Fashions change: the hula hoop, the lava lamp and the Rubik's Cube were once the height of coolness. No longer. Some things, however, never seem to go out of fashion. They have an appeal that keeps them relevant. This can be the enduring attraction of popular brands or it can centre on the deeper drivers of human behaviour. Amidst all the ups and downs of life there is still plenty of continuity.

Corruption is a perfect example of that sort of continuity. Types of corrupt practice change, the mechanisms that individuals use when engaging in corruption evolve (at times breathtakingly quickly) and the challenge of working out how to counteract corruption becomes ever more complex. Yet even if the nature, extent, scope and opportunity to be corrupt inevitably wax and wane over time, the corrupt temptation remains an underlying constant.

The extent and scope of academic analysis of corruption has not always been quite so constant. Ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle may well have recognized corruption and indeed condemned it, but for significant periods of time corruption did not really feature on the radars of too many social scientists (Buchan & Hill 2014). It was acknowledged to exist, but a variety of factors prompted scholars to generally look elsewhere for their objects of study. There are plenty of understandable reasons for that. Corruption remains a classic “contested concept”; we know it when we see it, but pinning down its key attributes remains tricky (Philp 1997; Gardiner 2002). Corruption is virtually impossible to meaningfully measure (Heywood 2015). Corruption is generally a clandestine process that subsequently makes both quantitative and qualitative analysis tricky; what data should we use and how do we ask questions of those who are potentially involved in the process?

All that having been said, the last half century has seen academia wake up to the corruption challenge and indeed start to confront those issues. Corruption may well be hard to define, but so are concepts such as democracy, freedom, justice and a range of other ideas that occupy social scientists’ thinking. Grey areas notwithstanding, corruption remains in essence the deliberate abuse of entrusted power for private gain (Nye 1967). No definition ever incorporates every potentially corrupt act, but this one is still a perfectly acceptable place to start.

Teodorin Obiang and asset recovery

Tena Prelec and Georgia Garrod

What happened?

The case of Teodorin Obiang is an emblematic case for the study of kleptocracy, corrupt capital flows and asset recovery. His father Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago, one of Africa's longest-serving leaders, came to power by military coup in Equatorial Guinea in 1979. Obiang Sr's early authoritarian predisposition worsened with the discovery of huge offshore oil deposits in the early 1990s. Between 1993 and 2007, annual government oil revenues increased more than a thousand-fold, shooting up from $2.1 million to $3.9 billion; in the same period, a vast amount of this money was siphoned offshore, into the Obiang family's private bank accounts. A significant portion of these funds was deposited there by US oil companies (Firger : 1045). 2010

While Equatorial Guineans continued to live in abject poverty, the Obiang family made no effort to hide their riches. Teodorin, in particular, spent ostentatiously in some of the world's most expensive locations. In 2006, when he was earning an official monthly salary of $5,000 as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Teodorin bought himself a $30 million mansion overlooking the Pacific in Malibu, California, through a US limited liability company (Burgis 2020: 201). Shortly thereafter, he also purchased a $127 million six-storey mansion in Paris, decorated with more than $47 million worth of furniture (Chrisafis 2017).

Western firms offering professional services, particularly in the US, had long been accused of complicity in the movement of the Obiang family's illicitly gained wealth. A notable example was Riggs Bank in Washington, where members of the Obiang family controlled multiple accounts into which hundreds of millions of dollars from oil revenues were deposited (Silverstein 2011).

Following sanctions against Riggs for violating money-laundering regulations, the Obiang family were supported by US-based lawyers to set up a web of shell companies that would “defraud US financial institutions regarding [Obiang’s] relationship to accounts opened” (Adams 2012). Global Witness tracked the case for a decade and reported that Teodorin Obiang funnelled around $75 million into the US between 2005 and 2007. The Obiangs also retained the services of Washington PR firm Qorvis Communications, which sent out “scores of press releases highlighting all manner of good deeds by the Obiang government” (Lynch 2010).

This part of the book describes cases of kleptocracy and state capture, two terms used to describe systematic abuse of entrusted power by elites. “Kleptocracy” focuses more on the role of an individual leader and emphasizes the accumulation of money and power through theft. As a phenomenon, it has become more prevalent as a result of the globalization of financial and legal services, which has made it easy for individual kleptocrats to hide the proceeds of corruption using transnational and secret financial structures (Bullough 2018). Several initiatives advocating for a stronger global policy response to grand corruption and illicit financial flows favour this term, with the US Congress, for example, having established, in June 2021, a bipartisan caucus against foreign corruption and kleptocracy.

The concept of “state capture” was widely used in the late 1990s to characterize a particular pattern of corruption that had emerged during the first decade of transition in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Hellman, Jones & Kaufmann (2000) conceptualized state capture as one of two types of corruption prevailing in this region and era. “State capture” occurs where the formation of laws and policy is captured by a narrow interest group, typically a few oligarchs with good connections to the political leadership. “Administrative corruption”, by contrast, occurs when the implementation of laws and policy is improperly influenced by a group or individual (Hellman, Jones & Kaufmann 2000).

Hence, the defining feature of state capture relates to process – the political process in which laws and policy were formed is distorted because narrow interest groups have too much control over it, therefore departing from the pluralist democratic model in which many interest groups compete for influence fairly and those that are best able to build broad coalitions gain the right to shape laws. State capture represents a deviation from this ideal by virtue of the fact that the competition among interest groups is not fair. Captor groups gain influence because they have personal connections to those holding political power, and because those in political power are prepared to abuse their power over the policy-making process by making secret deals in which they exchange influence for various kinds of “loyalty”.

There is no single explanation for why any political outcome happens. As such, our broader understanding of why corruption occurs is coloured by this underlying complexity. In drawing together concluding thoughts surrounding what can be learned from our four case studies, it is useful to rely on some of the conceptual, theoretical and methodological bedrocks that ground our analysis as political scientists. It has generally been accepted that there are five “I”s that help us to draw together these threads and better help us to understand specific phenomena in the round (Peters 2020).

First, the causal power that (both formal and informal) institutions within society hold over how and why we act the way that we do. Second, how we might understand the interests that actors have that can explain their political actions. Third, that our underpinning ideology and/ or the widely held ideas within a society can, somewhat amorphously, explain certain outcomes. Fourth, that the role and influence of individuals can be central in understanding certain courses of action. Finally, that the importance of the international environment in structuring what is, and is not, appropriate may well have an effect on political behaviour.

The five “I”s in context

The study of corruption is often represented as a pitched battle between explanations that favour the power of interests and explanations that favour the power of institutions – and the submissions from our four contributors here (and their interpretations of the case studies therein) are no different. On the one hand, sensible solutions might well be based around rebalancing incentives structures. So, for example, Jacques Chirac sees it as not in his best interest to indulge in misbehaviour.

On the other hand, a problem highlighted is one of an institutional failing where both Darleen Druyun and Jack Abramoff indulge in illegal behaviour due to a mixture of both implicit and explicit institutional weaknesses such that it stretches credulity that they are merely “bad apples”. Or, as the Azerbaijani case highlights, institutions can end up being structured in ways that can implicitly encourage misbehaviour. As such, the solution posited is to focus far more on embedding the aforementioned logics of appropriate behav-iour within said institutions, such that cultures and norms of good behaviour exist from top to bottom.

Angola and the Dos Santos regime

Tom Shipley

What happened?

Under its long-serving former President, José Eduardo dos Santos (1979– 2017), Angola provides an example of a kleptocratic regime where an autocratic political system enabled vast resources to be directed to a select group of elites. This has led to extreme inequalities in wealth distribution that are highly damaging to Angolan society and a common consequence of this form of corruption. In a context where elite impunity has allowed kleptocratic practices to run unchecked for a long time, recent anti-corruption developments under Dos Santos's successor, President João Lourenço, show that even the most deeply rooted regimes can be disrupted, although the motives behind these countermeasures and their longevity remain open to question.

There are a distinct set of circumstances that led to the development of kleptocracy in Angola. The country endured a destructive civil war lasting from 1975 to 2002, from which Dos Santos's Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) emerged as the undisputed ruling party. The MPLA's dominance has been the main feature of the political system ever since, with the party and Dos Santos winning three elections since 2008 by wide margins, while also facing accusations of repressing political dissent as well as any critical commentary from journalists and civil society.

The wartime period and domination of the subsequent peace allowed Dos Santos to carve out what the respected Angolan commentator Ricardo Soares de Oliveira has described as a “parallel state”, whereby Dos Santos assumed personal control over the “country's revenue-handling and coercive organizations” (Soares de Oliveira 2015: 22). Soares de Oliveira considers that this state, “while the bearer of some successes, is inextricably linked to the stunting of formal institutions, the misappropriation of public resources on an epic scale and the consolidation of JES’ [Dos Santos’s] authoritarian rule” (Soares de Oliveira 2015: 26). At the centre of this state sits the national oil company Sonangol, which manages the oil revenues that make up the lion's share of Angolan state revenues, as well as access to the economic opportunities that flow from the oil and gas sector.

While there is substantial secrecy shrouding the regime, over the years various controversies have come to light that suggest that corruption has been taking place on an extraordinary scale.

The case study format used in this volume was developed at the Centre for the Study of Corruption (CSC), based at the University of Sussex. It has been extensively field-tested amongst students and forms the basis for an entire module of our online MA in Corruption and Governance.

Case studies are a widely used tool in campaigning and policy-making, both in relation to corruption and other subjects. In an educational context, they are perhaps most frequently and systematically used in business schools, with the Harvard format being widely recognized as an effective device for practical analysis. The CSC Case Study Template is designed to allow a systematic analysis of a case; a judgement to be made as to whether it is or is not a case of corruption; and the presentation of information in a readable form that has multiple end-uses, including policy-making, advocacy, campaigning and education.

We are not offering a theory about corruption, although readers may tease one or more out from the case studies. Our faculty discussions have many times debated the extent to which rational choice is the nearest it is possible to get to an overarching explanation for corruption, or whether it is merely one of several means of analysing the problem. But we do not approach our case study analysis with a single theory that we are trying to illustrate. Indeed, with contributors from a range of disciplines using the same analytical template, one of our findings is how widely theoretical interpretations can vary.

Although we do not offer a single theory of corruption, we are instead offering an approach to anti-corruption problem-solving. The theory behind this approach is simple: if you have a good understanding or diagnosis of the problem, you are more likely to find a solution, and the diagnosis needs to examine a case from angles that include the harm, the benefits, the enabling environment, systems failures and the effectiveness of penalties. The CSC Case Study Template is designed to give such a description of a corruption problem, combining a concise narrative with a rigorous analysis from all angles, including the problem of how it came to happen.

An underlying observation is that there are plenty of successes in tackling corruption, not just failures.

As any generic “introduction to politics” text will outline, it is ultimately about “who gets what, when and how” (Lasswell 1936). In this sense, those engaged in political corruption will – by either accident or design – ensure that the answers to these questions are not decided altogether equitably. Therefore, “what makes political corruption an evil is that it undercuts the ability of politics to provide such a solution” to this basic formula (Philp 1997: 456; for a more detailed unpicking of this see Philp & Dávid-Barrett 2015).

Conflicts of interest: cronyism, patronage and nepotism

Concepts such as cronyism, patronage and nepotism (as well as broader issues such as clientelism) are often considered to be classic forms of political corruption and we will take them in turn below. The generally accepted definition of cronyism is laid out by Khatri and Tsang (2003: 289) and encompasses the “granting of economic favors to friends and privileged associates”. They outline that cronyism as both a concept and a practice ought to be understood as occurring on two levels: the horizontal and the vertical.

At the horizontal level, cronyism is situated amongst peer networks and is reflected well in a more general understanding of elite theory. That policy tends to be more responsive to those from specific wealthy constituencies (Gilens 2012; Gilens & Page 2014) and, more generally, ties at the intersection of business and politics reflect shared experiences born out of elite schools, universities and members’ clubs (Bond 2007).

Concerns surrounding horizontal-level cronyism were well represented around emergency procurement measures during the coronavirus pandemic. In the UK alone contracts in excess of £1.5 billion were dished out to companies connected to the Conservative party (Hill 2020).1 Such was the furore around this that the term cronyism almost disappeared from the debate altogether, as did corruption. Governance in the UK, it seemed, was better summed up by a different, altogether more British c-word, “chumocracy”, in which “ministers just pick up the phone and fill important jobs with their chums” (Clark 2020). Which, in terms of a neat one-line summary of cronyism, does as good a job as any academic reflection might manage.

However, the term chum speaks to a relationship that, at least superficially, occurs on a level playing field. Vertical-level cronyism on the other hand is hierarchical and represents a kind of corruption born of unequal relationships.

Alstom and corporate bribery

Tom Shipley

What happened?

The Alstom scandal is a landmark corporate bribery case, which is notable for the seriousness of the offences and their global reach. In the words of Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, a US Department of Justice official who had a leading role in investigating this case, the Alstom scheme was “astounding in its breadth, its brazenness and its worldwide consequences” having been “sustained over more than a decade and across several continents” (US Department of Justice 2014a). While the scale of this scandal, which involved millions of dollars in bribe payments to secure an estimated $4 billion in projects, is particularly shocking, it is a good illustration of the common mechanics of these schemes and the conditions that allow them to prosper.

Headquartered in France but with operations in around 70 countries, at the time these offences took place Alstom's core business was in the power and rail sectors. Alstom was a leading international firm engaged in building and maintaining the power plants and grids, which keep the lights on, and the rail networks, which keep countries on the move. The company clocked up sales of around €21 billion annually in the 2000s, employing up to 110,000 people around the world (United States v Alstom 2014). Operating in a competitive international market, a large part of Alstom's business depended on securing large, high-value contracts from state-owned power and transport companies.

The charges filed against Alstom by the US Department of Justice show that the company systematically employed bribery as a strategy for securing business from these state-owned enterprises (SOEs) (United States v Alstom 2014). The charges cover Alstom's operations in five countries – the Bahamas, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan – and relate to conduct dating back to the late 1990s through to around 2011. The company's conduct in Indonesia, where some of the most egregious wrongdoing took place, provides an insight into how this scheme worked in practice.

A key client for Alstom in Indonesia was the state-owned electricity company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (“PLN”), which in the 2000s was looking for support to increase power generation in the country.

Bribery is the simplest and most blatant form of corruption. Bribe-paying happens all around the world, at levels that vary from petty bribes to very large sums. Yet it is illegal throughout the world, meriting two Articles (numbers 15 and 16) in the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), and a treaty of its own in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (usually known as the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention). Figure 2.1 illustrates the relationship between bribery and other forms of corruption and economic crime.

UNCAC and the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention have provisions on the bribery of public officials, although more recent anti-bribery legislation such as the UK Bribery Act (2010) and France's Loi Sapin II (2017) move the focus away from solely public officials. These laws acknowledge that bribery also takes place in other contexts, such as within the private sector. Indeed, there has been a spate of new and updated anti-bribery laws in the past two decades, as countries aim to comply with international conventions or react to national scandals. The grandparent of these laws is the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977, and its use of extra-territoriality – that bribes paid overseas can be prosecuted in other jurisdictions where the company has operations – has been adopted by the UK and France, among others.

Article 1 of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention provides the key concepts that underpin recent legislation:

Legislation typically frames bribery as an inducement offered to (or solicited by) someone in a position of power in order to persuade them to use their role improperly. Section 1 of the UK Bribery Act describes this as “improper performance of [a relevant] function or activity”.

Our case studies on corrupt capital perhaps present a bleaker picture than those in our other categories, because even the examples of success reveal a system that is not working well and that facilitates much of the other corruption illustrated in this book. Many of our case studies from other sections contain evidence of corrupt capital flows: large corporate bribes accruing to politicians and senior public officials, kleptocrats and the crony capitalists who benefit from state capture. The proceeds of the corruption need somewhere to hide. But where case studies might show a success in tackling corruption – such as the ejection of the Guptas from South Africa – the tracing, freezing and forfeiture of the proceeds of their corruption often lags behind.

Although the nature of the problem is clarified through our case studies – the use of the global financial system and a network of enablers to launder corrupt capital – and some solutions are apparent, successes are few and far between. We have selected some of these where there has been a success – Obiang, Hajiyeva and the self-destruction of Bell Pottinger – but we also see the unfinished business of holding professional enablers to account for their hands-off but undeniably complicit role in global corruption. The Panama Papers lie somewhere in between: a secret world successfully exposed, but by no means have all of those who were implicated in wrongdoing been held to account.

All of these cases show how the global financial system can be abused by corrupt capital. It is worthwhile remembering that not everything revealed by the Panama Papers was illegal or suspicious. The global system of secrecy over financial affairs has had legitimate uses. But perhaps the most startling revelation from the Panama Papers is the extent of the illegitimate uses. Before the Panama Papers publication, the notion of corrupt capital could have been written off as a marginal activity at the fringes of an otherwise well-functioning system. The Panama Papers confirmed what tax justice and anti-corruption activists had been saying for at least a decade: that illicit financial flows are at the very core of the system of financial secrecy, and not the fringe.

These cases give us a glimpse, a small window, into the sums of money involved. That is unusual, as the secrecy of this world of corrupt capital means that little is normally known.

The Council of Europe and Azerbaijan: corruption in parliament

Roxana Bratu

What happened?

This case highlights corrupt practices that went consistently unrecognized at the highest level of the Parliamentary Assembly at the Council of Europe (PACE) for nearly 20 years. Azerbaijan engaged in “caviar diplomacy” from the inception of its membership of the Council of Europe (COE) in 2001, making consistent efforts to silence criticism and promote a favourable view within PACE in exchange for gifts and money extended to foreign politicians and public officials.

This lobbying strategy functioned in parallel with the Azerbaijani laundromat (Harding, Barr & Nagapetyants 2017), a scheme used to pay lobbyists, apologists of the political regime and MPs, as well as to launder cash via shell companies registered in the UK and elsewhere. Azerbaijan made significant use of this practice for a very long time. The justifications spun by those implicated gave the impression that these practices were generally viewed as acceptable. These factors point to an institutional culture based on a lack of transparency and accountability, high levels of informality and, ultimately, corruption.

A 2018 report into “allegations of corruption and fostering of interests” within PACE (PACE 2018a) was commissioned following reports by several NGOs, including the European Stability Initiative (2012). The investigation was carried out by an independent investigation body consisting of three former judges and highlighted that Azerbaijan joined the COE on the understanding that it would carry out reforms to human rights, fundamental freedoms of political prisoners and free elections. However, Azerbaijani officials instead created a network of supporters and apologists to silence critics (PACE 2018a). These “friends” consisted of around a dozen MPs and a few members of the secretariat who worked to further the interests of Azerbaijan from within PACE. In exchange for their support, the “friends” would receive material, symbolic and/ or political benefits.

The support by Azerbaijan, with a budget of €200,000, for the appointment of Pedro Agramunt, of Spain – first as chair of the party grouping EPP (European People's Party) and then as president of PACE – is indicative of the corrupt practices used (Freedom Files Analytical Centre 2017). This was not an isolated incident, as other MPs had received support from Azerbaijan in successfully obtaining appointments in PACE to the Monitoring Committee, the Rules Committee and as rapporteurs, leading to an apparent softening of the attitude of PACE reports towards Azerbaijan.

Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, but the cases in this volume demonstrate the great variation in each of those key terms. Those who hold public office certainly have entrusted power, often governed by a foundational document such as a country's constitution and with duties that are clearly defined. But we suggest that many other types of entrusted power are relevant for our understanding of corruption, including power held by those operating in the private sector. In the case of Sepp Blatter at FIFA, we saw how one man's power over an international sporting body can be abused, with implications for global norms in a sphere which prides itself on fair competition (see also Hough & Heaston 2018, for more on this). In the chapters on enablers, we argued that professional services companies specializing in PR, financial or legal services can also have duties that stretch beyond shareholders. They are entrusted to uphold the standards of their professions but, as key service providers to kleptocrats, they all too often abuse that power and ignore these higher responsibilities (see also King & Zavoli 2020, for a good example of the challenges in this regard in the UK property market).

It is self-evident from the case studies that corruption can therefore occur in the private sector as well as the public sector. Indeed, over the past 20– 30 years, the boundary between the public and private sectors has become increasingly blurred in many countries. As the public sector has engaged more in the outsourcing of public services, conflicts of interest have grown and movement through the “revolving door” become more common. The kleptocracy chapters show that oligarchs who buy privatized assets often benefit from straddling the public-private divide. And in the corporate sector, anti-bribery laws encourage us to focus on the role that businesses play in initiating or being complicit in corruption, even if it involves transactions with public officials. Just as the distinction between the public and private sectors has become blurred, so has that between public sector and private sector corruption.

The cases covered in this volume also demonstrate the wide range of ways in which power can be abused.

It is accepted on every continent that we must transition the global economy to net zero. Other than widespread targetsetting, there is not much coherence in global policy-making. Every time we pick up a book on climate change we go straight to the section on what to do about it. Our typical reaction is disappointment. Recommendations range from banal suggestions that we should “find our individual purpose” to implausible ambitions for a complex global carbon tax. A frustration with these proposals helped to motivate us.

This book is all about what to do. We don't need to convince anyone of the urgency. All the major economies of the world are trying to reduce emissions. There is also a clear and emerging consensus on what needs to be done. It doesn't involve a complete overhaul of every individual's lifestyle. It doesn't involve the end of capitalism, reductions in incomes, or huge taxes. We need to start by making two things happen quickly: make electricity sustainable, and run everything off electricity. Everyone should know this, and help make it happen.

Our critique is directed at a lack of realism in the current tactics. Realism about human psychology, business and politics. Human beings only change behaviour if their options are cheaper, more convenient and socially normalized. Businesses only change behaviour if they make more money, or if it's made illegal. Policies should follow the golden rules: effective, simple and non-partisan. Far too much energy in climate mitigation is going into efforts that misconstrue these realities.

Supercharge Me is a manual to rapidly collapse emissions. Currently, we are not investing fast enough to halve emissions by 2030 and prevent an increase in global temperatures above 1.5°C. If the policies we describe are implemented, this goal is within range, and shorter timelines are realistic. We are not saying it is easy to electrify everything. It requires huge global investment to overhaul the capital base of the global economy. What we are saying is that it is very doable and already happening, in some cases quite quickly. We have most of the technology we need.

An investment boom on this scale is very likely to make most of the global population better off, and the states that fund it will be wealthier. Given the scale of the threat, and the vast ancillary benefits, we need to move much faster.