Corruption as a Self-Reinforcing Trap: Implications for Reform Strategy

M. Stephenson

Published 2020 in The World Bank Research Observer

ABSTRACT

Corruption is widely believed to be a self-reinforcing phenomenon, in the sense that the incentive to engage in corrupt acts increases as corruption becomes more widespread. Some argue that corruption's self-reinforcing property necessarily implies that incremental anticorruption reforms cannot be effective, and that the only way to escape a high-corruption equilibrium “trap” is through a so-called “big bang” or “big push.” However, corruption's self-reinforcing property does not logically entail the necessity of a big bang approach to reform. Indeed, corruption's self-reinforcing property may strengthen the case for pursuing sustained, cumulative incremental reforms. While there may be other reasons to prefer a big bang approach to an incremental approach, this conclusion cannot be grounded solely or primarily on corruption's self-reinforcing character.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2020

  • Venue

    The World Bank Research Observer

  • Publication date

    2020-06-13

  • Fields of study

    Economics, Political Science

  • Identifiers
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-100 of 134 references · Page 1 of 2

CITED BY

Showing 1-31 of 31 citing papers · Page 1 of 1