As the previous chapters have illustrated, in recent times we have seen policy-makers adopt a wide array of anti-corruption policies. While some have had limited success in achieving their aims, many have outright failed. Indeed, corruption remains every bit as challenging today as it was when it was first catapulted into the international policy arena in the 1990s. This final substantive chapter looks in detail at one of the responses to the apparent “failure” of the more traditional approaches to tackling corruption. It assesses the role that individual citizens can and do play in both highlighting corrupt practice and trying to do something about it. The rise of “citizen-centred approaches” has taken different forms in different places, and the scope and scale of their aims is broad. In plain English, some have much more potential to effect change than others. But, as a whole, they represent a new, interesting and potentially important set of anti-corruption ideas and opportunities.

THE ANTI-CORRUPTION INDUSTRY

Why have citizen-centred approaches recently taken on more prominent roles? One reason is the apparent failure of so-called top-down approaches to make much genuine headway. Indeed, the exponential rise in the salience of corruption as a public policy issue has gone hand-in-hand with criticism regarding what those active in the anti-corruption world have actually achieved. Such criticism is not (usually) directed at the authenticity of these activists’ aims, but rather at some of the unintended outcomes of their work or, indeed, the way that many have become part of an “anti-corruption industry” (see, e.g., Michael 2004).

In terms of unintended outcomes, some have argued that noble anti-corruption aims simply lead to more bureaucracy, more red tape and very little ostensible and verifiable change in the extent or type of corruption that actually exists. Anechiarico and Jacobs, for example, use anti-corruption reform in New York to provocatively claim that such reforms not only often lead to “no change”, but also contribute to “proliferating regulations and oversight mechanisms” that can “seriously undermine our ability to govern” (Anechiarico & Jacobs 1996). Anti-corruption sounds good, but in effect it means more hurdles for the good guys while the not-so-good guys simply find other ways of achieving their aims.