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desirable—part of the process of economic and political modernization no longer bear
the stamp of conventional wisdom (Huntington 1987)?
The international realm has traditionally been viewed as highly permissive with
respect to bribery and other transactions that would be deemed corrupt in a domestic
context. Only twenty years ago it was considered perfectly acceptable – and in many
states tax deductible—to bribe “foreigners” if not one’s own nationals. This is no longer
the case in one small sense: although such activities still routinely occur, they are no
longer openly, publicly justifiable (Noonan 1984: 652-655). This aligns with a more
general trend: the growth of a comprehensive governance agenda within international
institutions and across a broader swath of non-governmental and trans-governmental
networks, wherein the structure and implementation of domestic institutions and laws
within sovereign states is increasingly subjected to external pressure to align with
“universal” norms (Slaughter 1997). This holds true for the problem of corruption as
well as for other governance projects such as democratization and advancement of
human rights.
Any perusal of major news sources will reveal plenty of corruption scandals in
the advanced industrialized states, and within international organizations themselves,
but, significantly, most international anti-corruption campaigns emanating from
international organizations and aid donor governments are targeted at the developing
world. Less developed countries are generally perceived as being far more corrupt than
industrialized states, according to such indices as the Corruption Perceptions Index put
out by Transparency International (www.transparency.org). In the past decade,
Convention