Anti-Corruption in Germany

Dan Hough

University of Sussex

Dr. Dan Hough is a Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex.

Germany has traditionally been seen as a country where corruption is under control. This was further supported when Transparency International (TI), the largest and most prominent anti-corruption NGO, published its 11th annual progress report on the OECD’s Convention on Combating Bribery in August 2015 (see here for the full report). The Convention (see here for the full text) was adopted in 1997 and requires signatories to make foreign bribery a crime for which both individuals and companies are responsible. Forty-one countries have signed up to this, of which Germany is one. That might not sound particularly impressive (i.e., over three-quarters of the world is not involved), but this group of advanced economies is still responsible for around two-thirds of the world’s exports and around 90 percent of FDI outflows. It’s a group that subsequently matters.

The article originally appeared in The International Association for the Study of German Politics on August 25, 2015. Click here to continue reading.