Navigating the political economy of corruption

This How to guide explains how to analyse and address policy-distorting corruption by focusing on how actors actually behave within specific political and economic contexts.

Rather than relying on formal enforcement or transparency alone, it sets out the SOAS-ACE approach, which examines actors’ power, capabilities and interests to identify feasible entry points for reform.

The guide makes the SOAS ACE approach accessible to practitioners and policymakers to pick up and apply within their own anti-corruption and policy design work.

It introduces key concepts and provides in-depth guidance, with examples from Bangladesh and Nigeria, of how to understand the national political settlement and the landscape of corruption; analyse sectoral political economy dynamics; and craft and validate feasible policy proposals.