Rethinking Cross-Border Corruption: Limits of Conventional Paradigms: A Special Issue of American Behavioral Scientist

Abstract

In October 2024, an interdisciplinary group of over thirty social scientists gathered in Barcelona, Spain, at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), to reconsider the analytical and policy challenges of cross-border corruption. The conference was sponsored by the European Union under the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Programme for Research and Innovation, Grant Agreement number 101132483 (Project: BridgeGap). This special issue advances an analytical rethinking of cross-border corruption as a structural and relational phenomenon that transcends the nation-state framework. The contributions examine how corruption operates through transnational governance networks, institutional asymmetries, and the strategic behaviors of political, financial, and criminal actors. Across diverse regional contexts, the authors show that cross-border corruption cannot be reduced to isolated acts of bribery or enforcement gaps; rather, it must be understood as a patterned mode of exchange and influence embedded within global systems of regulation, finance, and legitimacy. Collectively, these papers underscore the inadequacy of technocratic “good governance” approaches and call for integrative frameworks that link political economy, law, and media analysis to explain how corruption adapts, persists, and legitimizes itself within global governance.

Keywords

cross-border corruption transnational governance institutional asymmetry political economy global legitimacy anti-corruption policy good governance power and influence regulatory networks global systems

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bauhr

(2017). Need or greed? Conditions for collective action against corruption. Governance, 30(4), 561–581.

Charron

Lapuente

(2013). Why do some regions in Europe have a higher quality of government?. The Journal of Politics, 75(3), 567–582.

Costa

Kassa

(2025). Border Corruption. Basel Institute on Governance, Quick Guide Series 38.

Crombach

Smits

(2024). The subnational corruption database: Grand and petty corruption in 1,473 regions of 178 countries, 1995–2022. Scientific Data, 11(1), 686.

Dickson

D. J.

(2014). Cross-border investigation and prosecution of bribery and corruption offences. ERA Forum, 15(1), 51–68.

Farah

P. D.

(2021). The Transnationalization of Anti-Corruption Law (Preface). Transnational Law and Governance Series, gLAWcal Series, Routledge Publishing (New-York/London).

Jancsics

(2019). Border corruption. Public Integrity, 21(4), 406–419.

Johnston

(2005). Syndromes of corruption: Wealth, power, and democracy. Cambridge University Press.

Johnston

(2014). Corruption, contention and reform: The power of deep democratization. Cambridge University Press.

10.

Johnston

Kubbe

(2025) Cross-border corruption: Wealth, power, and injustice without limits. Report on the BridgeGap conference on cross-border corruption, Barcelona, Spain, October 2024. Forthcoming.

11.

Kim

Tajima

(2022). Smuggling and border enforcement. International Organization, 76(4), 830–867.

12.

Kmonpetch

(2011). The phenomenon of cross-border human trafficking: Complexities of exploitation issues in Thailand. Kyoto Working Papers on Area Studies: G-COE Series, 104, 1-21.

13.

Morris

S. D.

(2019). Linking crime and corruption: The case of Mexico. Corruption in Latin America: How politicians and corporations steal from citizens. In Rotberg

R. I.

(Eds), Corruption in Latin America (pp. 207–233). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94057-1_9

14.

Suber

D. L.

(2023). Corruption and bribery at the border: Strategies of survival and adaptation between people smugglers and border enforcement. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 709, 65–85.