Today’s Guest post is by Nedim Hogic. Nedim advises clients in the private and public sector on environmental, social, and governance issues. Author of many articles on corruption, international law, and the rule of law and development, he is currently writing a book on judicial anti-corruption campaigns.
Since becoming an important policy goal in the 1990s, global anticorruption efforts have gone through three phases. In the first, anti-corruption policies were considered important for economic development, driven by the belief that successful anticorruption programs would make global borrowing and spending and financial aid more efficient. In the second, spanning the first two decades of this century, it was central to the protection of the rule of law and democracy.
The current phase, and particularly that part denominated “kleptocracy,” is animated by the threat it poses to global security. The Biden Administration’s national security strategy, which followed its memorandum calling the fight against corruption a core U.S. security interest, is not the first American or indeed international document to suggest corruption is a national security threat. But it is the first to state the premise clearly and straightforwardly, thus marking a sharp change in thinking about transnational corruption. Indeed, in my view the change is significant enough to be labelled a paradigm shift.
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