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KickBack - The Global Anticorruption PodcastThis podcast series features in-depth interviews Author: KickBack
This podcast series features in-depth interviews with a wide range of corruption experts, on questions such as: What have we learned from 20 years of (anti)corruption research? Why and how does power corrupt? Which theories help to make sense of corruption? What can we do to manage corruption? How to recovery stolen assets? Language: en Genres: Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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142. Anna Persson on systemic corruption and political will
Thursday, 8 January, 2026
For our first episode of 2026, regular host Liz David-Barrett is joined by Anna Persson, associate professor and senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. Anna draws on extensive field research to challenge simplistic understandings of political will, and explore systemic corruption as a complex collective action problem. Anna examines how moral hazard and adverse selection shape leadership behaviour, and how corruption becomes "expected behaviour" in societies where the high individual costs of resisting systemic corruption make transparency measures insufficient. The episode also challenges the "coherent state" model, examining how competing authorities and variations in state effectiveness within countries impact anticorruption efforts. Links to Anna's research: Why Anticorruption Reforms Fail—Systemic Corruption as a Collective Action Problem https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2012.01604.x?saml_referrer The Power of Ideational Reach: A New Approach to State Capacity https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gove.70020 Responsive and Responsible Leaders: A Matter of Political Will? https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/responsive-and-responsible-leaders-a-matter-of-political-will/DD7C9258D3E95E8B79CB70FA10126275
