ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the features of modern devel op ing country markets, using some examples from South Africa, to argue that tradi tional defi n i tions of private-sector corrup tion are simply too narrowly focused to capture the range of economic activ it ies that are of wide spread contem por ary concern to citizens. Many noxious outcomes and beha viours remain legal, such as tax avoid ance and evasion, thin capit al isa tion and delib er ate bank ruptcy of subsi di ar ies by ephem eral invest ment funds. Relatedly, busi ness regu la tion and corpor ate law remain weak and porous in many markets. In short, to reduce private-sector corrup tion requires work to redefi ne the scope and applic ab il ity of the concept itself, in order to better align what the general popu la tion view as immoral with what is form ally illegal. In order to attempt this redefi n i tion we need to examine more closely the mutable edges of the markets in which private-sector corrup tion takes place. These have been made partic u larly complex in the past thirty years or so by neo-liberal economic policies and greater inter na tion al isa tion and fi nancial isa tion of devel op ing-country econom ies. This context has eroded a clear divide between the public and private sector, creat ing many spaces in which the newer forms of corpor ate malprac tice have grown, includ ing in the mispri cing of deriv at ives which contrib uted to the 2008 fi nan cial crash (Hildyard 2008; Beetham 2011). In this chapter, the argu ment will be developed using illus trat ive examples from south ern Africa, where devel op ment fi nance institu tions and private-equity fi rms jointly coin vest from tax havens and by so doing main tain a key stra tegic role in overall economic devel op ment (Bracking et al. 2010; Bracking 2012b).
