IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chm/wpaper/wp2012-10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Democracy's shortcomings in anti-corruption

Author

Listed:
  • Tine Søreide

Abstract

Citizens of countries with a corrupt political leadership are trapped in a situation, typically characterized by increasing income differences, human rights violations, dysfunctional democracy, limited press freedom, weak access to basic services, such as health and utilities, and it is difficult for them to move to another country to get a better life. Despite Arab Spring experiences, confronting a government with monopoly on power within its jurisdiction often fall short, and citizens’ success in their efforts to replace an illegitimate government relies on some form of international support. This paper reviews some of the reasons why we see shortcomings in this support. The international anti-corruption initiatives far too often fail to reach the political elite. New laws that could have made it difficult to hide stolen money abroad are not enforced. Pro-democracy initiatives are important, yet not efficient enough for getting rid of corrupt politicians. International pressure for legal reform does not bring change unless the laws are enforced. ‘Other governments’ often fail the citizens in these countries. Instead, they keep a good dialogue with the incumbent in order to improve their chances to get access to resources, secure profitable contracts for ‘their’ firms, or because of military strategies. Narrow interests and competition between countries distort the process towards a world free from political corruption.

Suggested Citation

  • Tine Søreide, 2012. "Democracy's shortcomings in anti-corruption," CMI Working Papers 10, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
  • Handle: RePEc:chm:wpaper:wp2012-10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cmi.no/publications/file/4678-democracys-shortcomings-in-anti-corruption.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chm:wpaper:wp2012-10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Robert Sjursen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmiiino.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.