Framework to understand and address the systemic corruption in local governments

Abstract The diagnoses made to justify anticorruption measures tend to minimize the complexity of the phenomenon of corruption. In line with the garbage can model (Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1972), where solutions look for problems, the corruption problem is characterized as something “addressable” by the anticorruption policy, which brings serious consequences, such as the implementation of a fallible policy. The article reviews the phenomenon of the fallibility of anticorruption policies. We argue that anticorruption policies are likely to fail when they are designed without recognizing that the type of corruption faced is embedded in a wider scheme of systemic corruption. We trace our argument along a series of implications that emerge from the Corruption Consolidation Framework (CCF) (Meza & Pérez-Chiqués, 2021). Supported by the CCF, we derive a series of implications to reorient the discussion and future lines of research around understanding and addressing the phenomenon of systemic corruption.