Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform

The second edition of Corruption and Government updates Susan Rose-Ackerman's 1999 book to address emerging issues and to rethink old questions in light of new data. The book analyzes the research explosion that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall, the founding of Transparency International, and the World Bank's decision to give anti-corruption policy a key place on its agenda. Time has vindicated Rose-Ackerman's emphasis on institutional reform as the necessary condition for serious progress. The book deals with routine payoffs and with corruption in contracting and privatization. It gives special attention to political corruption and to instruments of accountability. The authors have expanded the treatment of culture as a source of entrenched corruption and added chapters on criminal law, organized crime, and post-conflict societies. The book outlines domestic conditions for reform and discusses international initiatives - including both explicit anti-corruption policies and efforts to constrain money laundering.

Susan Rose-Ackerman is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence (Law and Political Science) at Yale University, Connecticut. She is one of the world's leading scholars of the political economy of corruption and one of the first economists to write on the subject. She is the author or editor of seventeen books and numerous articles. The first edition of her book Corruption and Government has been translated into seventeen languages. In addition to her work on corruption, she writes about public law and public policy from a comparative law and political economy perspective. Her most recent book is Due Process of Lawmaking (with Stefanie Egidy and James Fowkes). She has been a visiting researcher at the World Bank and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Bonnie Palifka is an Assistant Professor at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Campus Monterrey, Mexico. She has taught a course on corruption based on the first edition of this book since 2004 at ITESM and since 2011 at Yale University. Dr Palifka has spoken on corruption at conferences in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, St Kitts, and France. Her most recent publication is 'A Review of Drivers of Corruption: A Brief Review, by Tina Søreide' in the journal Crime, Law and Social Change.