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	Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law

Review of Combating Corruption: A Comparative Review of Selected Legal Aspects of State Practice and Major International Initiatives

Author:	Kenneth Mwenda LLB, BCL, MBA, PhD, DBA, FCI, FRSA World Bank
Issue:	Volume 6, Number 3 (September 1999)

1. Book authors and title: W. Paatii Ofosu-Amaah, Raj Soopramanien, and Kishor Uprety, Combating Corruption: A Comparative Review of Selected Legal Aspects of State Practice and Major International Initiatives, (Washington DC: The World Bank, 1999)

2. This work, addressing only selected legal aspects of state practice and major international initiatives in the fight against corruption, provides an insightful treatment of anti-corruption efforts mounted by states. The work spells out not only the techniques used by states in the fight against corruption, but it also looks at regional and international efforts to deal with corruption. In spelling out these efforts, the work identifies both indirect and direct techniques used by states in the fight against corruption. These techniques include leadership codes, declaration of assets by national leaders, codes of conduct, a pro-active media, and transparent financial management in the public sector. Indeed, there is no doubt that the authors have succeeded in putting together materials which cover a wide range of issues in the fight against corruption. However, laudable as this effort may be, the work somewhat falls short of providing some critical analysis of the major constraints affecting the efficacy of the legal framework and/or tools for combating corruption.

3. Although the authors do acknowledge that there is no single method, standing on its own, which can be treated as an ideal method of combating corruption, and that, therefore, a multi-faceted approach may be desirable, the authors would have scored a further milestone had they endeavoured to show or highlight some of the constraints affecting each of the legal tools. Such an approach would have provided a much more integrated analysis of the subject at hand. Indeed, had the authors undertaken this approach it would have helped in placing the law/legal tools in an appropriate socio-economic and political context. The fight against corruption goes beyond legal tools and includes inter-disciplinary perspectives of a social science nature. But again, ought we not to distinguish a tool-kit for the practicing lawyer from an academic treatise? Somewhere in between the line, as I contend, falls the inevitable and the ideal.