The Political Economy of Corruption in Africa: A Theoretical Discourse

Abstract

Corruption as a political discourse gained ascendance within the last two decades. As developing countries, including African countries, democratized and simultaneously undertook market reforms, anti corruption assumed one of the major instruments of international policy reforms, through which the success or otherwise of transitional societies was to be measured; whether those countries were making a success of market reforms and their democratization process became partly dependent on the extent to which they were tackling the problem of corruption and promoting transparency and accountability in their political economies. As a World Bank study noted, “Ten years into the transition process, corruption is now recognized to be a pervasive phenomenon that can seriously jeopardize the best intentioned reform efforts. Because of the complex and deep political economy dynamics surrounding the process transition economies are undergoing—fundamentally replacing entrenched policy frameworks and vested interests regulated regime of command and control with new policy structures and institutions governed by market incentives—it is essential for policy makers to understand the causes of corruption” (Broadman and Recanatini, 2000; 1).