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Abstract

This research was concerned with exploring the extent and causes of corruption in the developing world. In recognition of corruption’s scale and complexity, to achieve this research aim a comparative study that looked closely at four developing countries was selected. The comparison involved selecting two countries from Asia and two countries from Africa that had similar histories and geographies, but differing corruption estimates on Transparency International’s corruption perception index, in order to isolate differences that could be responsible for differing corruption levels. This resulted in Botswana being compared to Nigeria, and India being compared to Pakistan. To estimate the extent of corruption in these countries, this research went beyond using Transparency International’s widely used corruption perception index by collating multiple indictors of corruption. This also permitted a better understanding of how the countries differed, which was then built upon by the exploration of secondary literature regarding potential explanations for the estimated corruption level in each country. This research found that good governance, political stability, and democracy were the biggest differences between the two countries in both comparisons, but Nigeria and Botswana had much clearer differences than India and Pakistan. It also found that the causes of corruption are unique to each country and as such concludes that more detailed research is required to understand the impact of these differences on corruption causation in the selected countries. The most interesting finding related to a new form of corruption measurement, the Index of Public Integrity, that was deemed a useful and valid tool that could be the future of corruption measurement.

Course: Criminal Justice - MSc - C2681F

Date Deposited: 2023-05-11

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14131.html