ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how an increasing number of international organizations have adopted anti-corruption agreements over time, and shows that a few outliers resist this trend. It addresses signaling motives as scope conditions for diffusion, and aims to compare the scope and legal design of these agreements. The chapter draws elements of prevention, criminalization, jurisdiction, domestic enforcement, and international enforcement each document addresses. It also discusses the mushrooming of the international agreements in various regions and notes that they were adopted at different points in time. The chapter focuses on a group of regional organizations that are considered relatively active in terms of promoting and protecting governance norms at the domestic level. This makes them likely to embrace anti-corruption treaties. The Council of Europe’s efforts to address corruption can be traced back to a summit in Malta in 1994, at which a working group on the issue was created.
