It is an odd moment when a brand new book arrives on your desk and as you examine it for the first time, despite the novelty of the content, it immediately feels familiar … because you think you have already met several of its cousins.

That just happened to me, only three days before final submission of this manuscript. The book which just arrived is The Many Faces of Corruption, edited by J. Edgardo Campos and Sanjay Pradhan of the World Bank. It is quite fat as books on corruption go, with over 400 pages. It has three parts, each organized around a different set of dimensions. The first is organized according to “sectors” (health, education, forestry, roads, water, etc.) and explores the specific types of corruption most prevalent within those sectors. The second part deals with public financial management, and looks in turn at budgeting, procurement, tax administration and customs. The final part examines the money-laundering profession and details strategies for undermining it.

Why exactly does such a book — which amasses a great deal of new information on this one subject — seem nevertheless familiar? Because the authors are deliberately pointing their corruption control colleagues along a new path — at least, a path which is relatively new for the corruption control field. The authors admit up front that their work represents early steps in that journey, but claim that significant opportunities for effective action lie ahead, and only along that path.