The first day of the SOAS Anti-Corruption Evidence (SOAS ACE) and Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) conference, Governance and corruption in the Global South, brought together researchers and practitioners to explore some of the most pressing governance and anti-corruption challenges facing the Global South today.
Across four thematic sessions—from health systems and infrastructure procurement to state capture and illicit financial flows—discussions returned repeatedly to one central question: how can anti-corruption reforms succeed where conventional transparency and governance approaches have struggled?
While the contexts differed, common themes emerged around political settlements, incentives, holding power, horizontal checking, and the importance of building durable coalitions for change.
Here are some of the key ideas from the four conversations.
1. Beyond technical fixes: anti-corruption reform in health systems
Health systems are often treated as technical systems, rather than political systems. Opening the discussion, Pallavi Roy argued that while systems approaches have generated important insights, they often overlook power structures, political incentives, and governance dynamics that shape how health systems actually function.
She explained that health systems present a distinctive governance challenge because they are both highly political and highly regulated. As countries increasingly treat healthcare as a public good through the pursuit of Universal Health Coverage, it has become more politically contested, with governments, donors and other actors competing over resources and influence. At the same time, reforms must operate within established national regulatory frameworks, including professional licensing, pharmaceutical regulation and clinical standards. These institutional requirements limit the scope for redesigning incentives or accountability mechanisms. The challenge, she argued, is designing governance interventions that remain both politically feasible and consistent with these constraints.
Building on this framing, Jonathan Cushing argued that many anti-corruption reforms in health continue to rely on technical solutions which overlook the political realities that shape how health systems function. He noted that political economy analysis remains underused in practice, as donors often prioritise measurable technical outputs, projects rarely allocate resources for political analysis, and health practitioners are often more comfortable with technical than political approaches. Drawing on procurement reform, he illustrated how initiatives focused on transparency and monitoring frequently failed because they did not address local political dynamics or institutional constraints. Rather than assuming technical reforms can simply be transferred between contexts, he argued that effective governance requires understanding local political realities and designing reforms that reflect the incentives, capabilities and relationships shaping implementation.
Turning from diagnosis to practice, Pamela Ogbozor demonstrated how the SOAS ACE Power, Capabilities and Interests (PCI) framework can be used to design politically informed anti-corruption interventions. Drawing on ongoing research in Enugu State, Nigeria, she described an approach cocreated with health system stakeholders to reduce health worker absenteeism that combined transport allowances, peer support networks and community monitoring. Rather than introducing new rules or relying primarily on formal sanctions, the intervention addressed the practical barriers to attendance while embedding accountability within existing relationships between health workers, communities and local government. Early findings suggested that aligning these different actors around shared incentives and responsibilities helped strengthen both service delivery and local ownership of reform.
Across the session, one message emerged clearly: effective health governance requires moving beyond technical fixes to understand health systems as political systems. These themes are explored further in the synthesis report Corruption in Health Systems: Context, Incentives and the Political Economy of Reform.
2. Reducing risk to encourage better investments in infrastructure
Large infrastructure projects attract powerful actors because of the significant financial rents involved. Traditional anti-corruption approaches—such as media exposure, NGO monitoring and transparency initiatives—often struggle because they lack sufficient holding power to challenge entrenched interests. Instead, Mushtaq Khan argued, effective reforms require countervailing groups with comparable holding power and incentives, actors with a long-term stake in project outcomes, and sustainable accountability mechanisms driven by self-interest rather than donor funding.
Research from Bangladesh illustrated this point through climate adaptation infrastructure. Corruption was found to be lower where projects had strong dual-use value, creating direct benefits for local communities. Small farmers became active monitors of construction quality because the infrastructure improved their transport and livelihoods. Rather than external oversight by NGOs or the media, these local beneficiaries provided the strongest and most durable check on corruption. The research suggested a simple practical policy implication: offering communities choices over infrastructure design and location can strengthen local ownership and create incentives for long-term oversight through horizontal checking.
The discussion also explored the role of competition in reducing corruption risks in procurement. Research on power plant investment in Bangladesh found that formal procurement rules and multiple bidders were often insufficient because collusion could still occur. Support through international financial institution credit lines helped reduce political risk, encouraging politically unconnected investors to enter the bidding process. Their participation strengthened competition and resulted in project costs around 25% lower.
Broadening the discussion, Marc Ayoub explored how political settlements shape infrastructure outcomes through the example of Lebanon’s electricity sector. Long-standing political interests have contributed to chronic underinvestment in the national electricity system while supporting politically connected private generator networks. Although the rapid expansion of solar energy following Lebanon’s economic crisis created new opportunities for decentralised energy provision, community-led renewable solutions emerged more quickly than central government reform. At the same time, speakers cautioned that renewable energy may simply reproduce existing patterns of elite capture, creating new “green cartels”.
The final contribution, from Cathy Haenlein, examined corruption vulnerabilities in voluntary carbon markets. Carbon credits are inherently difficult to verify because they are based on estimated future emissions reductions, while verification bodies are often paid by project developers, creating potential conflicts of interest. Combined with inconsistent due diligence and fragmented oversight, these arrangements create opportunities for corruption, including manipulated carbon accounting, disputed land rights and fraudulent project claims. These examples illustrated the governance challenges of regulating markets built around difficult-to-verify environmental claims. The discussion also questioned whether current governance arrangements create sufficient incentives for regulators to expose problems in the market.
Together, the three contributions demonstrated that tackling corruption requires more than stronger procurement rules or greater transparency. Effective governance depends on understanding the incentives and power relationships that shape behaviour, creating conditions for genuine competition, and identifying actors with both the interest and the capacity to sustain accountability over time.
3. Comparing political configurations of state capture
State capture can be understood as the ability of powerful political and economic actors to shape the rules, institutions and decisions of the state in ways that serve their own interests. Opening the discussion, Pallavi Roy distinguished state capture from more everyday forms of corruption such as bribery or administrative abuse, arguing that while these often involve individual transactions, state capture operates by influencing the institutions of the state itself. Understanding these different forms of corruption, and the political contexts in which they emerge, is essential for designing feasible anti-corruption reforms.
Building on this framing, Thomas Shipley explored how political configurations of state capture differ across countries. Drawing on examples from Zambia and Madagascar, he showed how capture can take more centralised or decentralised forms depending on political settlements, with different constellations of political and economic actors shaping state institutions. The discussion underscored that there is no single model of state capture, and that reform strategies need to be grounded in an understanding of the specific political configurations that sustain these systems.
Drawing on his experience advising Bangladesh’s interim government, Mustain Zahir reflected on the country’s recent political transition. While the removal of a captured regime has created new opportunities, he argued that political transition is only the beginning of the reform process. Institutions, bureaucracies and networks built under previous governments often remain intact, while sectors including finance, energy and infrastructure continue to be shaped by politically connected actors. The challenge, therefore, is not simply replacing political leaders, but building new coalitions capable of sustaining reform over the long term. These themes echo discussions from the SOAS ACE seminar on the Monsoon Revolution in Bangladesh.
The discussion followed with Alexandra Gillies from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reflecting on the role of investigative journalism in exposing hidden networks of influence. Although state capture is often difficult to prove because relationships of power operate informally and behind closed doors, investigative reporting can help reveal these networks, support opposition scrutiny and provide citizens with a language to understand and challenge capture. Even where journalism cannot prevent capture outright, it can increase the political costs.
Across the discussion, one message emerged clearly: tackling state capture requires looking beyond formal institutions and legal frameworks to understand the political settlements, incentives and power relationships that shape governance. Durable reform depends not only on changing governments, but on building the coalitions and accountability mechanisms capable of sustaining change over time.
4. Illicit financial flows: recovering illicitly transferred wealth
The final session examined the challenges of recovering illicitly transferred wealth, bringing together perspectives from research, civil society and government. Opening the discussion, Mushtaq Khan argued that illicit financial flows should be understood not simply as financial crimes, but as products of deeper systems of state capture. Drawing on Bangladesh, he described how politically connected business networks can capture finance, energy, construction and public procurement, enabling the extraction and concealment of public resources through both legal and illegal mechanisms.
Building on this analysis, Susan Hawley reflected on the practical realities of asset recovery. She highlighted the significant challenges involved once illicit wealth has left a country, including weak investigations, manipulated documentation, captured enforcement agencies and lengthy international legal processes. While international cooperation is essential, she noted that effective collaboration depends on political will, trust between jurisdictions, institutional capacity and the availability of evidence. Even where assets are frozen or recovered, returning them to their country of origin can be slow and politically contentious, raising further questions about how to prevent recovered assets from simply being re-captured by the same political interests.
Drawing on experience from Nigeria, Simeon Obidario explored the growing challenges posed by digital finance. The increasing use of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and cross-border digital payment systems creates new opportunities for illicit financial flows to bypass conventional banking oversight, posing challenges for central banks, tax authorities and anti-money laundering agencies. He highlighted the need for regulatory frameworks and stronger digital supervisory tools to keep pace with rapidly evolving financial systems.
Across the discussion, one message emerged clearly: preventing illicit financial flows is generally more effective than attempting to recover assets after they have left a country. Once funds move through international financial systems, investigations become more complex and recovery can take years. Rather than focusing solely on asset recovery, speakers emphasised the importance of tackling the governance conditions that enable illicit financial flows in the first place, alongside stronger procurement systems, greater scrutiny of politically connected investors, enhanced international cooperation and more effective investigative capacity.
The Governance and Corruption in the Global South Conference took place 25-26 June 2026, hosted by SOAS ACE in partnership with INET. View programme.
