ABSTRACT
Both the development of anti-corruption strategies and their use as a component part of international programmes for good governance are fairly recent developments. Corruption hardly figured in international discourse before the 1990s. However, during the past decade major world powers and international agencies—such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the G7 group of industrialized nations and the European Union—have increasingly focused on both good governance and the problem of corruption (Doig & Theobald, 2000; Robinson, 1998, pp. 1–2; Szeftel, 2000). For many commentators there is an assumption that anti-corruption strategies fit closely with the aims of good governance and can be effective in increasing the accountability of state institutions and revitalizing networks of trust in civil society (US Government, 1999; Theobald, 2000, p. 149).
