Corruption in Bangladesh: Discourse, Judgements and Moralities

Political Science. This paper benefited greatly from comments from Geof Wood and discussions with J. Allister McGregor at the Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath and later with Eric Worby in Bangladesh. It began life as a report commissioned by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), but the views represented here are those of the author alone. Summary This paper briefly traces various attempts to understand corruption, through accounts of corruption as an obstacle to development and subsequent views of corruption as a transitory fact of life in modernizing societies, to more recent ideas about access and participation. Corruption cannot be viewed simply in moral terms, nor can it be conveniently individualised. The argument is developed that corruption can be viewed in terms of both understanding (as a development issue) and judgement (as a conditionality issue). There is a need to examine the subject in the context of state, markets and the structure of power. The issue of corruption is then linked to current debates taking place about new approaches to public administration and the now fashionable term "good governance". Moving to the specific country case of Bangladesh, it is noted that very little has been written on corruption, despite widespread anecdotal evidence of its extent. The large inflows of aid combined with a weak state creates many opportunities for corruption. measures taken to combat corruption are then reviewed with examples from a number of countries. The paper concludes by presenting ideas for a methodology, based on network theory, for the identification and analysis of 3 corruption in Bangladesh with a view to developing a strategy for its reduction.