LS08CH23-Wedel ARI 9 October 2012 7:56 Rethinking Corruption in an Age of Ambiguity Janine R. Wedel School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia 22201; email:
[email protected] Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2012. 8:453–98 Keywords The Annual Review of Law and Social Science is corruption, anticorruption, shadow elite, shadow lobbyist, online at lawsocsci.annualreviews.org accountability, transparency, state, governance, bureaucracy, social This article’s doi: networks, Cold War, post–Cold War 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.093008.131558 by 98.218.217.104 on 02/26/13. For personal use only. Copyright c 2012 by Annual Reviews. Abstract All rights reserved The central premise of the article is that the assumptions and approaches 1550-3585/12/1201-0453$20.00 of the “anticorruption industry” that debuted in the 1990s framed the issue of corruption and substantially shaped scholarly inquiry on the Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2012.8:453-498. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org subject. These assumptions and approaches also limited the ability to see other forms and patterns of corruption on the horizon. This article (a) critically reviews prevailing assumptions and approaches to the study of corruption during and especially after the Cold War, (b) examines the impact of economic frameworks and the anticorruption industry on post–Cold War scholarship, (c) explores contemporary forms of po- tential corruption, (d ) argues that prevailing approaches to corruption may make it more difficult to see contemporary forms of the age-old phenomenon and are ill-equipped to study them, (e) considers how cor- ruption might be reconceptualized to encompass the new forms, and ( f ) argues for a reintegration of ethics and accountability.