Where Does Informality Stop and Corruption Begin? Informal Governance and the Public/Private Crossover in Mexico, Russia and Tanzania

Despite significant investment and anti-corruption capacity building in the past decades, 'most systematically corrupt countries are considered to be just as corrupt now as they were before the anti-corruption interventions'. Statements like this are indicative of the frustration shared by practitioners and scholars alike at the apparent lack of success in controlling corruption worldwide and point to the need to rethink our understanding of the factors that fuel corruption and make it so hard to abate. In this article we propose a novel analytical lens through which to understand the root causes of corruption. Our arguments emerge out of the study of commonplace practices shaping political, economic and social outcomes in Mexico, Russia and Tanzania. The comparative analysis of these three seemingly dissimilar cases revealed striking similarities in rudimentary patterns of informal governance, which in turn can be linked to specific incentives to engage in corrupt behaviours.