The OECD and Ritualized Isomorphism: Anti-Corruption Monitoring, the ‘Narrow View’ of Corruption and the Transnational Political Order

Abstract

While there is considerable literature on the causes of corruption and its harmful effects, along with an extensive body of work focused on anti-corruptionism, there is a paucity of research that examines the anti-corruption dynamic. Few studies contemplate why anti-corruption rhetoric has come to occupy a central role in global governance, despite a growing consensus among some scholars that the anti-corruption movement has done little to reduce corruption globally. This paper explores the anti-corruption dynamic through an examination of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Anti-Bribery Convention and related peer-review process of the Government of Canada’s anti-corruption measures. It does so by situating the OECD’s work as part of a transnational movement that is more about advancing corporate interests on a global scale than about combating corruption in its various guises. In the process, our findings shed important light on how the state’s regulation of corporations is itself regulated through supranational political institutions.