ABSTRACT
In November 2007, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) launched its 'Transparency in Defence Expenditure' (TIDE) initiative, designed to fight corruption in military expenditures and arms procurement. Its initial focus was on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region regarded as the most corrupt in the world. This chapter attempts to show that DFID's neoliberal assumptions about the nature of corruption in arms procurement are highly biased, and that studies based on neoliberal methodologies produce a prejudicial picture of the nature of corruption in military procurement in SSA. A significant proportion of arms procurement transactions in SSA occur 'off budget'. The main focus of DFID's concern with corruption in military expenditures and arms procurement is on the demand side of corruption dynamics, namely, on the corrupt role of political and military elites in SSA. But for bribe-takers to exist there have to be bribe-makers.
