in leadership positions.³⁸
The existence and prevalence of shadow economies plays an important role as
well. The informal or shadow economy, which can constitute 40 percent of GDP in
developing countries, provides an enormous zone in which corruption can flourish.
Many transactions occur “off the books,” so there is little scope for regulation or
oversight to play a constraining role. As I discuss in Chapter 6, secrecy jurisdictions,
offshore centers and tax havens are other related huge facilitators. These spaces
provide a vast unregulated area in which transactions go undetected, vast sums can
easily be laundered, and other corrupt activities can flourish.
I have already discussed one of the largest single drivers of corruption and that
is political funding. Those who fund campaigns for particular candidates or
parties to gain public office expect some return on their investment. Those who
owe their office to the assistance of others’ financial contributions will be favorably
disposed to those parties when making decisions in office that affect those funders.
We see these obvious connections all over the world and, as highlighted in
Section 1.3, these can take dramatic forms in developed countries, where the
amounts needed to gain office are staggering and the largess available once in
office can be enormous.
There are plenty of psycho-social explanations for why people engage in
corruption, such as pressure from peers, co-workers, or family. Particular work-
places can present acute social stress situations, as plays out notoriously when
police are coercively persuaded to participate in a unit’s corrupt activities. Another
common driver is fear of being ostracized when in a high corruption setting.

³⁸ Lawrence Cockcroft, Global Corruption (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012).

14    

An additional important psychological phenomenon that often drives unre-

solved conflicts of interest is the phenomenon known as motivated blindness. We
have a tendency not to notice things we would prefer not to see. We have lots of
blind spots.³⁹ Troublingly, when people have a vested interest in seeing a problem
a certain way, objectivity can be compromised especially when there is a conflict of
interest. Everyone is affected by this phenomenon including professionals such as
physicians, CEOs, accountants, consultants, and politicians, and as we saw in the
previous section, healthcare professionals.⁴⁰ For another example, consider how
conflict of interest exists in the US credit-rating system. The largest credit-rating
agencies, such as Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch, are paid by the compa-
nies they rate. So they have an incentive to please the companies they assess and this
biases their assessments towards ratings that favor those companies. The results can
be disastrous, as happened in the case of the Global Financial Crisis.
Corruption can flourish in all sorts of improperly regulated circumstances
where there is little chance of detection or punishment, especially when perpe-
trators are strongly motivated. In authoritarian systems elites often set bad
examples, for instance stealing the country’s wealth and storing it in offshore
banks. Taking their cue from the top, other citizens and officials feel less com-
punction about breaking rules when opportunities arise. As well, states’ strategic
objectives often entail considerable tolerance of corruption, such as when retain-
ing access to cheap oil is a priority.
International systems of laws, rules, and privileges can also massively facilitate
corruption. Global justice theorists have been offering insights into how this
works for at least two decades.⁴¹ As one example, the International Borrowing
Privilege has allowed those who govern a state to borrow in the country’s name,
with the state thereby becoming obligated to repay the loan. This privilege has
incentivized groups to seize power by force, so they can take advantage of the
ability to borrow billions on behalf of their country. All too often those leaders
have siphoned the borrowed funds into their personal bank accounts, typically in
other countries and beyond the reach of local law enforcement. Citizens have seen
very little benefit from this borrowing. On the contrary, they have often been
saddled with the obligation to repay these loans, which has considerably ham-
pered local economies and pro-poor policy. More generally, world trade, in

³⁹ Max Bazerman and Anne Tenbrunsel, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to
Do About it (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011).
⁴⁰ Interestingly, judgment does not always precede action, but is often strongly influenced to take the
shape of rationalizing what we want to do. Behavioral ethics researchers argue that often we only
engage in moral reasoning when we are attempting to justify the decisions we have already made. See
Bazerman and Tenbrunsel, Blind Spots.
⁴¹ For excellent treatment see, for instance, Leif Wenar, Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules
that Run the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of
Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); and Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and
Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008).
 , ,    15

practice, recognizes the position of “might makes right.”⁴² As an example consider

that whoever holds power in resource rich countries has the legal right to freely
dispose of resources. So, international trade permits oil purchases made with
corrupt regimes to find their way into economic systems throughout the globe
and these transactions are legally upheld internationally. Once again, these trading
arrangements often set up incentives for corrupt agents to seize power so they can
benefit from these international rules.⁴³
Cultural or social norms are another often-mentioned driver of corruption. For
instance, it is often reported that there are strong cultural norms about gifts as
important to building, maintaining, or signaling special relationships. Gift giving
can often operate in ways that would seem to promote corrupt behavior when gifts
are not easily distinguishable from bribes. In addition, important cultural assump-
tions sometimes seem to govern expectations about appropriate behavior for those
in power. The person in a position of power may be expected to show special
treatment for members of their family, tribe, or ethnic group. Similar practices
involving loyalty or reciprocity expectations can be found in many parts of the
world, including Africa, Indonesia (the Upeti system), China (“guanxi”) and
Russia, which uses the concept of “blat” for a similar phenomenon.
As we see throughout the book, there are ways to deal with the complex issues
that promote corruption, including tackling these challenging cultural issues just
introduced. Perhaps at this point it is useful to provide some useful maps of how
I proceed.

1.6 Book Overview

In this section I offer the reader two maps at different resolutions concerning how
I plan to navigate the complex terrain ahead. So first, I present the high-altitude
view and in the next section a detailed, chapter-by-chapter guide.

⁴² Lawyers call this the rule of effectiveness. See, for instance, Wenar, Blood Oil, 74.
⁴³ For the last two decades, global justice theorists have argued that international rules perpetuate
corruption, so this is fairly well-worn territory. One common strategy is to argue that international
privileges, such as the International Resource or Borrowing Privileges, should only be available to those
governments that are democratically elected. Also there should be more oversight to ensure that funds
borrowed are demonstrated to be of benefit to people. A common argument is that more accountability
and oversight mechanisms should be in place. For excellent treatment see, for instance, Singer, One
World and Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights. Leif Wenar offers several further innovative
arguments and ideas on these topics in Blood Oil. In other works I critically discuss these arguments.
See, for instance, Gillian Brock, “Towards Less Dirty Trade, More Human Rights Protection, and More
Public Accountability over Resources,” Philosophy and Public Issues, 7 (2) (2017): 17–38. See also,
Gillian Brock, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),
chapter 5. This book is much more comprehensive in discussing multiple forms and drivers of
corruption (not just international structures, laws and institutions) and how we should address a full
range of corrupt activities.
16    

1.6.1 The Overall Project

In this section I give readers an over-arching sense of how the argument is

developed. This project aims to blend normative and real-world tools to yield a
normatively justified account of how to assign responsibilities for addressing
corruption. We should not underestimate how important a deep understanding
of how to address corruption effectively actually is to the overall project. What we
ought to do concerning addressing corruption must track evidence about the
kinds of interventions that are likely to be effective. Such understanding is also
crucial to assigning responsibilities to particular agents fairly. Clarifying what is
effective at addressing corruption is an important precursor to arguments for
claims about who should do what for whom. So, in short, getting clear on what
needs to be done is important for a discussion about who should do it.
Throughout the book I introduce different case studies to illustrate the multi-
plicity of corruption risks we face and how they manifest to thwart global justice
efforts. As we come to appreciate, corruption takes many forms and many tools
are needed to address it. These examples illustrate the complexities involved and
the details of what needs to change in particular sectors to tackle particular
corruption problems while also illustrating some dominant commonalities. All
these kinds of details are necessary for the main normative project of arguing for
contentful claims about particular agents’ responsibilities.
Early chapters make the case for why we should care about corruption and
introduce my normative framework. In Chapter 2 I show how corruption under-
mines global justice efforts and therefore should be firmly in view in global justice
studies. To make these points I use the case study of corruption in the water sector.
A specific case study allows us to appreciate specific costs of corruption and how
to address corruption effectively, by exploring details of what needs to change and
how to make change happen. We can then understand the importance of active
civil society at the local level in the struggle against corruption. We can also see
how international efforts at assistance can be particularly effective when they
support local agents and organizations. In Chapter 3 I continue these themes, by
discussing the role states must play in contributing to resilient communities that
are human rights sustaining. We come to appreciate that combating corruption
and realizing human rights are closely connected and mutually reinforcing. States
have important contribution requirements that derive from the necessary condi-
tions for their own claims to exercise power legitimately. These requirements give
rise to important obligations to support credible mechanisms for implementing
justice here and now, including through projects aimed at fulfilling human rights.
As I argue in Chapters 4 and 5, there are such credible mechanisms for tackling
corruption effectively.
In Chapter 4 I canvas some of the impressive insights on how to address
corruption. Chapter 5 analyzes how well these insights have been brought to
 , ,    17

bear on real world initiatives, treaties, policies and other measures, so we can
assess the effectiveness of these corruption-reducing mechanisms. I argue that the
mechanisms have an impressive track record of success so far. If they gain further
support from key actors, they would be able to accelerate progress. The conjunc-
tion of claims from earlier and later chapters yields the central argument for the
important obligation we have to join in and join up, ideas to be explored in more
detail in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. In Chapter 5 I cover some current arrangements that
aim to curb corruption, such as laws, international agreements, and other initia-
tives that are experiencing impressive success. As we see in Chapter 6, particular
areas are good focal points for action as they target key issues or are likely to have
good spillover effects, such as in the case of targeting secrecy jurisdictions. Illicit
flows are a massive driver of corruption around the world. They facilitate organ-
ized crime, tax evasion, and other corruption-relevant activities. So, focusing on
agents and areas that enable these forms of corruption is particularly worthwhile.
Chapter 7 broadens the analysis and draws together many salient considerations
from previous chapters to offer a unified approach to responsibility assignments.
Here I also offer an original framework for navigating our forward-looking action
responsibilities, as we build relevant collaborations to form corruption-resisting
communities. Chapter 8 deals with key anticipated objections to the account and
recommendations offered, along with outlining some future directions for the field.

1.6.2 Chapter-by-Chapter Overview

Having provided a high-altitude map of the project, I turn now to a chapter-by-

chapter overview. As I show in Chapter 2, corruption plays an enormous role in
sustaining global injustice and hinders efforts aimed at remedying global depri-
vation. One of the greatest obstacles to wellbeing in developing countries is a lack
of clean water, resulting in many avoidable deaths every day.⁴⁴ Water and
sanitation services are also vital for sustainable pro-poor development. Around
32 percent of the world’s population lacks access to safe drinking water and basic
sanitation.⁴⁵ Although billions of dollars are spent on developing water resources

⁴⁴ Transparency International, Global Corruption Report: Corruption in the Water Sector

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Available here: https://www.transparency.org/en/
publications/global-corruption-report-2008-corruption-in-the-water-sector; Transparency International,
Building Integrity to Ensure Effective Water Governance (Berlin: Transparency International, 2008)
Available here: https://www.transparency.org/en/publications/policy-position-03-2008-building-integrity-
to-ensure-effective-water-govern.
⁴⁵ Transparency International, “World Water Day: Corruption in the Water Sector’s Costly
Impact,” Transparency International, 21 March, 2016. Available here: https://www.transparency.org/
en/news/world-water-day-corruption-in-the-water-sectors-costly-impact.
18    

and services, a large amount of this investment is lost to corruption every year.⁴⁶
After tracing how corruption in the water sector exacerbates global deprivation,
I outline some key parts of my global justice framework. This allows us to
appreciate how to target corruption-facilitating features. As I argue, effective states
and civic participation play an especially important part in our quest to reduce
global injustices of several kinds, including corruption. I show why the efforts of
local actors are particularly important and sketch how international agents can
strengthen local efforts. As we come to understand with the case of corruption in
the water sector, specific details can be extremely useful in analyzing how to assign
responsibilities fairly. This is the focus of later chapters, especially Chapter 7. So,
Chapter 2 begins to assemble the normative tools we need for the larger project.
Chapter 3 continues this work. Chapter 2 emphasizes the important role domestic
actors must play in addressing corruption, and Chapter 3 focuses on the comple-
mentary roles for international agents, especially in supporting these domestic
actors.
Chapter 3 begins by taking readers on a purposeful journey that challenges two
core sets of assumptions that underlie our state system. In searching for a
compelling justification for states’ rights to self-determination and common
assumptions about compatriot favoritism, we see that the justification must
include requirements to contribute to resilient communities that are human rights
sustaining. Obligations to contribute to global arrangements that are human
rights sustaining must feature in any credible justification for why state’s self-
determination has standing. I also argue that our human rights practice is an
attractive normative vehicle for realizing justice goals here and now. I consider
and rebut some anticipated objections to this view. Another important theme
from Chapter 3 is that combating corruption and realizing human rights are
intimately connected and mutually reinforcing. This chapter also provides defense
for the claim that we have obligations to support aspects of our human rights
practice that are credible mechanisms for implementing justice. To assess whether
our human rights practice delivers on the promise in the case of corruption we
examine core features of that practice with regards to corruption. Chapter 5
focuses on that issue and, as an important part of that assessment, Chapter 4
canvases research on addressing corruption effectively.
In Chapter 4 we gain an appreciation of the many mechanisms that are needed
to counter corruption. Because there are multiple forms of corruption, controlling
it requires several kinds of interventions and many agents will be involved in such
interventions. As we come to appreciate, where the levels of corruption in a
particular society are low, a vast array of mechanisms and agents are involved in

⁴⁶ Transparency International, “World Water Day: Corruption in the Water Sector’s Costly
Impact,” Transparency International, 21 March, 2016. Available here: https://www.transparency.org/
en/news/world-water-day-corruption-in-the-water-sectors-costly-impact.
 , ,    19

controlling it.⁴⁷ Chapter 4 includes coverage of at least ten important areas that
require attention in our quest to address corruption. These include the importance
of effective accountability mechanisms, appropriate transparency embedded in
supportive contexts, and good institutional design. Promoting ethically robust
processes, procedures, expectations, and institutions are also significant. Ensuring
appropriate training is in place for employees, so they can uphold corruption-
curbing standards and professional conduct, is similarly central, as is the need for
robust procedures that can govern conflicts of interest. Independent oversight and
monitoring will be crucial to sustained success of all interventions. When corrup-
tion involves a collective action problem, special attention is needed to reform
social norms. Forming social action coalitions can be especially helpful in addressing
several varieties of corruption. More generally, reducing corruption requires strong
coalitions of stakeholders, including sector professionals, civil society organizations,
and communities. The research survey also allows us to appreciate the many agents
that have a role to play and therefore the range of actors that will potentially be in
view as we move to the project of exploring agents’ responsibilities.
In Chapter 5, I examine some of the legal and human rights tools that have been
developed to take account of the empirical knowledge canvassed in Chapter 4.
Pre-eminent among those tools is the United Nations Convention on Anti-
Corruption (UNCAC), the most comprehensive agreement that guides interna-
tional and domestic anti-corruption efforts. I also discuss the mechanisms
included for holding state parties to account for their performance with respect
to the requirements of UNCAC.
UNCAC covers a full range of activities including prevention, international
cooperation to return stolen assets, criminalization of certain offences, and com-
bating corruption in routine government operations. UNCAC is an impressive
accomplishment for several reasons. Despite all the diversity we find among
peoples of the world, the convention has been able to secure agreement on
universally recognized acts of corruption and ways to address corruption all
within one comprehensive framework. Not only does it foster continuous learning
and international exchange on effective corruption-curbing practices, but the
implementation review mechanism provides good opportunities for accountabil-
ity and assistance, in efforts to strengthen legal and regulatory regimes’ abilities to
fight corruption. States have important obligations in relation to UNCAC. If states
fulfill their obligations we make significant progress in creating the framework for
facilitating resilient, low-corruption societies. I also evaluate how effective
UNCAC has been so far in delivering on its promise and discuss some compelling
reasons to be optimistic, based on notable progress so far.

⁴⁷ See, for instance, Michael Johnston and Sahr Kpundeh, “Building a Clean Machine: Anti-
Corruption Coalitions and Sustainable Reform,” World Bank Institute Research Working Paper 3466
(2004): 2.
20    

Another large real-world policy area that has been making significant
corruption-curbing progress is that of Multi-stakeholder Initiatives. We cover
the original prominent initiative—one that developed to take account of high
levels of corruption in the lucrative extractive industries—which paved the way for
others to follow. Corruption in the extraction of high-value natural resources
often fuels conflict and social tension, making the goal of securing peaceful and
inclusive societies quite unachievable. So focusing on corruption in this sector
seems especially worthwhile. We also cover corruption in the construction sector
and an important Multi-stakeholder Initiative that has developed to address it.
Construction is an area often plagued by high levels of corruption, which can
result in defective and dangerous projects that undermine a nation’s beneficial
social and economic development. To understand where the corruption risks lie,
we explore various stages in the life cycle of construction projects, including
preparing a proposal for a construction project, tendering, implementation, and
operational phases. Once we understand the kinds of risks involved at each stage,
we can appreciate why the Multi-stakeholder Initiative that operates in this sector,
namely the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative, has been effective. So, by
the end of Chapter 5 we should appreciate that there are some well-developed
collaborative frameworks for curbing corruption. In many cases a core obligation
is to join in and join up to form stronger coalitions in order to amplify gains. In
addition, the rich texture provided by the case studies gives us a good appreciation
of the many agents who could play a role in corruption-reducing efforts. They also
help us identify specific agents who will have particular kinds of responsibilities,
given specific kinds of corruption risks. This will be useful as we begin the
normative project of assigning responsibilities to reduce corruption.
In Chapters 2 and 3 I argue for important normative positions, such as that
everyone has duties to support institutional schemes already in existence that
either are delivering effectively on core components of justice or are credible
prospects for doing so here and now. This follows from our duties to support
the maintenance or bringing into being of institutions that can secure justice, in
virtue of the requirement that we should seek fair terms of cooperation with
others. As I argue, unwillingness to play a role in supporting what justice requires
would be unfair. This gives us important reasons to care about how well our
existing administrative structures do in securing justice and how they can be
improved if there are important deficits. Chapters 4 and 5 show that there are
some impressive real-world frameworks that we should support. There are also
useful mechanisms available for improving on those frameworks, should areas for
enhancement be identified, as is often appropriate for processes involving con-
tinuous learning.
While the constellation of current arrangements is successfully reducing cor-
ruption in some sectors, in other areas it would seem that there is still a long way
to go. In Chapter 6, we examine one area in which there is significant room for
 , ,    21

progress. Increasingly, corruption has become an international matter. Given

current global financial arrangements, the proceeds of corruption can easily be
transferred out of the countries in which corruption occurs. Various professionals
play an integral role in facilitating these transfers. Illicit flows are a massive driver
of corruption around the world, helping those who make use of offshore options
to evade the rule of law in the jurisdiction where they reside. Focusing on activities
and agents that enable illicit flows is particularly worthwhile, as we can then
appreciate the key agents whose activities currently contribute greatly to corrup-
tion and where reforms are urgently needed. A detailed case study reveals that
accountants, lawyers, bankers, and other financial professionals will have impor-
tant responsibilities to assist with reforms, given the ways in which they have
contributed to, benefit from, and have capacity to fix, corruption. Considering
their professional responsibilities adds weight to the argument.
This case study serves as a good illustration of key principles that can be applied
to fair assignments of responsibilities in this and other cases. There are further
important reasons to focus on tackling corruption in this area. The scale of
corruption is huge. Stemming and recouping losses here would also release
resources that can assist in addressing global justice goals, such as fulfilling
human rights and addressing global poverty effectively. While we focus on the
role of tax professionals as key enablers, similar arguments apply to other service
providers, such as realtors and those who trade in high value assets, as we explore.
In Chapter 7 I synthesize and build on previous points to address the normative
questions of who ought to be responsible for taking actions to combat corruption.
I discuss some of the factors relevant to sharing responsibility for tackling
corruption fairly. While everyone might have some role to play, our responsibil-
ities to take action differ greatly, with some having much more important roles to
play. Responsibilities track a variety of factors including specific corruption risks
that we are directly able to address, capacity to assist, contributions to the
corruption, benefits derived from corruption, role-related responsibilities, and
assistance already provided. In the chapter I give some textured analysis of how
agents have different roles to play in tackling responsibilities to reduce corruption.
Starting with the responsibilities for states, we move on to discuss the responsi-
bilities that professionals and professional organizations have, especially those
professions that have among their members some of the worrying enablers of
corruption or whose members are able to address specific corruption risks, given
the role they play in specific processes. We then discuss responsibilities that many
actors have in virtue of the ways Multi-stakeholder Initiatives are structured.
Drawing together material from earlier chapters I argue that agents from civil
society, business, professions, and government should all play their assigned part
in supporting anti-corruption measures so that they can work effectively. We also
have obligations to enlarge capacities to address corruption. Our different capa-
cities, roles, and situations can also be grounds for obligations to assist in creating
22    

capacity in different ways as well. As I argue, the different ways of creating

capacity also amplify responsibilities.
I offer a framework that can assist with particular agents’ responsibility assign-
ments in certain cases. The framework blends insights from throughout the book.
It is a complex model of responsibility that is action-oriented and forward-
looking, and we can use it in determining responsibility for a wide range of actors,
including local officials, CEOs of multinational corporations, lawyers, accoun-
tants, bankers, engineers, citizens, and many more diverse agents. There is often
much that a person should consider doing, and this can give rise to a sense of
obligation overload. We can resolve this problem by keeping in view our core goal.
We should aim to create resilient communities and mechanisms that support
human rights. Forming broad coalitions and joining up with others often makes
our task more manageable, while at the same time amplifying our efforts. Joining
up with others making complementary efforts increases our power to create
corruption-curbing capacity. Our obligations involve joining in, joining up, and
contributing to the joint venture.
Chapter 8 addresses some key objections to my approach and policy recom-
mendations. One set that stands out as important concerns the thought that, in
arguing for my position and recommendations, I have ignored relevant cultural
differences. Considering the wide diversity of ways in which humans have organ-
ized themselves, is it inappropriate to assume all cultures should support targeting
the corruption I identify as worrisome and should adopt the corruption-curbing
measures for which I advocate? For instance, many cultures seem to include
norms about the appropriateness of showing special favor towards members of
specific groups, such as those with whom one shares tribal, religious, or ethnic
associations. A person who occupies a position of power should extend the
benefits of power to enrich the fortunes of those in their networks of relationships,
or so it is maintained. In addressing such lines of objection I make several
arguments. We can certainly challenge how widely accepted some of those
purported cultural norms are and whether ordinary citizens from those cultures
really do endorse such norms as appropriate ones for the public sphere.
Furthermore, in places where such norms do seem widespread, people often
comply with them because they believe they are too difficult to change, given
how deeply embedded they seem to be and perceptions about the limited efficacy
of individual actions. In such cases we have collective action problems and we
have a number of resources that can be, and have been, brought to bear in
challenging those cultural norms and reforming them. I remind the reader
about some of these resources, show how they have contributed to progress
around the world, and identify some of their core features that can be applied to
other contexts.
In early chapters, particularly Chapter 2, I introduce the kind of corruption that
will concern me in this book, illustrated by many examples throughout the work.
 , ,    23

I leave to the Appendix further discussion of conceptual issues for those who are
interested in such matters. Corruption entails a deficiency, and when we are
talking about corruption involving humans rather than inanimate objects, like
computers, the deficiency is typically a moral one.⁴⁸ There is no single deficiency
common to all kinds of corruption, as the kinds of corruption are so diverse, so it
is difficult to find one account that applies to all cases. Some of this difficulty is
explored in the Appendix. As my primary concerns in this book are normative
rather than conceptual, I believe discussing these issues earlier in the book would
interrupt the flow of building my argument, which is why I have relegated
discussion of these topic to an appendix. As I argue, a sufficiently clear account
of the corruption that should concern us is available and is more than adequate for
the purposes of my normative project, so some conceptual boundary fuzziness
should not distract us from the important work the normative project sets out to
accomplish. As I also argue, it is clear what sorts of corrupt behaviors are
worrisome. Important international frameworks also assist us in identifying
exactly which behaviors to target. So, in practice, there is sufficient clarity on
which practices are accurately labeled as corrupt and, more importantly, where we
should focus our energies in aiming to reduce corruption that thwarts global
justice efforts.

1.7 Why Should Normative Theorists Be Interested

in This Project?

Building on my previous body of work and approach to global justice, with this
book I aim to contribute to discussions about reducing global injustice at several
levels.
One important focus is to offer empirically informed, normative policy recom-
mendations concerning how we can reduce corruption in our actual world.
Corruption has been a neglected issue by global justice and normative theorists
and so there has not been as much of the kind of empirically informed normative
policy discussion as there should be.
Second, theorists who are concerned to bring about justice have not focused
much on how to remove immense, fundamental barriers to realizing justice.
Widespread corruption is one important barrier of this kind. Corruption is not
just an injustice (as it is in the vast majority of actual cases), but it also acts as a
barrier to achieving justice. Justice theorists who hope their work has practical
traction have spent a great deal of energy on what justice might look like, focusing
on how benefits and burdens should be distributed in society, how institutions

⁴⁸ However, if for example an organization is corrupt then attempting to corrupt it may be morally
praiseworthy. This non-standard case is treated in the Appendix.
24    

should be structured, what rights people should have, and so forth. They have not
been much concerned with what might be called omnipresent or fundamental
barriers to the achievement of justice, such as corruption, in either their policy,
applied, or theoretical studies of justice. This book aims to expand the normative
terrain of justice in these (and other) important ways.
Third, I address the complex issues surrounding taking responsibility for
reducing the injustices of corruption. I offer constructive suggestions about how
we can assist and how to allocate responsibilities fairly among the many agents
who can and should play a role in reducing corruption risks.
Fourth, I offer a novel framework for helping us evaluate and assign responsi-
bilities for change. I develop a model of action responsibility that integrates a
variety of concerns that are relevant when distributing responsibilities. The kind
of responsibility I am primarily concerned with in this work is the responsibility to
take action. The idea of action responsibility captures central points of what is at
stake: who should act and what they should do. What should be done is obviously
a key issue in determining the content of an obligation. Clarifying where the
corruption risks lie is very often essential to understanding what needs to be done
to reduce relevant corruption dangers. Armed with this understanding, we can
often better appreciate who is in a position to act with regard to particular
vulnerabilities.⁴⁹
There is a place for what is often called the liability model of responsibility,
which is backward-facing and is focused on causation of significant harms.⁵⁰
Those who perpetrate grave harms, such as stealing state assets and thereby
denying a country the means to address poverty, should rightly be held to account
through the criminal justice system, legal frameworks, or regulatory schemes.
There is certainly discussion of holding people to account for their corruption
crimes in this book, and the obligations many other parties have to assist in such
cases (such as when stolen state assets must be returned). However, the main kind
of responsibility I will focus on here involves the much harder issue of who should
take action now to transform arrangements to be more corruption-resilient in
future. This account of responsibility is forward-looking and is more difficult to
grapple with in many ways because of the complexity and range of activities that
can and should be taken to prevent future corruption. I discuss the action
responsibilities for various agents including state actors, multinational corpora-
tions, citizens, professional bodies, and members of professions. By considering
central dimensions relevant to effective corruption-curbing measures, we can
come to appreciate who should do what. As one example, I argue that many

⁴⁹ For more on how my approach differs from that of others’ see the footnotes in Chapter 7.
⁵⁰ For a succinct introduction to the liability model and how it differs from the forward-looking
approach to responsibility that we focus on here, see Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
 , ,    25

agents have various capacities relevant to controlling corruption risks, and these
ground responsibilities to play our part in the existing initiatives aimed at creating
capacity. We help create and enlarge capacity by participating in the many
credible mechanisms that are helping to reduce corruption. I also offer a novel
framework that provides guidance when responsibilities are less clear. The frame-
work offers eight central questions for evaluating our action responsibilities. It also
aims to reduce conflicts we may confront as we grapple with a sense of obligation
overload. Our overarching goal should be to create resilient communities and
mechanisms that are human rights supporting. Joining our efforts with those of
others and forming broad coalitions often helps us reduce tensions in deciding
what to do here and now, as we navigate the contours of our obligations to
contribute to the corruption-curbing enterprise.
There are many other reasons normative theorists should find my project
valuable, and here I very briefly mention only another three. I emphasize a local
agent-empowering approach to issues of human rights under-fulfillment that is
essential to tackling a range of global injustices, in addition to several other layers
of relevant considerations. I also discuss some of the special responsibilities
particular agents have in reducing global injustice. In addition, I show how
participating in various practices and initiatives not only is important for realizing
global justice but also is partly constitutive of it. By appreciating how this works in
practice and by illustrating with cases, we gain insights that can considerably
improve our theorizing about global justice matters.
To motivate normative theorists to persevere through some of the sections that
deal with empirical research especially on curbing corruption, I emphasize that to
make the kind of contributions outlined we must be sufficiently well informed by
key research from relevant disciplines. The empirical information presented is
important to building the argument. So, the manuscript appropriately discusses
and systematizes content drawn from a wide range of existing literatures. My
target audience, largely those interested in justice from a philosophical point of
view, will not be familiar with much of this literature. Material from early chapters
in the book (especially Chapter 4) is necessary to lay the ground for the normative
analyses to come. Bringing that literature to the attention of normative theorists
should help better inform theorizing about global justice.
To further motivate my approach, it might be useful to draw parallels between
the early years of trying to bring those concerned with climate science and policy
into conversation with normative theorists in efforts to broaden their awareness of
core concerns. Normative theorists needed some accessible introductory immer-
sion in relevant literatures familiar to climate scientists and policymakers, so that
they could make more empirically informed, substantive recommendations that
were sufficiently attuned to effective and feasible policy options. As well, climate
scientists and policy makers often wanted and needed accessible treatment of the
normative issues involved in formulating policy. Doing the multi-disciplinary
26    

review required to develop policy on complex issues with normative dimensions

often has to confront the issues I have been outlining about making complex
material from a range of disciplines sufficiently accessible to multiple audiences.
I make clear that this book is just a start on the many problems in this
important field and I encourage others to join me in completing the work,
indicating where the field would benefit from further research. By the end of the
book, I hope to have said enough to motivate interest in this neglected area and to
stimulate others to work in this rich terrain. I do not claim to have attended to all
the issues here. But I do claim to have made a good start by offering to normative
theorists sufficient tools to see that:

1. They ought to care about the corruption issues discussed in the book.
2. This is a rich area for fruitful further work.
3. This book provides many of the resources for taking this important project
further and offers guidance on where to look for more.

With these goals in mind, it is important to offer readers a broad understanding

of corruption phenomena, its drivers, the forms it takes, its harmful consequences,
its connection with human rights, the variety of anticorruption measures availa-
ble, the fact that combating corruption requires multiple tools, and so on. Much of
the material presented in early chapters will be new and helpful to readers with
normative interests. We need the kind of comprehensive treatment I offer in this
book if we are to make defensible, empirically informed normative policy recom-
mendations. As well, we need such knowledge to understand the responsibilities
we have to take corruption-curbing action.

1.8 The Central Kind of Corruption in View in

This Project: A Clarification

While those interested in normative issues are my primary audience I am hoping

that many in adjacent areas will find value in the book as well, as we work toward a
multi-disciplinary understanding of the complex issues involved with taking
responsibility to reduce corruption. So, the book is written in a reasonably
accessible way, with much of the scholarly engagement with other authors rele-
gated to footnotes. For those interested in matters such as other theorists’ posi-
tions in the corruption and philosophical literatures and how my position might
differ from theirs, I encourage them to explore such discussions in the notes.
Given my aims and target audiences, I have placed my focused conceptual
chapter on defining corruption in an appendix for several reasons.
First, there is a trade-off between accessibility and drilling down into
focused philosophical conceptual work. In this book I have firmly opted for
accessibility, aiming for a wide audience that will be supplied with the resources
 , ,    27

they need to continue work in this neglected area. So, I am reluctant to go too
deeply into conceptual analyses that might throw the reader off-track. Getting
the right balance between clarifying core concepts and advancing the main
argument in an accessible way is obviously worthwhile, and this book is my
attempt to do so.
In addition, as an author, one needs to make assumptions about what the
reader already knows, cares about, wants to know, and so forth. Inevitably, choices
must be made about what one can presuppose or put to the side in focusing on the
central journey the author imagines the reader wishes to take. Having taken quite
a few philosophy and politics students through this field, the resulting manuscript
is my judgment of what they need to know to get to where I think they want to,
and should, end up, relegating what they might reasonably judge to be a side-trip
to a place that won’t impede the core mission.
Having said all of that, I make a few comments about the concept of corruption
I use in this work and the kinds of approaches I find helpful, as will be discussed
throughout the book (but especially in the Appendix and Chapter 8). The central
kinds of corruption that are most troubling and that concern me in this work are
those in which agents use public office or professional roles, typically for some
personal or political gain, in ways contrary to the purpose of that office or role,
thereby abusing their entrusted power. This focus will cover a large assortment of
activities, including inappropriate favoritism for associates, state capture, bribery,
various kinds of conflicts of interests, attempts to expand influence improperly,
fraud, influence peddling, and collusion in procurement processes. Because agents
can be engaged in a range of inappropriate activities in their public or professional
roles, the range of activities with which we are concerned is wide. Cases are
introduced throughout the book that make clear that there is corruption in play
and why these kinds of widespread phenomena should be of concern.
The United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) is one very
important international tool that I think can greatly assist us when it comes to
taking corruption-curbing actions, as I discuss in more detail in chapters to come
(such as Chapters 5 and 8). Given that almost every state in the world has agreed
to be bound by UNCAC’s terms, and to be held accountable for their performance
in relation to it, there is considerable potential power here that I explore.
Importantly, UNCAC does not dwell on trying to define the overarching category
of corruption as a term. Rather, its approach is to give accounts of a plurality of
corrupt activities, especially when they ought to be criminalized, such as bribing
public officials, misappropriation of property by a public official, money launder-
ing, obstruction of justice, and embezzlement. It also recommends that states
consider criminalizing a range of other activities and offers perfectly workable
accounts of how to identify the problematic activities. The approach UNCAC
adopts is an excellent one, considering both that the convention is supposed to
govern all states across the world and that securing agreement can be challenging
in such international contexts.
28    

In this chapter and others to come, I offer many examples of corruption that
should be of concern to global justice theorists. I think we can get agreement that
the core cases discussed in this book all fit the over-arching account of corruption
that is my focus and can serve the function of offering us some real and important
problems to get to work on. In all cases, agents are clearly using their public office
or professional roles for some personal or political gain, in ways contrary to the
purpose of that office or role, thereby abusing their entrusted power. It is enough
to make a start on my normative project that we have some very clear cases that
are troubling and they can serve as examples of what we should target when we
aim to transition to more corruption-resilient arrangements.
There is much conceptual work that remains for philosophers. In the
Appendix, I show how it is difficult to find an account of corruption that covers
all cases. Even when we narrow our focus to a particular domain, such as political
corruption, drawing tight boundaries around corruption and neighboring dys-
functions is often fairly challenging. In future work, researchers might like to focus
on trying to grapple with such boundary problems. We could also explore the
many different types of corruption in more detail, focusing on activities such as
bribery, conflicts of interest, market-based corruption, influence peddling, crony-
ism, and so forth. While developing more theories of corruption and its many
associated concepts is worthwhile, the normative import of corruption has been
neglected in major philosophical debates about justice. Clearly, one cannot do all
the important work that needs doing in one book and I have chosen to work on
the part of the field that, in my view, would make the biggest contribution to those
currently suffering the adverse effects of corruption injustices. I believe the
conceptual tools, cases, and analysis offered all make abundantly clear why, in
my core examples, there are corruption injustices in play that should be of concern
to normative theorists. That will serve sufficiently well for the project in view.

1.9 Conclusions

This chapter has canvased some of the many different forms corruption can take,
providing some specific examples so that we can gain an appreciation for the rich
variety that occurs in both affluent and poor nations. We saw, as one example,
how corruption results in huge costs to the political system. The improper
dependence on financial contributions diverts the US Congress from its proper
purpose to strongly favoring the interests of the wealthy and well-connected. We
should not be surprised to learn that in such contexts governments are quick to
offer bailouts, subsidies, exemptions, reduced tax rates, and other favors to those
who generously fund their campaigns, often at the expense of ordinary citizens.⁵¹

⁵¹ Salter, “Crony Capitalism, American Style: What Are We Talking About Here?”.
 , ,    29

I also offered an introduction to the kind of corruption of interest here and some
of the diverse factors that facilitate it. In addition I offered two maps that help
orient the reader to the terrain ahead. I highlighted why normative theorists
should find my project of interest. And I clarified the relationship between the
conceptual and normative work that needs to be undertaken in this vast and
under-theorized area.
While I have traced some of the variety of forms corruption can take, my focus
in chapters to come is on the kinds of corruption that thwart efforts to reduce
global injustices. In the next chapter I begin to show why this should be especially
troubling to those in global justice studies. Consider, for instance, how the
Sustainable Development Goals have an ambitious agenda. They aim to eliminate
poverty and achieve a world that is environmentally secure for future generations,
along with being more prosperous, equal, just, peaceful, inclusive, and better
governed. To achieve even modest improvements in education, health, sanitation,
water quality, sustainable energy, let alone more ambitious goals of mitigating
climate change risk or achieving sustainable cities and ecosystems, large infra-
structural projects are needed. The sums required for this investment are enor-
mous, but just as worrying are the estimates of how much will be lost to
corruption. Approximately one third of the US$22 trillion needed to cover the
most basic needs over the next 10 years could be lost to corruption, with a further
third lost to mismanagement and inefficiency, according to UN estimates.⁵²
Quality infrastructure is needed to improve lives, to transform economies,
increase employment, and provide the safe housing, environments, and human
settlements needed for all to flourish. Furthermore, considering the role that
corruption plays in fueling conflict and social tension, peaceful and just societies
are unlikely to come about without tackling corruption. For these sorts of reasons,
the fight against corruption should be a high priority to those concerned with
global poverty eradication, peace, security, and justice.

⁵² Patrick Keuleers, “Fighting corruption in infrastructure – a must for achieving the 2030 Agenda,”
UNDP Anti-Corruption For Development, December 24, 2015. Available here: http://anti-corruption.
org/2015/.
 2
Corruption and Global Injustice

2.1 Introduction

Corruption is one of the most prominent topics of global concern among ordinary
citizens today. Recent polls from the pre-Covid era found that corruption was
rated as the most troubling problem, ahead of poverty, unemployment, and
climate change.¹ One of my aims in this chapter is to show that corruption is a
huge problem that global justice theorists have not focused on sufficiently well,
given its persistence, scale, and widespread devastating effects. In fact, corruption
is intricately involved in multiple global injustices and significantly hampers
efforts to address these. Highlighting such connections should help global justice
theorists appreciate that they should be more concerned with efforts to eliminate
corruption than they currently are. In addition, my analysis in diagnosing some of
the core injustices also sheds light on new ways to assist with global deprivation.
While there are many forms of corruption, the kinds of corruption that are of
most concern to me in this project are those in which people use public office or
professional roles in ways that are contrary to the purposes of that office or role,
abusing their entrusted power, typically for some personal or political gain.
I explore some of the worrying forms corruption takes for many of the world’s
most vulnerable people. To understand the implications of core themes and
analysis, a detailed illustration is helpful. In this chapter I discuss the case of
corruption in the water sector. Corruption in this sector has many faces including
grand fraud, embezzlement in infrastructure development, policy capture in the
allocation of water resources, bribery, and malpractice in water service delivery.
I discuss a sample of such behaviors. Forty percent of the world’s population
currently lives in areas described as under water stress and this is forecast to rise to

¹ United Nations, “Opening Special Session on Corruption, General Assembly Adopts Political
Declaration with Roadmaps to Help Countries Tackle Bribery, Money-Laundering, Abuse of Power,”
United Nations, June 2, 2021. Available here: https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/ga12329.doc.htm. For
the most up to date results check the IPSOS website which runs monthly surveys titled “What Worries
the World,” available at: https://www.ipsos.com/en/what-worries-world-july-2022. For older data see
also Leslie Holmes, Corruption: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015),
xiii; and WIN/Gallup International, Corruption Tops the List as the World’s Most Important Problem
According to WIN/Gallup International’s Annual Survey (Bulgaria: Gallup International Center for
Public and Political Studies, 2014) available here: https://www.gallup-international.bg/en/32507/cor
ruption-tops-the-list-as-the-worlds-most-important-problem-according-to-win-gallup-internationals-
annual-poll/.

Corruption and Global Justice. Gillian Brock, Oxford University Press. © Gillian Brock 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198875642.003.0002
     31

more than 65 percent within ten years.² Such pressure is likely to increase already
fierce competition for water and lead to significant problems related to water
quality. Corruption threatens countries’ abilities to enjoy a fair and sustainable
water future. We can only achieve the water-related Sustainable Development
Goals and realize human rights related to water and sanitation if integrity in these
sectors is substantially improved and corruption addressed.³
Using the case study of corruption in the water sector I illustrate how corrup-
tion thwarts global justice. Drawing on this case study allows me to trace several
important factors that deserve analysis such as the costs corruption inflicts on the
global poor. It also offers insights on how to address corruption effectively and
how change happens. I introduce this case study in Section 2.2 and it runs as a
useful backdrop to illustrating key points throughout the chapter.
After analyzing how corruption in the water sector exacerbates global depriva-
tion, in the third section I outline some central features from my global justice
framework so we can appreciate how corruption undermines efforts to address
global poverty, still one of the greatest sources of human suffering today. Here we
see why effective states and civic participation are especially important and why
supporting local agents has a crucial role to play. While I give a brief synopsis of
core elements from my account of global justice, it is important to note that my
key points about corruption and justice fit with many theories of justice, a point
that will become even more obvious in Chapter 3. Providing some detail to at least
one account of global justice is helpful to understand how destructive corruption
is, as I discuss in Section 2.4. That section shows how corruption undermines
attempts to reduce global injustices. In Section 2.5 I draw on insights from
empirical studies, practitioners, and advocacy groups, to highlight some of the
main areas needing reform in our quest to reduce corruption. Among the many
common findings we learn that reducing corruption requires strong coalitions of
stakeholders, including sector professionals, civil society organizations, and com-
munities. I show how these insights apply to constructive change in the featured
case study on corruption in the water sector. As we come to appreciate, there is
some important empirical detail that is useful in our quest to understand how fair
responsibility assignments can be made, a task that becomes a focus of attention in
later chapters. In this chapter I begin to develop the normative tools we need for
the larger project. Chapter 3 continues this work. While Chapter 2 emphasizes the
role of domestic actors in addressing corruption, Chapter 3 focuses on the

² Water Integrity Network, Engaging with Partners for Change: Adapted Strategy 2020–2022 (Berlin:
Water Integrity Network, 2019). Available here: https://www.waterintegritynetwork.net/annual-
reports/.
³ For some further discussion of these topics see Peter McIntyre, Water Integrity and the Human
Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation (Berlin: Water Integrity Network, 2016). Available here:
https://www.waterintegritynetwork.net/2016/08/22/human-rights-to-water-sanitation-integrity.
32    

complementary role that international agents should play in supporting these

domestic actors.
The example of water-related corruption introduced in this chapter helps
illustrate several points to be developed in chapters to come. In later chapters
I also examine corruption in additional sectors such as construction, extractive
industries, and finance. As we learn more about corruption risks in different
sectors and ways to address these, we accumulate analysis that will be integral to
the responsibility sharing project.

2.2 Corruption and Global Deprivation: The Case

of Clean Water

As we saw in the previous chapter, some of the worst forms of corruption concern
inappropriate influence. This influence gains a foothold through multiple
mechanisms such as funding political campaigns or lobbying, often resulting in
regulation failures that produce weak institutions. Political donors have frequently
thereby threatened public interests, helping the well-connected to advance their
agenda and shirk their responsibilities. While these forms of corruption are to be
found in all regions of the world and they are troubling wherever they occur, they
are especially troubling when they defeat our efforts to address global poverty.
One of the largest scale global injustices we currently face is that of poverty.⁴
Approximately 1 billion people currently live in extreme poverty (as measured by
living below the $1.90 (US) per day poverty line).⁵ Many of these poor people live
in developing countries (or countries that are classified as low-income) and those
countries especially need effective states that can actively manage beneficial
development and pro-poor economic activities that reduce poverty.⁶ Corruption
significantly undermines states’ abilities to be effective, as we see over the next two
sections.

⁴ Andy Sumner, “Where Will the World’s Poor Live? Global Poverty Projections for 2020 and
2030,” Institute of Development Studies In Focus Policy Briefing 26 (2012): 1–5. Available at: http://
www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/InFocus26-Final2.pdf. While some progress was taking place pre-Covid, the
situation has worsened again as the pandemic continues to disrupt lives and livelihoods. For the current
situation see the UN website for regular updates at: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/ending-
poverty.
⁵ The UN “Ending Global Poverty” website as at November 10, 2021. For the current situation see
the UN website at: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/ending-poverty.
⁶ I elaborate briefly on these connections below. These are vast topics and the interested reader
might consult Duncan Green, From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can
Change the World (Oxford: Oxfam International, 2008); Duncan Green, From Poverty to Power: How
Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World, 2nd edition (Rugby, UK: Practical Action
Publishing, 2012) and Gillian Brock, “Global Poverty, Decent Work, and Remedial Responsibilities:
What the Developed World Owes to the Developing World and Why,” in Diana Meyers (ed.), Poverty,
Agency, and Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 119–45.
     33

Corruption plays a huge role in sustaining global injustice and is an important

obstacle to remedying global deprivation. To understand why, let’s consider a
particular form of deprivation and trace the ways in which corruption thwarts our
efforts. Lack of clean water is one of the greatest obstacles to wellbeing in
developing countries.⁷ At least 663 million people lack access to adequate drinking
water and 2.4 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation, which contributes
to between 1.6 and 3 million deaths annually, many of whom are children under
five years old.⁸ Contaminated water, inadequate water infrastructure, and poor
sanitation facilities are leading factors in the transmission of diseases rampant in
the Global South. These include malaria, dengue fever, cholera, Hepatitis A,
typhoid, diarrhea, and parasitic diseases such as schistosomiasis, resulting in
millions of preventable deaths and significant disabilities every year. There are
also close linkages between access to safe water and several aspects of human
wellbeing, including improved economic, social, security, and educational out-
comes.⁹ Water and sanitation services are vital for sustainable development. Yet,
around 32 percent of the world’s population lacks access to safe drinking water
and basic sanitation. To develop water resources and services, between US$770
billion and $1760 billion per year is needed.¹⁰ Although billions of dollars are
spent on these projects, on conservative estimates, at least 10 percent of this
investment is lost to corruption every year. This shortfall has a devastating effect
on the world’s most vulnerable.¹¹
In addition to the impacts on human wellbeing just canvassed, water related
corruption hinders attempts to address several other global injustices, such as by
undermining food security. Irrigated land produces about 40 percent of the
world’s food, but “irrigation systems can be captured by the rich and powerful

⁷ Data from many important sources confirm this claim. See, for instance, the World Health
Organisation’s key facts page, e.g., “Drinking Water”. Available here: https://www.who.int/news-room/
fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water.
⁸ WHO and UNICEF Reports. Cited at blog post “World Water Day: Corruption in the Water
Sector’s Costly Impact,” Transparency International, March 21, 2016. Available here: https://www.
transparency.org/en/news/world-water-day-corruption-in-the-water-sectors-costly-impact.
⁹ Transparency International, Global Corruption Report: Corruption in the Water Sector
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008a). Available here: https://www.transparency.org/en/
publications/global-corruption-report-2008-corruption-in-the-water-sector; Transparency International,
Building Integrity to Ensure Effective Water Governance (Berlin: Transparency International, 2008b)
Available here: https://www.transparency.org/en/publications/policy-position-03-2008-building-
integrity-to-ensure-effective-water-govern. For more current data see, for instance, The United
Nations, UN World Water Development Report 2019: Leaving No One Behind (Paris: UNESCO,
2019). Available at: https://en.unesco.org/themes/water-security/wwap/wwdr/2019#download.
¹⁰ Transparency International, “World Water Day: Corruption in the Water Sector’s Costly
Impact,” March 21, 2016. Available here: https://www.transparency.org/en/news/world-water-day-
corruption-in-the-water-sectors-costly-impact. For more information download the full Water
Integrity Global Outlook Report for 2016 available at that URL.
¹¹ Water Integrity Network, Water Integrity Global Outlook Report for 2016 available at https://
www.transparency.org/en/news/world-water-day-corruption-in-the-water-sectors-costly-impact.
34    

while spillages, leakage and bad water treatment can lead to water shortages or
contaminate irrigation water”.¹² These developments can cause crop failure,
threaten food security in communities reliant on subsistence agriculture, or lead
to steep rises in local food prices.¹³
Corruption also impedes efforts to promote gender equality. Corruption in the
water sector has a particularly significant impact on women and girls by exacer-
bating the consequences of existing service failures and reinforcing gender ine-
quality. Women and girls are typically expected to fetch water, sometimes very far
distances from their homes, which exposes them to considerable risk of sexual
assault. There are also opportunity costs to all these gendered expectations: time
spent collecting water is time women and girls could be spending on other things,
such as income generation, study, or leisure. In addition, women and girls are
expected to do much of the work around cleaning, cooking, laundry, and caring
for the sick, so are more heavily exposed to risks associated with unclean water.
Furthermore, women are often not included in decision making so their needs are
frequently neglected. This can partially explain why so many girls lack adequate
toilets in schools which can result in increased absenteeism.¹⁴
The United Nations has undertaken significant efforts to remedy the situation
of unsafe water and sanitation. In 2010 the UN General Assembly recognized
access to water and sanitation as human rights. The UN’s 2030 Agenda includes
access to water and sanitation as a sustainable development goal (SDG 6), as well
as requiring that there be accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
(SDG16). And yet pervasive and systemic corruption continues to drain resources
from the water sector. There are many reasons why corruption frustrates efforts to
provide safe water. Let’s review some of them next.
For some time there has been widespread recognition that the problem of
supplying clean water is not a technical problem; we have the expertise to supply
good pumps, equipment, filtration facilities, dams, and the like.¹⁵ The major

¹² Mathew Jenkins, “The Impact of Corruption on Access to Safe Water and Sanitation for People
Living in Poverty,” Transparency International, July 4, 2017, 10, available at: https://knowledgehub.
transparency.org/helpdesk/the-impact-of-corruption-on-access-to-safe-water-and-sanitation-for-people-
living-in-poverty.
¹³ Jenkins, “The Impact of Corruption on Access to Safe Water and Sanitation for People Living in
Poverty”; Katy Mgiro and Magdalena Mis, “Kenyan Women Pay the Price for Slum Water ‘Mafias,’ ”
Reuters, November 26, 2014; Water Integrity Network, Water Integrity Global Outlook (Berlin: Water
Integrity Network, 2016). Available at: https://www.waterintegritynetwork.net/wigo/.
¹⁴ Nikki van der Gaag, Because I am a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls 2020— Digital and Urban
Frontiers: Girls in a Changing Landscape (Woking: Plan International, 2010). Available here:
https://plan-international.org/publications/state-worlds-girls-2010-digital-and-urban-frontiers.
¹⁵ John A. Allen, “Integrated Water Resources Management is More a Political Than a Technical
Challenge,” Developments in Water Science 50 (2003): 9–23; Patrick Stalgren, Corruption in the Water
Sector: Causes, Consequences and Potential Reform. Swedish Water House Policy Brief Nr. 4.
(Stockholm: SIWI, 2006); Transparency International, Global Corruption Report: Corruption in the
Water Sector (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Transparency International, Building
     35

problems are related rather to dysfunction in the structures or processes of

institutions that manage water supply. There are many ways in which dysfunction
in the management of water resources compromises people’s abilities to meet their
basic needs and much scope for graft, corruption, and systems of patronage to
play a destructive role.¹⁶ Corruption infects all parts of the water delivery process
from the awarding of contracts for dams, pipelines, or wells, to the maintenance of
water delivery equipment and other ongoing processes for ensuring people receive
reasonably priced, clean water. Each part of the water management and delivery
process has a number of vulnerabilities.¹⁷
Consider first the domain of policymaking and decisions about the location of
water sources. Decisions on where to place key water sources (dams, wells,
irrigation pipes, and so forth) can be captured by wealthy elites with political
connections, so that these decisions end up favoring their interests at the expense
of the poor.¹⁸ Undue influence can also undermine effective enforcement of
environmental regulations, as the well-connected can pay off inspectors to turn
a blind eye or submit fraudulent paperwork, for instance when they contaminate
local water supplies by dumping illegally. These problems of inappropriate influ-
ence can affect other regulations and who gets access to water.
Policy can also fail the most marginalized in society by not understanding the
lived reality of their position.¹⁹ In low-income, water-scarce countries, informal
service providers and water cartels can be both a driver and consequence of
corruption. The problems are especially acute in informal or illegal settlements
such as slums where citizens are often neglected by the state. It is frequently a
requirement to show secure title to land in order for a water connection to be
established. However, in such areas most poor households will be unable to
provide the relevant paperwork. The poor are then deprived of the cheapest
source of water and this leaves them having to rely on insecure options like
informal providers who sell water of questionable quality off the back of their
trucks. These suppliers frequently operate outside the law and charge exorbitant
prices, far in excess of the public utility rates. There are even many examples of

Integrity to Ensure Effective Water Governance (Berlin: Transparency International, 2008), UNDP,
Fighting Corruption in the Water Sector: Methods, Tools and Good Practices (New York: UNDP, 2011).
Available here: https://www.undp.org/publications/fighting-corruption-water-sector.
¹⁶ Transparency International, Global Corruption Report: Corruption in the Water Sector;
Transparency International, Building Integrity to Ensure Effective Water Governance.
¹⁷ Stalgren, Corruption in the Water Sector: Causes, Consequences and Potential Reform; UNDP,
Fighting Corruption in the Water Sector: Methods, Tools and Good Practices; Water Integrity Network,
Water Integrity Global Outlook.
¹⁸ Kenneth Odiwuor, “In Africa, Corruption Dirties the Water,” The New Humanitarian, March
14, 2013.
¹⁹ Mgiro and Mis, “Kenyan Women Pay the Price for Slum Water ‘Mafias’ ”; Water Integrity
Network, Water Integrity Global Outlook.
36    

officials colluding with “water mafias” and cartels to force the poor to rely on high
cost, low-quality informal providers.²⁰
Procurement processes can also be fertile ground for massive corruption.²¹
Parties who have much to gain from securing contracts can engage in bid rigging
and collusion. Those who are involved in purchasing decisions can demand
kickbacks or bribes in order for their bids to be viewed favorably. After the
tendering process is completed, costly infrastructure projects (such as dams) can
be vulnerable to corruption as construction companies seek to influence decision
makers to change contract terms or specifications, often by using substandard
material and equipment in efforts to maximize profitability.
Corruption can also be rampant beyond the construction phase.²² There are
significant opportunities for illicit gains in maintenance and operations, as inspec-
tors and providers can supply inferior goods and services by bribing the right
person or engaging in collusion. Corruption can also infect the process of assign-
ing and implementing water rights, such as when allocating turns at using
community maintained irrigation facilities, permitting informal ground water
extraction, or granting licenses to water providers. Budgeting processes are
another area ripe for corruption, as government officials find opportunities to
embezzle funds and foreign aid intended to be used for water resources manage-
ment. There can also be numerous opportunities for kickbacks in nepotistic
appointments to lucrative positions in water management. At the service delivery
and client interface, water utility officials may request bribes to deliver water
services and goods, to evade water fee payments, permit illegal connections, or to
speed up the routine delivery of services and goods. Local elites can also capture
water provision services and decision-making processes. Inspectors can be bribed
to provide false documentation on water quality, toxicity of wastewater or sub-
standard equipment.
In defense of the many who engage in corruption in poorer countries and
drawing on points made in the first chapter, we should appreciate that corruption
may be a kind of coping strategy when state or legal provision of services is
nonexistent or inadequate. And this is one of the main problems that should be
resolved: ensuring that core services are provided and, more generally, that
institutions can deliver reliably and effectively on what people need for decent
lives. So, in analyzing why people lack safe water we arrive at the importance of
factors that can be accurately described as considerations concerning quality of
institutions, a theme which I develop in the next section.

²⁰ UNESCO-IHP, Urban Water Conflicts, Urban Water Series (Paris: UNESCO-IHP, 2012);
Laurence Cockcroft and Anne-Christine Wegener, Unmasked: Corruption in the West (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2017).
²¹ UNDP, Fighting Corruption in the Water Sector: Methods, Tools and Good Practices;
Transparency International, Global Corruption Report: Corruption in the Water Sector; Transparency
International, Building Integrity to Ensure Effective Water Governance.
²² UNDP, Fighting Corruption in the Water Sector: Methods, Tools and Good Practices; Water
Integrity Network, Water Integrity Global Outlook.
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