Oscar M. Granados - Corruption Networks: Concepts and Applications

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This book has brought together a diverse set of innovative scholars from political science, sociology, economics, physics, and mathematics using different methods ranging from qualitative to complexity science. A common thread among the contributions in this book the reader holds in her/his hands is that the network representations of social relations underlying corrupt transactions are crucial for understanding and countering the phenomenon. Corruption is rarely an isolated phenomenon representing an outlier against the background of generalized integrity, and, typically, various forms and manifestations of corruption are enabled by trust, mutual monitoring, and sanctioning, facilitated by a network of relationships. Network perspectives can be traced back to early efforts to define corruption as a transactional feature inherent in public service provision, government contracting, tax collection, or natural resource extraction. Additionally, organized crime research has long recognized the networked nature of corruption and how personal connections underpin the corrupt governance of organizations and markets. Thus, there is a growing recognition in different disciplines that corruption typically presents collective action dilemmas, and the sustainability of corrupt societal equilibria is maintained by norms and self-reinforcing expectations. Network analysis of corrupt phenomena holds the key to better understanding their drivers and designing effective anticorruption policies. Furthermore, these perspectives are indispensable as they allow for linking individual corrupt relationships and transactions to meso and macro behavior. Even though research and public policy advice have been interested in macro-level analysis and predominantly focused on fighting corruption on the country level, they often lacked the micro-foundations leading to incomplete conclusions and ill-informed policy recipes. In the last decade, this situation has changed with growing attention paid to local and sectoral corrupt phenomena and the tailored tools effectively fighting corruption in context. However, the disconnect between the micro and macro has neglected, calling for novel methods and approaches capable of filling this void. Network analysis of corruption dares both to address the micro-phenomena in its context but also aims to draw macro-relevant conclusions, hence it could be the method, at least partially, which fills this void.