The learning on corruption has exploded over the past two decades plus. Where once one scratched around for material on subjects like conflict of interest, the measurement of corruption, and whistleblower protection, a plethora of books, articles, reports, monographs, and, yes, even blog posts are available today on these and other once recondite topics. Great news for specialists and students. 

But bad news for those who aren’t. For policymakers, reporters, citizens, and other non-experts who need to know the basics about a corruption-related topic for a parliamentary debate, a story deadline or what-have-you but don’t have all day, or days, to read up on it.

Until recently they were at the mercy of an internet search engine. If they were lucky, one of the first entries that came up provided a useful summary of the learning. Or maybe it was misguided or out-of-date. Or, as now happens more frequently, maybe the search engine produced a hallucinogenic note, text generated by a large language model that sounds authoritative but the content of which is anything but.  

Now, thanks to two recent publications, the days of hoping a search engine or a LLM will provide a short, reliable introduction to a key corruption related concept are over.

The Elgar Concise Encyclopedia on Corruption Law, edited by Mark Pieth and Tina Søreide, Professors at the University of Basel and the Norwegian School of Economics respectively, contains 103 entries of roughly 1500 words each ranging from accounting and audit law to whistleblower protection.  In between are entries on anticorruption compliance programs and other preventative measures, the intersection of corruption law and the social sciences, the work of intergovernmental anti-corruption organizations, and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and the OECD Antibribery Convention.*

A sign of how deep the learning on corruption has become is that the Dictionary of Corruption, compiled by a University of Sussex team led by Professors Robert Barrington and Elizabeth David-Barret, covers mostly different topics. As one would expect from a dictionary, the entries are shorter than those in the Encyclopedia, running from an average of 200 words to in some cases 500 or even 1000. But all go to the nub of the topic, starting with an entry on the notorious corruption case of American lobbyist Jack Abramoff and ending with one on then South African President Jacob Zuma’s efforts to capture the state for friends and cronies. As with the Encyclopedia entries, the authors provide sources for those wanting to know more about the topic.**

Readers may have the occasional gripe about an entry. The Dictionary’s one on fraud and its relation to corruption might have been sharper. Since the Digest, fraud has been defined as the theft of property by deceit (De Dolo Malo, 1.4.3). Keeping that definition at the fore would have clarified where fraud and corruption overlap and where they are separate. While my criticisms of cross-national measures of corruption have mellowed with time, for my taste the Encyclopedia’s learned entry on corruption measurement could have still been a bit more critical.

But such quibbles are minor in what overall are two valuable efforts to make the learning on corruption accessible to a broader audience. Both are reasonably priced as well. A hardcover version of the Encyclopedia is $274.50 and the e-book $65.  It can be ordered here.  The hardcover of the Dictionary from Amazon is $95.00, paperback $30.00 and Kindle edition $22.99. Orders here.   

*Full disclosure: this writer contributed the entry “Asset declarations and ownership registries” and GAB publisher Matthew Stephenson “Law and corruption.”

** More full disclosure: GAB publisher Matthew Stephenson wrote the entry on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.