This book examines the nature, causes, and consequences of grand corruption, showing how it can be assessed, measured, and attacked from within and without.

The volume brings together in a single, definitive text some of the best analyses on how to measure the costs of grand corruption and dissects the legal approaches and institutions to counter grand corruption and kleptocracy. Through a series of compelling country case studies, the book explores how corrupt political elites and public officials have stolen from the public purse for personal gain at the expense of their own people and their country’s social and economic development. It also highlights the role of financial and legal intermediaries in the West in laundering these ill-gotten gains. The volume then explores the impact of existing legal constraints on controlling corruption, some of which are still in the evolutionary stage of development. It draws lessons from different national attempts to control corruption as well as regional and international initiatives. The final section of the volume discusses a variety of new anti-corruption initiatives, including efforts to establish an International Anti-Corruption Court.

This book will be of much interest to students of grand corruption, global governance, foreign policy, international law, and international relations.

Robert I. Rotberg is Founding Director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict, President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. His most recent book is Overcoming the Oppressors (2023), and on corruption, he has published Anticorruption (2020), Corruption in Canada at Home and Abroad (2019); Corruption in Latin America (2019), and The Corruption Cure (2017). Rotberg is the vice chair of Integrity Initiatives International.

Fen Osler Hampson is the president of the World Refugee & Migration Council and chancellor’s professor and professor of international affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He is the author/coauthor of 15 books and editor/coeditor of 32 volumes and more than 200 refereed publications, including The Two Michaels: Innocent Canadian Captives, High Stakes Espionage, and the US-China and Cyber War (2021) and International Negotiation and Political Narratives: A Comparative Study (2022).