ABSTRACT
This analysis is a critical examination of the relationship between statebuilding and corruption in the political economies of post-conflict countries. The central contention is that anti-corruption programmes are an important element of ‘good governance’ for reducing transaction costs in fostering a neoliberal development. The prevalence of a debate that links corruption/anti-corruption to statebuilding requires an explanation at least partly located in ideas of liberal political economy. A ‘neoliberal’ paradigm of development is fundamental to what has been termed ‘the liberal peace’ and its arts of governance (for a summary of the debate, see Cooper et al. 2011). A variant of the structural adjustment policies of the 1950s onwards, economic assistance usually comes with conditionalities requiring: the privatization and financialization of public goods, entrepreneurship through micro-finance, support to free market competition, foreign investment, poverty reduction within balanced budgets, ‘local participation’ within neo-liberal parameters, export-led growth, and the integration of societies (many with little comparative advantage), into a global trading system. Aggressive neoliberalism may be in retreat as a consequence of economic crisis, interactions with local agency that produce hybrid or ‘multibrid’ economic forms, and the consequences of China and South American countries getting involved in development with different economic approaches. However, the emphasis on corruption also becomes a problem for the normative objectives of statebuilders because economic dynamism in developing or war-torn countries derives from sources other than reducing interference with ‘good governance’ and the ‘free market’, strategies that themselves may contradict drives to contain corruption.
