E LAW - MURDOCH UNIVERSITY ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF LAW
ISSN 1321-8247
Volume 6 Number 3 (September, 1999)
Copyright E Law and/or authors
File: mwenda63a.txt
ftp://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/pub/elaw/issues/v6n3/mwenda63a.txt
http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v6n3/mwenda63a.html
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Review of Combating Corruption: A Comparative Review of Selected Legal
Aspects of State Practice and Major International Initiatives

Kenneth Mwenda
World Bank

  1. Book authors and title: W. Paatii Ofosu-Amaah, Raj Soopramanien, and
     Kishor Uprety, Combating Corruption: A Comparative Review of Selected
     Legal Aspects of State Practice and Major International Initiatives,
     (Washington DC: The World Bank, 1999)

  2. This work, addressing only selected legal aspects of state practice
     and major international initiatives in the fight against corruption,
     provides an insightful treatment of anti-corruption efforts mounted by
     states. The work spells out not only the techniques used by states in
     the fight against corruption, but it also looks at regional and
     international efforts to deal with corruption. In spelling out these
     efforts, the work identifies both indirect and direct techniques used
     by states in the fight against corruption. These techniques include
     leadership codes, declaration of assets by national leaders, codes of
     conduct, a pro-active media, and transparent financial management in
     the public sector. Indeed, there is no doubt that the authors have
     succeeded in putting together materials which cover a wide range of
     issues in the fight against corruption. However, laudable as this
     effort may be, the work somewhat falls short of providing some
     critical analysis of the major constraints affecting the efficacy of
     the legal framework and/or tools for combating corruption.

  3. Although the authors do acknowledge that there is no single method,
     standing on its own, which can be treated as an ideal method of
     combating corruption, and that, therefore, a multi-faceted approach
     may be desirable, the authors would have scored a further milestone
     had they endeavoured to show or highlight some of the constraints
     affecting each of the legal tools. Such an approach would have
     provided a much more integrated analysis of the subject at hand.
     Indeed, had the authors undertaken this approach it would have helped
     in placing the law/legal tools in an appropriate socio-economic and
     political context. The fight against corruption goes beyond legal
     tools and includes inter-disciplinary perspectives of a social science
     nature. But again, ought we not to distinguish a tool-kit for the
     practicing lawyer from an academic treatise? Somewhere in between the
     line, as I contend, falls the inevitable and the ideal.