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Understanding Global Corruption Trends

David Whyte highlights the prevalence of corruption in various UK institutions despite its low ranking on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Corruption is increasingly recognized as a complex issue involving transnational networks and legalized practices that disproportionately affect the wealthy. Global initiatives, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, aim to combat corruption in all its forms, while definitions of corruption continue to evolve to encompass both illegal and legal abuses of power.

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32 views2 pages

Understanding Global Corruption Trends

David Whyte highlights the prevalence of corruption in various UK institutions despite its low ranking on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Corruption is increasingly recognized as a complex issue involving transnational networks and legalized practices that disproportionately affect the wealthy. Global initiatives, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, aim to combat corruption in all its forms, while definitions of corruption continue to evolve to encompass both illegal and legal abuses of power.

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ysabelle roco
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© © All Rights Reserved
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ain, David Whyte reveals that corruption exists "across a wide range of venerated

institutions" in the UK,[3] ranked as one of the least corrupt countries by the Corruption
Perceptions Index (CPI). In a 2022 speech on "Modern Corruption", USAID
Administrator Samantha Power stated: "Corruption is no longer just about individual
autocrats pilfering their nation's wealth to live large",[4] but also involves sophisticated
transnational networks, including financial institutions hidden in secrecy. Responding to
Whyte's book, George Monbiot criticized the CPI for its narrow definition of corruption
that surveys mostly only Western executives about bribery.[5] Similarly, others point out
that "global metrics systematically under-measure 'corruption of the rich' - which tends
to be legalized, institutionalized, and ambiguously unethical - as opposed to 'corruption
of the poor'".[6]

Corruption and crime are endemic sociological occurrences that appear regularly in
virtually all countries on a global scale in varying degrees and proportions. Recent data
suggests corruption is on the rise.[7] Each nation allocates domestic resources for the
control and regulation of corruption and the deterrence of crime. Strategies undertaken
to counter corruption are often summarized under the umbrella term anti-corruption.
[8]
Additionally, global initiatives like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal
16 also have a targeted goal which is supposed to reduce corruption in all of its forms
substantially.[9] Recent initiatives like the Tax Justice Network go beyond bribery and
theft and bring attention to tax abuses.[10]

Definitions and scales


[edit]

A billboard in Zambia exhorting the public to "Just say no to


corruption".
Stephen D. Morris,[11] a professor of politics, wrote that political corruption is the
illegitimate use of public power to benefit a private interest. Economist Ian Senior
defined corruption as an action to secretly provide a good or a service to a third party to
influence certain actions which benefit the corrupt, a third party, or both in which the
corrupt agent has authority.[12] World Bank economist Daniel Kaufmann[13] extended the
concept to include "legal corruption" in which power is abused within the confines of the
law—as those with power often have the ability to make laws for their protection. The
effect of corruption in infrastructure is to increase costs and construction time, lower the
qual
Historically, "corruption" had a broader meaning concerned with an activity's impact on
morals and societal well-being: for example, the ancient Greek
philosopher Socrates was condemned to death in part for "corrupting the young".[2]

Contemporary corruption is perceived as most common


in kleptocracies, oligarchies, narco-states, and mafia states,[citation needed] however, more
recent research and polic

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