ABSTRACT
Corruption has become a major preoccupation of the states and multilateral organizations engaged in statebuilding efforts in conflict-affected states. This is unsurprising given the centrality of questions of governance to international statebuilding efforts, and the apparent pervasiveness of the problem. Ample surveys of the populations in conflict-affected countries identify corruption as a major concern, and anecdotal accounts of rampant corruption and embezzlement of foreign aid in statebuilding environments such as Afghanistan, Liberia, or Kosovo abound. Conflictaffected states have also consistently populated the bottom of corruption indexes such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI).2
