ABSTRACT
Anti-corruption efforts are usually launched with high hopes, considerable fanfare and, at times, genuine political backing by top-level leadership. This chapter offers two parallel arguments: first, that we need to view corruption control not only as an array of specific legal remedies and administrative controls, important though they are, but also as a long-term political process through which people defend themselves against abuses by others—or as Madison had it, through which they "oblige to control itself." The second is that the corruption problems of various societies differ in qualitative ways, in large part because divergent interests are taking advantage of contrasting opportunities and institutional weaknesses. To help explain the indifferent track record of those reform efforts, the chapter also focuses on two different families of problems: those inherent in the task of fighting corruption anywhere and those reflecting the contrasting forces shaping different sorts of cases.
