Anti-corruption Discourse Research Articles

Conflict and warfare metaphors in the Nigerian media conceptualization of corruption

ABSTRACT The incidence of corruption in Nigeria is monumental, widespread, pervasive and endemic. Studies on corruption in Nigeria have been approached from diverse perspectives including insights from social sciences and humanities. This study is based on the tenets of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). The CMT approach expresses the role of language, culture and cognition in the communication of human experiences. The underlying motivation for conceptualizing corruption as warfare is because it is pervasive, dangerous and destructive and can stifle national development. The Nigerian media have been at the forefront of reporting cases of public sector corruption and in doing so have deployed different metaphorical frames in conceptualizing the phenomenon. This study chiefly investigates the dominant use of conflict and war metaphors in the conceptualization and communication of corruption and anti-corruption discourses in the Nigerian media. Thus, this study uses insights from CMT to unearth and analyze some of the metaphorical schemes and categories that have been used by six Nigerian newspapers, namely; The Guardian, The Punch, Daily Trust, The Nation, Vanguard and Sun to represent corruption and anti-corruption rhetoric.

Corrigendum to: Ofori, Michael, Dogbatse, Felicity Sena “We are only to appear to be fighting corruption … we can’t even bite”: online memetic anti-corruption discourse in the Ghanaian media

Corrigendum to: Ofori, Michael, Dogbatse, Felicity Sena “We are only to appear to be fighting corruption … we can’t even bite”: online memetic anti-corruption discourse in the Ghanaian media

The Rule-of-Law as a Problem Space: Wāsṭa and the Paradox of Justice in Jordan

AbstractThis article explores structural entanglements between the rule-of-law, as a globalized aspirational horizon in post-Cold War politics, and corruption, as a highly salient malaise, by way of an ethnography of wāsṭa, an institutionalized practice of patronage in Jordan, and a salient object of corruption discourse in recent years. The article follows wāsṭa and anti-corruption practices in various sites where wāsṭa is most salient and most problematized and situates the contemporary practice in relation to historical transformations in Jordan’s political economy and global discourses on justice and development. While globalized anti-corruption discourses pit practices of patronage and brokerage like wāsṭa against the rule-of-law, an ethnographic and historical view illustrates how the latter is the condition of possibility of the former, the framework by which it is diagnosed, and its presumed cure. Thus, I argue that the rule-of-law should be understood as a historically specific “problem space” that posits corruption as a prime diagnostic of the ills of state and society while generating practical paradoxes and a perpetual sense of temporal out-of-jointedness for “developing” countries.

“We are only to Appear to be Fighting Corruption…We can’t even Bite”: online memetic anti-corruption discourse in the Ghanaian media

Abstract Purpose The goal of this study is to explore how memes are used as tools to expose and shame corruption in Ghana. The Ghanaian media has used memes to criticize unhealthy governmental and social practices and advocated for alternative approaches to addressing these issues. Thus, we explore the qualities memes possess in contributing to the anti-corruption discourse in Ghana. Methods Using visual rhetoric and metaphorical analysis of five media memes purposively collected from the Facebook page of Tilapia Da Cartoonist of TV3, this study discusses the approaches memes employ to ridicule and humorize the fight against corruption in Ghana and suggests remediations for governmental corruption. Results We find that memes play crucial anti-corruption roles. As such, they criticize corruption by showing the impact of corruption on the average citizen. Memes reveal the suppression of anti-corruption agents and agencies and the lack of real commitment to the fight against corruption in Ghana. While memes expose and criticize corruption, they also provide utilitarian approaches to addressing corruption. Central to this study, the research finds that humor is a basic feature of memes. However, within the Ghanaian media context, the humor in a meme does not affect the seriousness of the message a meme conveys. Practical implications Memes can be used strategically as an advocacy tool and a good complement to daily news reports. Social implications Media memes could be used as active media tools to produce, reproduce, distribute, and enhance complex socio-political narratives in society. This may have social and political implications for society. Originality This is the first study to explore memes as an anti-corruption media text. It is also the first study to examine the impact of humor on the message a meme conveys. This is done through a qualitative interpretation of the memes. Limitations and recommendations are provided.

Coloniality of anti-corruption: Whiteness, disasters, and the US anti-corruption policies in Puerto Rico

This article introduces the concept of ‘coloniality of anti-corruption’ to help situate and describe contemporary US anti-corruption policies aimed at Puerto Rico. The aim of the concept of coloniality of anti-corruption is to underscore corruption’s inextricable relationship to race, class, gender, and other colonial power relations. The article argues that US interventions with the Puerto Rican government, along with its distribution of disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane María (2017) and subsequent earthquakes (2020), are best understood against the backdrop of a long history of corruption narrative implemented by the US. This is a narrative that seeks to legitimate US’s colonial and capitalist expansion in Puerto Rico. To demonstrate this, the article explores the application of anti-corruption narratives by the Trump administration to justify its disaster relief policies for Puerto Rico. In particular, the article focuses on Trump’s tweets describing Puerto Rican politicians as ‘corrupt’ and Puerto Rico as ‘geography of fraud.’ In doing so, the article provides a theoretical account of the uses of corruption and anti-corruption discourses to justify colonial and capitalist’s global endeavors. It also illustrates how anti-corruption policies reproduce the idea of the non-white other as the corrupt subject and denotes the humanitarian consequences of such policies.

“If one is Orthodox, one should not strive for luxury”: political values and the changing strategies of anti-corruption CSOs in Russia

ABSTRACT By analysing the changing strategies adopted by anti-corruption CSOs in Russia, this article sheds light on the role of political values in the anti-corruption field. We argue that the rise of a conservative discourse in Russia that places greater emphasis on values has created both limitations and opportunities for CSOs. With this ‘conservative turn’, the question of ‘foreign influence’ has gained prominence in political debates. As an effect of this discourse, the label ‘foreign’ has been applied to certain CSOs, limiting their ability to claim neutrality on the basis of expert knowledge. In the context of the fight against corruption, however, references to the ‘foreign’ are present both in the government’s rhetoric and in societal narratives. By responding to a conservative anti-corruption discourse ‘from below’, certain CSOs have adopted a new strategy of reaching out to an ideologically diverse audience to maintain their non-political positioning.

Deconstructing Corruption through Its Aporias

The dominant discourse of corruption (the idea that corruption is cancer, a social disease) has legitimized a particular and simplified overview of a rather intricate phenomenon. Thus, the strategies and instruments to deal with the disease have been a priority of several international organizations, creating a real anti-corruption industry with its own priorities, prognosis, and language. The instruments and policies created through this industry are proposed to several countries (basically developing ones) to face the malady they suffer. This dominant discourse has been crucial in creating a practical and political language that determines how corruption is conceived and treated through national and international policies. In this article, we seek to deconstruct the concept of corruption to identify several hidden dichotomies and contradictions, some of them already identified by different research projects which depart from the dominant discourse. Hence, five aporias are proposed to deconstruct the anti-corruption discourse. These aporias have been studied by different disciplines which have analyzed corruption. Each aporia shows critical contradictions endogenous to the dominant discourse urging to open its instruments and prognosis to further and thoughtful debate.

Populist Constitutionalism in Brazil and Peru: Historical and Contextual Issues

Given populism's common practice in South America, the region provides a crucial case to identify populism as a prevalent strategy by different ideologies. The link between populism and constitutionalism is paramount because populist governments typically use constituent power and constitutional identity to reach political goals. This study aimed to provide a comparative constitutional analysis of the recent development of populism in Brazil and Peru. The first was the rhetoric and practices of Jair Bolsonaro's government in Brazil, whereas the second was Pedro Castillo's government in Peru regarding constitutional reforms and human rights issues. This comparison justified that Brazil and Peru are presidential republics where harsh political polarization shakes their societies. Bolsonaro and Castillo have anti-corruption discourses and support a new constituent process but present antagonistic economic views. This study was comparative in nature that used a qualitative approach, sourced from bibliographic and documentary research that included specialized literature on South American populism and constitutionalism and the government's plans and legislation. This study showed that both governments have difficulties executing their respective agendas on customs and constituent referendums due to governability problems and important features of the constitutional design, such as eternity clauses, judicial review, and constitutional rigidity. It concluded that the populist strategies of Bolsonaro and Castillo are different. Bolsonarism is antiliberal and promotes human rights regression, whereas Castillo's populism is conservative but democratic. In common, both face the coalitional presidentialism and constitutional protection mechanisms as constraints to putting their political goals entirely into practice.
 KEYWORDS: Authoritarianism, Constitutionalism, Fundamental Rights, Populism.

Corruption as a Social Problem: a Constructionist Approach

Introduction. The article provides an overview of the constructionist approach in sociology in the concerning the phenomenon of corruption as a social problem. The relevance of the work is determined by the need to examine the possibilities of sociology in the study of anti-corruption discourse and the construction of corruption in the public consciousness.Methodology and sources. The issue has grown in importance considering the need to study the perception of corruption in society and the processes of its construction. The methodological basis of the work is the analysis of primary sources (works by M. Spektor, J. Kitsuse, J. Best) and research publications, including the retrospective analysis of the theoretical prerequisites for the development of a constructionist approach in the sociology of social problems. This paper gives a detailed overview of the concept of social problems, which is important for the development of theoretical and empirical studies of various social problems from constructionist positions.Results and discussion. The paper presents the features of two directions within the framework of social constructivism: strict and contextual. The author identifies two main areas of corruption research in a constructionist discourse: the analysis of the construction of corruption as a social phenomenon and the analysis of the construction of deviance, which correspond to the phenomenological (strict) and contextual directions. This study defines the main theoretical aspects of the constructivist approach, its ideological prerequisites and traces the development of the main theoretical directions of constructivism within the interactionist approach in sociology. As a result of the analysis, the author highlights the limitations of the constructionist approach, which are significant for choosing a concept and conducting research and pays attention to the possibilities of developing an integrative approach.Conclusion. Social constructivism has heuristic potential in exploring the discourse of corruption as a social problem and the construction of its deviance, which is a promising area of research on the perception of corruption in modern Russian society.

Public or private corruption?

This is a summary of some of the main arguments and findings of the book ¿Corrupción pública o privada? La dimensión ideológica de los discursos anti-corrupción en Colombia, Ecuador y Albania (Bogotá: Tirant lo Blanch, 2020). The book compares the official anti-corruption discourses of president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) in Colombia, president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) in Ecuador and prime minister Edi Rama (2013-present) in Albania. It shows that although these three countries face very similar levels and perceptions of corruption their governments articulate this phenomenon differently due to their distinct ideological positions. While the neoliberal governments of Santos and Rama defined corruption primarily as abuse of public office and locate it mainly in the public sector, or in its interaction with the private one, the government of Rafael Correa, which embraced the 21st Century Socialism, defined corruption primarily as a problem of the private sector that captures and distorts the public sector.

Rule by law versus rule of law: A multimodal analysis of persuasion and legal ideologies in anti-corruption discourse in China

The authors conduct a multimodal analysis of the anti-corruption discourse in China by employing the SFL genre theory and the SF-MDA approach. Anti-corruption discourse that popularizes the anti-corruption mechanism and educates the officials constitutes an important part of China’s anti-corruption campaign. This paper first presents a genre analysis of a corpus of 51 anti-corruption videos on the official public legal education website to examine how these videos are designed in their overall organization to achieve the persuasion purpose—alert officials to stay away from corruption. It is found that most anti-corruption videos are expositions that are embedded with different story genres and emphasize the negative consequence of corruption on one’s family. Using Multimodal Analysis Video software, the authors then analyze the different reader stances enacted through a range of multimodal resources in three representative anti-corruption videos. Based on the detailed multimodal analysis, the authors finally explain how the use of linguistic and visual resources in the videos realizes the underlying ideologies of rule by law and rule of law and future implications of this study.

Games of Truth in the Age of Transparency: International Organisations and the Construction of Corruption

Corruption is one of the most intractable problems that the world is faced with and its reported impact is widespread and pervasive. Since the mid-1990s, international efforts to combat this problem expanded significantly, driven by the involvement governments, international financial institutions and non-governmental organisations. The objective of this article is to use Michel Foucault’s work in a critical analysis of the international fight against corruption. This analysis is centred on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, as well as his notions of knowledge, power and ethics. The primary focus is on the role played by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Transparency International in the proliferation of international anti-corruption discourse and practices. Furthermore, South Africa will be used as a case study to unpack the historical and contextual factors that play a role in the legitimisation of corruption. As will be shown in this assessment, without adequately understanding the local factors that stimulate corruption and the other societal characteristics that serve to compound its pervasiveness, internationally driven anti-corruption initiatives have limited scope for success. Corruption will persist where there is a lack of resonance between international anti-corruption ideals and local norms, values and ideologies.

From ‘sick nation’ to ‘superpower’: Anti-corruption knowledge and discourse and the construction of Indonesian national identity (1997–2019)

Anti-corruption knowledge and discourse emerged in the mid-1990s promoted by powerful international actors and organizations, mostly targeting countries in the ‘Third World’. In this paper, we seek to decolonize this knowledge and show how it influences the construction of national identity of former colonies. Our case is a country with a reputation as one of the most corrupt in the world: Indonesia. Long celebrated in the West for its economic growth and political stability, in 1997 the Asian Financial Crisis forced Indonesia to accept financial aid from the International Monetary Fund accompanied by harsh conditions that resulted in domestic turmoil. Using discourse-historical method, we trace how national identity was constructed in The Jakarta Post from 1997 through two decades of Western-influenced corruption-related reform. Our findings show how acceptance of Western anti-corruption discourse and knowledge early on contributed to highly negative internal constructions of Indonesian national identity, but over time, this gave way both to more positive self-presentations as well as greater critique and contestation of this knowledge. Moreover, alternative rationales for anti-corruption were asserted that drew from shared understandings of Islam and Indonesia’s independence. Overall, we show how this type of internationally dominant management and organizational knowledge (MOK) colonized how Indonesia was imagined but that contestation was possible, enabled by improvements in economic circumstances. We conclude by arguing that to understand the colonizing effects of MOK, it is necessary to look at the impact of management knowledge beyond the boundaries of organizations, including at the level of national identities.

Victims of Corruption: Integral Reparation and Institutional Trust as Cores of Anticorruption Strategies

In the context of the current anti-corruption discourse, it is critical to consider the systemic and structural manipulation of institutions, which potentially increases social/interpersonal and institutional distrust and lack of confidence, and creates the perception of “institutional vacuums” and institutional illegitimacy. In the long run, this dynamic creates a vicious circle between lower social/ interpersonal and institutional trust and higher corruption. Bearing this in mind, in this paper it is argued that integral reparation of individual, collective, and social victims of corruption should be a core principle of any anti-corruption discourse and practice that seeks to restore social/interpersonal and institutional trust and legitimacy. This paper consists of four sections. After the introduction, in the second section it is analyzed how institutional distrust is an unexpected consequence of exposing Macro- corruption and institutional cooptation. In the third section the main strategies for restoring social/interpersonal and institutional trust are discussed. In the final section it is considered the role of integral reparation actions to restore trust and confidence among individual, collective, and social agents.

Between the state and civil society: Anti-corruption discourse of movements and non-governmental organisations in Russia

Abstract The main objective of the article is to define the main strategies of discourse of an anti-corruption civil society (ACS) and to analyse functioning of its main models, which are presented by the activity of three organisations: The All-Russia People's Front, the Transparency International–Russia, and the Anti-Corruption Foundation. For this analysis, we selected the content analysis and critical discourse analysis of anti-corruption investigations and used other documents demonstrating the organisations’ activities. According to the research results, all three models exist in Russia but their correlation is asymmetric. All-Russia People's Front acts on behalf of the state as the main anti-corruption agent. Transparency International presents itself as a part of the global anti-corruption movement based on the principles of professionalism and political independency. The Anti-Corruption Foundation declares that state authorities are corrupt and therefore cannot fight against corruption using adequate measures. The asymmetry of the models presented is determined by the lack of checks and balances in the country, where the state presents itself as the single agent of curbing corruption and creates fictive anti-corruption civil society.

Combatting institutional corruption: The policy-centered approach

How can institutional corruption be combatted? While recent years have seen a growth in anti-corruption literature, examples of countries rooting out systemic corruption remain few. The lack of success stories has sparked an academic debate about the theoretical foundations of anti-corruption frameworks: primarily between proponents of the principal-agent framework and those seeing systemic corruption as the result of collective-action problems. Through an analysis of current principal-agent and collective action anti-corruption literature, this article adds two additional arguments to the debate: (a) the need to specify what one talks about when talking about systemic corruption and (b) the necessity to move beyond the principal-agent versus collective action frameworks dichotomy towards a policy-centered approach for how to combat institutional corruption. Having outlined how institutional corruption can be seen as one type of systemic corruption, this article shows how a policy-centered approach such as strengthening the appearance standard through an independent public commission can address theoretical mechanisms emphasized in each anti-corruption framework–thus arguing that the frameworks complement rather than rival each other. The article ends by arguing for an anti-corruption discourse acknowledging that a multifaceted problem such as corruption requires multiple frameworks rather than attempts for silver-bullet explanations.

Populism on the Semi-Periphery: Some Considerations for Understanding the Anti-Corruption Discourse in Romania

ABSTRACT The article analyzes why and how anti-corruption has become a quasi-hegemonic metanarrative and identity marker of urban middle classes in Romania, and argues that it is part of a complex identity discourse that is in essence populist. It pits “the People” against the elites, it displays an exclusionary character, and the hostility toward elected institutions is also present. While scholarly accounts rarely associate Romanian anti-corruption discourse with populism (because of its putative “progressivism”), we argue that it should be regarded as a prominent example of a new form of populism emerging on the semi-peripheries of the Western core.

Public or private corruption? (The ideological dimension of anti-corruption discourses in Colombia, Ecuador and Albania)

Public or private corruption? (The ideological dimension of anti-corruption discourses in Colombia, Ecuador and Albania)

Public or private corruption? The ideological dimension of anti-corruption discourses in Colombia, Ecuador and Albania

This is a summary of some of the main arguments and findings of the book ¿Corrupción pública o privada? La dimensión ideológica de los discursos anti-corrupción en Colombia, Ecuador y Albania (Bogotá: Tirant lo Blanch, 2020). The book compares the official anti-corruption discourses of president, Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) in Colombia, president, Rafael Correa (2007-2017) in Ecuador, and prime minister Edi Rama (2013-present) in Albania. It shows that although these three countries face very similar levels and perceptions of corruption their governments articulate this phenomenon differently due to their distinct ideological positions. While the neoliberal governments of Santos and Rama define corruption primarily as abuse of public office and locate it mainly in the public sector, or in its interaction with the private one, the government of Rafael Correa, which embraced the 21st Century Socialism, defines corruption primarily as a problem of the private sector that captures and distorts the public sector.

As Forças-Tarefas do Ministério Público Federal: o discurso político punitivo anticorrupção na instituição de garantias

No presente trabalho investigou-se de que modo o discurso punitivo anticorrupção, que ensejou a formação de forças-tarefa do Ministério Público Federal, tem o potencial de comprometer a função normativa constitucional do Ministério Público como instituição de garantia. A hipótese original é a de que as forças-tarefas ensejam um conflito entre os esforços para persecução da corrupção e os direitos fundamentais estabelecidos pela Constituição. Por conta disso, apresentam potencial de instrumentalização política, comprometendo a vocação constitucional do Ministério Público. A investigação será normativa e crítica. A metodologia será a da abordagem teórica, numa perspectiva hipotético dedutiva e terá fontes bibliográficas, mas também documentais produzidas pelo próprio Ministério Público Federal.