The Emergence of a Global Anti-corruption Norm

Abstract

The article analyzes the development of a global anti-corruption norm, and specifically its anit-bribery component, through the first two of three stages during the 1990s: (1) awareness raising, (2) institutionalization through the development of legal and policy instruments, and (3) global adoption, internalization, and adherence. A hegemonic actor explanation of norm development does not explain the failure of the norm in the 1970s in contrast to the relative success of norm development in the 1990s. The explanation lies in three processes: (1) the changing global environment, including the end of the Cold War and the spread of the principles of democracy and liberalism; (2) social interactions and the information revolution that contributed to wide-spread diffusion of new information about the causes and costs of corruption, as well as strategies to combat it; and (3) internal processes within the nation-state, from an explosion of NGOs and a freer, more investigative media, to changing calculations among political leaders about the costs of corruption. To reach the third stage of norm development will require both international organizations and domestic civil society actors to demand and monitor the implementation and enforcement of current commitments and to establish accountability.