Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020. 266 pp. US$160.00, cloth. ISBN 9780367586836.
The Global Anti-Corruption Regime deals with the dominant approach to understanding corruption and its limitations, and why such an approach results in a fundamental failure to reduce corruption globally. The author, Hannah Harris, argues that one main reason for such failure is that this approach does not acknowledge specific contextual aspects that make corruption more difficult to tackle than abstract models can possibly predict. In particular, it focuses on efforts to fight corruption in the island states of the South Pacific, where an externally constructed anti-corruption regime has limited application.
The global anti-corruption regime is imposed by means of multilateral legal tools such as the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), which is the main focus of the book. Harris analyzes the development of this tool, its implementation in different contexts, and then focuses on its enforcement in Papua New Guinea (PNG). This case study provides crucial insights into the challenges of applying the tool locally, and suggests ways to improve it. All this is achieved by means of an effective structuration of the argument, summarized below.
Following the introductory chapters, the author illustrates how UNCAC developed as one of the main tools of the global anti-corruption regime. Then, in order to situate its application in PNG, an exploration of the regional context of the South Pacific is provided. This is followed by a brief but relevant summary of the history of PNG, its economy, politics, and its main social and cultural features. The main actors, their values, and interests are described, in such a way as to show how they have shaped local corruption practices, as well as efforts to fight against it. Further evidence of the main argument is provided through semi-structured interview data that the author collected during her fieldwork in PNG. This is indeed the kind of data necessary to explore how diverse actors (from civil society groups to NGOs, multilateral organizations, government, and intergovernmental bodies) perceive and experience corruption and the effectiveness of UNCAC in combatting it. The author then outlines the limitations of the current anti-corruption regime and reflects on what could be done to make it more effective and widely applicable.
The understanding of these limitations is facilitated by the application of a theoretical model that was originally proposed by Ethan Nadelmann and Peter Andreas, a five-stage system that synthesizes the evolution of the global prohibition regime. Harris further develops this model by connecting it to her research findings and the work of other theorists of anti-corruption law, international relations, geopolitics, and economics. This complexifies the abstract application of UNCAC with a deeper understanding of how the legal tools of the global anti-corruption regime interact with local actors, their values, and their priorities. In particular, four major risk factors supplement those presented in the model proposed by Nadelmann and Andreas. First, the diverse contextual formulations of corruption make all attempts at measuring and managing it necessarily imprecise. Second, although the policies to tackle the link between corruption and international organized crime are well intentioned, laws and policies designed to target both issues simultaneously seem to have several unintentional side effects. Third, the global anti-corruption regime promotes a law enforcement approach to corruption that needs to acknowledge the diversity of political, cultural, and economic contexts, which result in a risk that such laws and policies might be entirely ineffective and even harmful. Fourth, as the three factors above already suggest, it is not possible to apply a universalistic anti-corruption approach to the vast diversity of local contexts in which corruption is practiced.
Clearly the most important lesson from this book is that it is not advisable to promote a top-down engagement with UNCAC, i.e., proceeding from an abstract formulation of the international context to the domestic context as if there was continuity between the two levels. In that sense, one way to improve the current global anti-corruption regime, according to the author, consists of strengthening local levels of engagement with UNCAC in such a way as to make the convention compatible with specific local conditions. In order to do that, new educational resources should be mobilized to encourage local actors to engage substantially with UNCAC. As they do so, the fundamental principles of the convention can be better tailored and adapted to the local context, for their substantial engagement with its principles and practices will produce a series of feedback loops that will make UNCAC more coherent with the unique features of the local context.
Readers interested in the relationships between culture, corruption, and anti-corruption instruments will enjoy this book, particularly researchers, policy makers, and activists who wish to reflect upon the actual effectiveness of the current tools of the global anti-corruption regime. In Harris’s work, they will find a clear and well-structured illustration of cultural and social factors that might prevent this set of principles, values, and best practices from eliminating corruption globally. Furthermore, they will be presented with potential solutions, and will be inspired to imagine new, more sophisticated ways of tailoring anti-corruption efforts to the diverse practices of corruption in different local contexts.
Rodolfo Maggio
University of Helsinki, Helsinki