CORRUPTION

International Affairs Forum Fall 2016
and acts overwhelmingly on this information, and second, that a grassroots or bottom-up approach
to targeting corruption may yield more effective results than top-down or trickle-down anti-corruption
predicated on aid conditionality. Before I elaborate on these lessons, it is worth noting that, while
grassroots anti-corruption is still not in the mainstream, other groups have attempted it with varying
levels of success. Grassroots anti-corruption women’s groups in India have succeeded in affecting
local city and province level politicians, and in Kenya, bottom-up initiatives were found to be more
successful that top-down policies dictated by conditionalities (Richards 2006, Oluyitan 2015). Even
so, the Anas justice scandal is unique in both its success, and its integration of journalism, public
involvement, and governmental willingness to change.
First, there has been a debate in the scholarly literature on dishonesty and bribery over whether
corruption, as defined by the West, is universally acknowledged to be negative and thus dissented
against or whether in certain cultural contexts it is seen as a fact or way of life, thus rendering citizens
apathetic towards reform (Barr and Serra 2006, 2008, Lee and Guven 2013). The overwhelming
Ghanaian media publicity surrounding Anas’ revelations and the subsequent protests and masscollective
action over the judiciary, which led to change, indicates that at least in West Africa, a region
noted for its corruption, the people not only acknowledge that corruption is negative, but, given the
chance, will revolt against a corrupt system.
Second, the change in the Ghanaian judiciary as a direct result of Anas’ work demonstrates that
international and local actors who target corruption should investigate new anti-corruption strategies
which focus less on top-down conditionalities but instead turn attention to news outlets and
empowering the local people with information. As mentioned previously in this paper, over the last
three decades, international actors have attempted to target corruption in Africa through aid-tied
conditionalities. These efforts have resulted either in mediocre results or have failed outright. The
success of Anas in not only reforming the judiciary but also creating a culture of reform throughout
Ghana suggests two things: international actors should look into the possibility of promoting bottomup
approaches to corruption via journalism, the press, and local actors, and that perhaps the best
way to beat corruption is from the inside-out rather than imposing policies from the outside-in. It
is interesting that the people and government alike in Ghana responded well to criticism coming
from a citizen rather than international actors: this suggests that should a government be open to
change, international actors should look into investing in local institutions to seek change rather than
attempting to force changes from outside the country.
Finally, the importance of the rule of law in government-wide anti-corruption movements indicates that
perhaps instead of creating conditionalities aimed at reforming the legislative or executive branches,
international actors should instead first focus on ameliorating developing countries’ judiciaries. While
it is true that all branches of government must work together in order to preserve and bolster the
rule of law, perhaps a good place to start would be the judiciary, which in the end is responsible for
the indictment and sentencing of those who are corrupt. As shown through the Anas justice scandal,
when a judiciary employs corrupt judges or is systematically corrupt, politicians, legislators, or even
members of the executive branch of government who are corrupt can pay their way out of indictment
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