A Passport at Any Price? Citizenship by Investment Through the Prism of Institutional Corruption

Abstract

As of mid-2013, Cyprus and Antigua and Barbuda are set to join a small but growing list of states that offer naturalized citizenship to aliens on the basis of significant investment in their respective economies. Granting citizenship by investment may appeal to policymakers, particularly in states experiencing financial turmoil, as a means to attract much-needed foreign investment. This paper seeks to critique citizenship by investment policies through the prism of institutional corruption, adopting and applying institutional corruption concepts developed in other fields to this new field of analysis. This paper argues that citizenship by investment policies amount to institutional corruption because they threaten to destroy the value of national citizenship and corrode public trust in citizenship in a way that naturalization on other bases does not.