Can Corruption be Controlled?

Abstract

Whatever the strength of their underlying commitment statesmen throughout the world, especially the third world, constantly extol the virtues and absolute indispensibility of efficient and honest government. If politicians and administrators cannot be relied upon, are not dependable nor above suspicion, the whole process of planning and policy implementation, any prospect of social and economic progress is undermined; the very notion of development itself becomes a chimera. Accordingly the fight against the abuse of public office is more or less a permanent feature of the political scene in many if not most UDCs. It is a struggle which takes a wide variety of forms individually too numerous to catalogue but which, for convenience, I propose to review under six broad headings:

‘What is government more than the management of the affairs of a nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is supported; and though by force or contrivance it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things.’

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man