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38 Crime L. & Soc. Change 1 (2002)

handle is hein.journals/crmlsc38 and id is 1 raw text is: # Crime, Law & Social Change 38: 1-32, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Explaining corruption: An institutional choice approach * MICHAEL W. COLLIER Department of International Relations, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA (e-mail: collierm@fiu.edu) Abstract. The end of the Cold War, the strengthening of world democracy, and the advance- ment of neoliberal economic reforms, have exposed corruption as a major world problem and spawned a plethora of international and national anti-corruption programs. Past theorizing has increased our knowledge about corruption, however, an interdisciplinary (political, economic, cultural) theory of the causes of political corruption has never emerged. This article develops a middle-range interdisciplinary theory of the causes of corruption built through employment of an institutional choice analytic frame. The analytic frame draws on the Institutional Analysis and Development work of Elinor Ostrom, Roy Gardner, & James Walker, and the constructiv- ist work of Nicholas Onuf. The resultant theory is advanced through a statistical analysis. The article concludes that ongoing international and national anti-corruption programs will likely fail unless they include reforms to state internal power structures and political cultures. Introduction Corruption - the abuse of public office for private gain - emerged as an important foreign policy issue after the Cold War. Make no mistake, the world was far from corruption-free before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the Western and Soviet Cold War struggle for spheres of influence, corruption in the superpowers' client-states was treated like the proverbial elephant stand- ing in the living room, an aberration obvious to everyone but that no one dared talk about. As post-Cold War emphases on democratization and free trade lifted the shroud of silence surrounding corruption, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund confirmed what scholars alleged for dec- ades, that corruption adversely affects both developed and developing states. Corruption significantly reduces state economic growth by diverting valuable resources and lowering investment rates.1 Corruption seriously degrades the welfare of a state's poorest citizens by increasing income inequalities and causing the under-funding of education and health programs.2 Corruption also becomes a threat to the very security of many states when, in alliance * An earlier version of this article was co-winner of the Alexander George Award for best graduate student paper in the Foreign Policy Analysis Section, International Studies Association conference, February 1999, Washington DC.

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