Gillian Brock’s book, Corruption and Global Justice, is avowedly mainly concerned with “the kinds of corruption that thwart efforts to reduce global injustices” (p. 3). That is, the relation between corruption and global justice that is principally of interest to Brock in this book is corruption as a barrier to global justice. Brock takes a very broad view of what constitutes global injustice issues. These include “global poverty eradication, peace, security, and justice. This book aims to address such matters and remedy the neglect” (p. vii). Thus, Brock’s focus is forward-looking: “the responsibility to take action” (p. 24). She states that “this book addresses a significant global problem in a comprehensive way” (p. vii).
Corruption and, more specifically, what is to be done to combat it, including in respect of its pernicious role vis a vis global injustice, is obviously a very important problem in urgent need of a remedy. In response to the problem, Brock offers a “normatively justified account of how to allocate responsibilities for addressing corruption across the many agents who can and should play a role” (p. vii). However, Brock somewhat narrows the potentially extremely wide scope of her book by stating that her primary concern will be with agents who “use public office or professional roles, typically for some personal or political gain, in ways contrary to the purpose of that office or role, thereby abusing their entrusted power” (p. 4). Brock makes extensive use of case studies both to evidence her empirical generalizations (e.g., regarding the drivers of corruption) and to illustrate her normative theoretical suggestions (e.g., regarding anti-corruption responsibilities). Indeed, the burden of the book consists of descriptions of case studies and the collation of general claims from the extensive corruption and anti-corruption literature. By comparison, her normative theoretical analyses are brief and her normative framework in relation to the allocation of responsibilities is not well developed. This framework, such as it is, consists of the notion of shared (forward-looking) responsibilities in respect of combating corruption that thwarts global justice (in her broad sense of the latter term). While she rightly identifies nation-states as critical bearers of these shared responsibilities, the key theoretical notions of corruption and shared responsibility are not analyzed. This is somewhat surprising given that Brock states that “those interested in normative issues are my primary audience” (p. 26). But, as she indicates, her book is multi-disciplinary and she sees herself not only as having a prior task of bringing empirical work to the attention of normative theorists, but also of providing material accessible to multiple audiences (pp. 25–26).
The book consists of eight chapters and an appendix. The appendix discusses philosophical theories providing definitions of corruption. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the book, outlining the content of subsequent chapters. It also describes a couple of salient examples of corruption, namely, improper interdependence between government and business as evidenced in the US by campaign finance (a case argued most influentially in theoretical terms by Lawrence Lessig in his 2011 book, Republic Lost) and in the US health sector between drug companies and health professionals (e.g., drug companies’ sponsorship of physicians’ luxury travel, supposedly for continuing education but largely for the marketing of new drugs).
The centerpiece of Chapter 2 is a case study on water and corruption, centered on the Water Integrity Network (WIN). WIN is an international non-government organization that promotes integrity in the water and sanitation sectors. Corruption in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure for water, the management of water resources, and elsewhere in the water sector undermines the poor’s access to adequate water supplies to meet their essential needs. WIN is illustrative of the type of institution that Brock favors in relation to combating corruption, namely one that has a focus on redressing the social power imbalances that undermine the capacity of the chronically poor to meet, for instance, their needs for adequate supplies of clean water. Thus, WIN emphasizes the participation of marginalized groups in decision-making. While a poor-empowering approach is most welcome, Brock claims that it stands in contrast with that of many philosophers (p. 41). Perhaps. But on the other hand, there is the work of capability theorists of poverty, in particular, such as Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, who stress the importance of empowerment.
In Chapter 3, Brock argues for the importance of state responsibilities to secure human-rights sustaining global arrangements. Certainly, in the current state-based system, it is only states that can reliably guarantee human rights, supposing they choose to do so. Moreover, as Brock stresses, corruption and human rights violations are somewhat interdependent (although the violation of a human right is conceptually distinct from injustice). However, Brock’s main claim is normative: “we fulfill many international responsibilities, as a requirement of enjoying self-determination and the defensible right to privilege our compatriots’ interests” (p. 54). This claim is not adequately defended in this work; rather Brock references and relies on arguments provided in some of her other works.
Chapter 4 consists of an assemblage of a wide variety of mechanisms for countering corruption drawn from the anti-corruption literature. The mechanisms are classified by Brock under ten headings, including accountability, transparency, and “coalitions and collaborations,” the last of which turns out in Chapter 7 on sharing responsibilities to be especially important.
Chapter 5 describes international legal and human rights tools to combat corruption. Brock endorses, in particular, the United Nations Convention on Anti-Corruption (UNCAC)—under which states have various obligations—and Multi-stakeholder Initiatives, notably in the extractive industries and in the construction sector. Arguably, she overstates the efficacy of these initiatives, given that they ultimately rely on state-based enforcement, and given also that the levels of corruption in many of its most important forms appears to be rising (e.g., as a result of the ease of moving the financial proceeds of corruption in today’s globally inter-connected, under-regulated, internet-based financial system).
As it happens, Chapter 6 focuses on the proceeds of corruption, money-laundering, and global financial arrangements and, thereby, in effect acknowledges the problem just mentioned. A particular issue here that Brock discusses is the complicity of members of the financial professions, such as accountants, lawyers and bankers, in money-laundering, tax evasion, and so on.
Chapter 7 on sharing responsibilities for combating corruption is perhaps the normative theoretical heart of the book. Brock reiterates her commitment to states as the primary bearers of responsibility, revisits UNCAC and identifies some criteria for allocating responsibilities, namely, the capacity to assist, contribution to corruption and benefits from corruption. She also draws attention to the literature on collective action problems conducive to corruption. Her forward-looking shared responsibility perspective is a familiar one (see, for instance, the entry on corruption in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). However, in presenting her perspective, Brock eschews analysis of the key concept of shared responsibility and ignores the considerable body of philosophical literature on this concept (see, for instance, The Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility, published in 2020) and its applicability to issues in practical ethics, including corruption. These are lacunae in a book with an avowedly primary normative focus.
In her final chapter, Chapter 8, Brock addresses a couple of potential objections to her perspective, specifically, that she has ignored the problem of cultural differences. Brock’s counterarguments to this familiar objection are well-made.
In summary, Brock’s book is a useful addition to the literature on corruption and global justice in that it collects and systematizes a salient fragment of the very large empirical literature on corruption and anti-corruption pertaining to global justice issues and sketches a normative framework in terms of shared responsibility. Moreover, it is a very readable book accessible to a wide range of audiences. However, her normative framework, while welcome so far as it goes, is not well-developed and its associated normative analyses are truncated.
