Beyond the Bribe

Abstract

Greater media and scholarly coverage of corruption and fraud in local-level NGOs in developing countries has brought attention to the complex and often contradictory underbelly of global civil society. The vast majority of social science research on corruption and fraud focuses on governments, corporations, and large-scale organizations. While some scholarship has examined the conditions that allow the proliferation of corruption and fraudulent activities in local-level NGOs, most of this work emerges from the global North and frequently fails to consider the unique conditions of the global South. The first section of this article summarizes foundational theories on corruption and fraud, highlighting their Western standpoint, which can be limiting in the context of developing nations. The second section turns to the contemporary development literature on local-level NGOs in the global South to illustrate why any exploration of corruption and fraud in these organizations must first address their unique circumstances, including globalization and neoliberalism, environments of uncertainty, organizational frames, and national structures of inequality, and how each can create opportunities for corruption and fraud. The review concludes with a case study of alleged corruption and fraud at a local-level NGO in Kathmandu, Nepal, to illustrate the vulnerability of such NGOs and how an integrated approach can provide a better model for understanding the complexities of corruption and fraud in the developing world.