Anti-corruption as policy failure. In P. M. Heywood, I. Kubbe, & A. K. Schwickerath (Eds.)

This chapter attempts to deconstruct the policy failure of the internationally driven anti-corruption approach into an analytical gap by reviewing the impact of the global approach to controlling corruption at national level, as promoted by international organisations and their consultants, rather than independent country approaches to curbing corruption, where no generalisation is possible. It makes three contributions. The first is to define and document policy failure in the field of anti-corruption as the gap between objectives, reducing corruption, and the outcomes. The second is to deconstruct the analytical gap that subverts international anti-corruption policy into a lack of adequate conceptualisation, contextualisation, and models (allowing a theory of change). The third is to document the implementation gap, though only for transparency policies, where evidence from 143 countries exists.