THE RESILIENCE OF IRAQI CORRUPTION

Abstract

For nearly four decades now, corruption has become widespread and deeply entrenched in Iraq. Iraq has also been the site of terrible violence and conflict over these same decades, and corruption has been a key contributor to this instability. The current Iraqi regime, led by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, with the assistance of the international community, has attempted to reduce this corruption but without much success. This thesis seeks to understand why the anticorruption strategies Iraq has pursued have found so little success. To answer this question, this thesis uses official government documents and reports, scholarly research and analysis of corruption, nongovernmental organization (NGO) works published regarding corruption, and media reporting (particularly in Iraq) to further explore efforts taken at reducing corruption in Iraq and explaining the obstacles these efforts have encountered. This thesis finds that the anticorruption strategy in Iraq has been unsuccessful primarily because it has failed to address the underlying framework of incentives that motivates public officials to commit the corrupt acts while omitting important aspects of successful anticorruption regimes. This includes the positive incentives that encourage corrupt behavior, the lack of negative incentives to discourage it, and the exclusion of the public from anticorruption initiatives.