The Politics of Compliance with Global Anti-Corruption Norms

Political corruption is one of the most insidious obstacles to economic development and political accountability in the developing world. With democracy under threat across much of the globe, curbing political corruption represents a major challenge to international cooperation. Yet, for all the expansion of global anticorruption norms, we still know surprisingly little about the conditions under which these norms actually work. The burgeoning literature on the international politics of corruption has focused mainly on the determinants of the diffusion of anti-corruption norms, rather than on their implementation and effectiveness. This talk presents a research program that combines formal theory, network analysis, and qualitative methods to examine the politics behind the fight against corruption in Third Wave democracies.