A fascinating piece in the New Yorker notes:
“But corruption has
outlived all predictions of its demise. Indeed, it appears to be thriving. According
to the African Union, during the nineteen-nineties a quarter of Africa’s gross
domestic product was siphoned off by graft. The United Nations estimates that
corruption adds a ten-per-cent surcharge to the cost of doing business in many
parts of the world. Corruption infects every level of government, bedevils
foreign development, enables terrorism, and fuels transnational crime. It is a
recurring conundrum in business, in religious institutions, in education, in
sports. Yet our conceptual vocabulary for understanding this pathology, let
alone combatting it, remains conspicuously meagre. The very term “corruption”
is so inclusive as to be almost meaningless, encompassing bribery, nepotism,
bid-rigging, embezzlement, extortion, vote-buying, price-fixing, protection
rackets, and a hundred other varieties of fraud.”Related:
http://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2014/11/rule-of-law-and-economic-development.html