This Anti-Corruption Helpdesk brief was produced in response to a query from a U4 Partner Agency. The U4 Helpdesk is operated by Transparency International in collaboration with the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre based at the Chr. Michelsen Institute.
Query
Please provide examples of how anti-corruption policies and/or institutions that have been instrumentalised for political and/or personal gain, with analysis of relevant patterns.
Summary
The prevention and prosecution of corruption is widely recognised to be an important component of democratic accountability. Yet, in some countries, apparent improvements in the control of corruption are accompanied by a stagnation or even deterioration in the quality of democracy.
Part of the answer to this puzzle could lie in the growing scholarship documenting how powerholders’ misapplication of anti-corruption instruments to pursue narrow group interests is associated with democratic backsliding. Methods used by powerholders to misuse the anti-corruption agenda include the deployment of anti-corruption rhetoric to justify the consolidation of executive power, the launch of spurious allegations and baseless criminal cases against political opponents and the repurposing of anti-corruption institutions to constrain civil society.
Measures implemented under the guise of anti-corruption campaigns but chiefly intended to entrench elite power may nonetheless be perceived as having a positive effect on reducing (certain forms of) corruption. Due to methodological issues, this impression may also be reflected in global governance indices.
Yet where anti-corruption measures are instrumentalised for political purposes, this can damage the rule of law, weaken oversight institutions and erode democratic checks and balances. As such, scholars theorise that the instrumentalisation of anti-corruption is likely to lead to an increase in real-world levels of corruption, because it allows insider groups to act with impunity.
Main points
- While, on aggregate, the quality of democracy is positively correlated with control of corruption on global governance indices, certain countries buck this trend. For these ‘outlier’ countries, global indices indicate relatively strong performance in controlling corruption but point to a decline in the quality of democracy.
- There is a growing scholarship that suggests that in some of these outliers, this apparent paradox can be partly explained by the so-called instrumentalisation of anti-corruption. This refers to instances when powerholders misuse the rhetoric of anti-corruption and/or the laws and institutions nominally intended to curb corruption to pursue their self-interest or the interest of a narrow group.
- The objective behind this abuse of the anti-corruption agenda often relates to the consolidation of power, including through the efforts to “stifle the opposition, to dismantle the institutional systems of checks and balances, and to change the rules of the game to lock in powerholders' advantages” (Jackson, Williams and Amundsen 2026: 14).
- As such, the instrumentalisation of anti-corruption typically forms part of a wider package of de-democratisation efforts, which may include interference by the executive branch in the judicial system, state repression and election rigging.
- It is possible that measures implemented under the guise of anti-corruption campaigns but intended to entrench elite power are perceived as having a positive effect on reducing (some forms of) corruption. This impression that may also be reflected in global governance indices, which – for methodological reasons – tend to assess the prevalence of administrative rather than elite corruption.
- Robust judicial oversight, independent prosecutors and investigatory bodies, and civil society scrutiny are usually what distinguish legitimate anti-corruption enforcement from its authoritarian imitation (see Table 1).
- It is important, especially for international partners, to be able recognise to instances of anti-corruption instrumentalisation to avoid inadvertently causing further harm. At the same time, better understanding of instrumentalisation can help counter efforts to de-legitimise genuine anti-corruption efforts.
- This Helpdesk Answer examines eight countries where, over the last decade, there has been some indication or reporting that anti-corruption efforts have been instrumentalised. All eight countries have declined on indices of democratic accountability. While democratic backsliding is a broad phenomenon not solely explained by the instrumentalisation of anti-corruption measures, this chimes with the view that instrumentalisation of anti-corruption policy damages the rule of law, weakens oversight institutions and erodes democratic checks and balances.
- However, during the same period across the sample of eight countries included, some have improved on the Corruption Perceptions Index while others have deteriorated. This could i) suggest that the impact of instrumentalisation on corruption control can be heterogeneous; ii) be explained by the gap between the real and perceived levels of corruption; and/or iii) indicate that current analytical frameworks for identifying genuine cases of instrumentalisation are underdeveloped.
Contents
- Instrumentalisation of anti-corruption and democratic backsliding
- Case studies of instrumentalisation
- Overview of instrumentalisation methods, red flags and potential safeguards
- Good practices in donor funded projects to resist the instrumentalisation
- References
Caveat
This Helpdesk Answer focuses primarily on the instrumentalisation of anti-corruption measures for private or political gain. The paper touches on how anti-corruption laws and institutions can be used to limit civic space and the operations of civil society, but this is not the main concern. Specifically, a comprehensive mapping of the impact of the abusive use of anti-money laundering frameworks and foreign agent laws is beyond the scope of this paper.
Authors
Matthew Jenkins, Transparency International
Reviewers
Laura Notess, Transparency International
Date
09/09/2026
Tags
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