ABSTRACT
Until fairly recently, polit ical scient ists gener ally viewed corrup tion in devel op ing soci et ies as, if not bene fi cial, largely benign. Indeed, eminent scholar Samuel Huntington wrote that ‘the only thing worse than a society with a rigid, over-cent ral ized, dishon est bureau cracy is one with a rigid, over-cent ral ized honest bureau cracy’ (1968: 386). The idea of corrup tion being a neces sary evil and a mech an ism that served to ‘grease the wheels’ of dysfunc tional and unre spons ive bureau cra cies in devel op ing soci et ies survived well into the late twen ti eth century. Nevertheless, since the crest of the third wave of demo crat isa tion and the accom pany ing imple ment a tion of neo-liberal and open-market economic reforms through out the Global South, social scient ists have begun to view the pres ence and persist ence of corrup tion in society through a more crit ical lens, and an interest in accur ately and validly meas ur ing this phenomenon has become of utmost import ance to quant it at ive schol ars.
