Corruption in Asian Countries: Can It Be Minimized?

Can corruption be combatted? Yes, but only under certain circumstances! That appears to be the experience of Asian countries where corruption is ubiquitous with the exception of Singapore--a that proved to be the only success story with a strong political leadership and better pay sales. Can this experience be replicated? Three decades ago, Gunnar Myrdal (1968, 938-939) identified the taboo on research on South Asian corruption as one of the factors inhibiting the research of his book, Asian Drama. However, this taboo no longer exists, judging from the increasing amount of research on corruption in Asian countries in recent years. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review, corruption was the biggest story of 1996, the Year of the Rat, as…