Identifying corruption risks in the defense and security sector: Empirical evidence using the Government Defense Anti-Corruption Index

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on conceptualizing corruption by suggesting that sector-specific typologies of corruption risks are useful heuristics that encourage understanding of corruption without attempting to define it in a way that is inherently contestable or inappropriately succinct. To develop this position, this article reflects on the difficulties in trying to define corruption in both general terms and within the context of the defense and security sector. It then details a corruption risk typology in use in the sector, explains how it was used to provide the theoretical backdrop for a global index, and then submits the typology’s five main risk areas to empirical testing using that same index’s results. The models that result show that this typology’s risk areas display sufficient internal coherence for its key risk areas to be of use not only to practitioners, but also to the sector analyst and academic attentive to conceptual concerns. [JEL codes: D74, H56]