Political will and government anti-corruption efforts: What does the evidence say?

The authors argue that political will is usually designated as a critical aspect of anticorruption efforts; however, little effort is concretely made to define what the concept means. The authors argue that political will can be understood by dividing the concept into four key components: origin of the initiative; comprehension and extent of analysis of the problem to be solved; credible sanctions; and resource dedication. Two cases of anti-corruption campaigns are examined in Singapore and Bangladesh alongside Transparency Internatioanal’s Corruption Perception Index, and the World Bank Governance Indicators. The analysis shows that the lack of the four criteria of political will, or of political will more broadly, in the case of Bangladesh had harmed the efforts to effectively combat corruption.