Anti-corruption Law as a Fiction: The Illusion of Serving Morality by Controlling It through Rules and Regulations with an International Reach

Abstract

According to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International, corruption is still far more prevalent in “non-Western” countries. The search for more effective anti-corruption legislation has shifted from preventing and combating bribery to preventing corruption in a broader sense. Consequently, anti-corruption law has obtained a more far-reaching scope. However, this does not work sufficiently. Up till now, we do not know why. This article focuses on why we should consider revising anti-corruption legislation. The research is a qualitative theoretical analysis based on empirical insights from preliminary anthropological fieldwork conducted in Gabon (Feikema 2015). One of the reasons for the challenge seems to be that the implicit institutional setup—namely, of a national state with a rule of law, which forms the point of departure of anti-corruption law—is not self-evident in countries where this democratic rule of law is not an experienced reality. For example, in the so-called hybrid political orders (Boege 2008), these developments of anti-corruption law may have a confusing and alienating impact, as demonstrated by a case study. Therefore, the effectiveness of these laws could be doubted. Even more importantly, respect for human dignity, the rationale of these laws, seems to be seriously at stake. We could understand recent developments in anti-corruption law as an illusion of control. Even more vitally, anti-corruption law could be considered a symptom of derailment. What we experience as evil may occur as the disturbance of the ecological cohesion of society: derailment.