Bureaucratic Corruption in Africa: The Futility of Cleanups

Abstract

"Corruption has been an important subject of analysis by social scientists for many years. In the 1960s, however, two major events rekindled interest in the study of corruption, especially in developing countries. First, the development by Samuel Huntington (1968, 1990) and others of theories of modernization and political development renewed discussions on bureaucratic corruption and the role of laws and institutions in economic growth and development (Leff 1964, Huntington 1990, Myrdal 1990). Second, the economies and markets of the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia were overwhelmed by corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and incompetence. Since the early 1960s, researchers have devoted significant effort to the examination of bureaucratic corruption in the developing economies, paying much attention to the effects of the behavior of civil servants on economic growth and development. Despite this emphasis on the study of corruption in post-independence Africa, there has been insufficient attention paid to the problem of corruption cleanup in Africa."