A common refrain is that efforts to combat corruption are frustrated by a lack of political will among government officials. In this talk, colleagues from the Duke Center for International Development presented research findings in response to the DRG Center’s Learning Agenda question, “How should USAID foster anti-corruption in contexts where “political will” is weak?” The research explores the serious limitations of political will as a concept and breaks it down into five more specific logics. The authors argue for a sectoral approach focused on sectoral level policy outcomes with anti-corruption as a means to achieve policy outcomes rather than an end in and of itself. They identify four promising approaches to adopt in challenging context and explore these approaches in four case studies in Vietnam, Mozambique, Peru, and Ukraine. Please join the Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Bureau and the Anti-Corruption Task Force for this dissemination event.
Recording available here. Report available here along with a two-page summary.