The hollowness of anti-corruption discourse

ABSTRACT As part of an overall focus on governance in international political economy, the corruption issue has catapulted from the margins of academic and policy discourse on international affairs to a position as one of the central problems facing transition economies and the developing world today. But the irreducibly normative character of anti-corruption discourse is in tension with the predominantly rationalist, technical and instrumental justifications for open markets which have long dominated the academic and institutional discourse on international political economy. A survey of the anti-corruption consensus reveals omissions and oversights which cause analysts to evade and obscure, rather than directly engage, core problems of politics and ethics; this may have practical consequences for anti-corruption efforts. Republican political thought, though not without its own risks and flaws, may balance and correct some of the omissions and oversights of liberal and rationalist discourse on corruption.