Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention

Preventing corruption helps to raise city revenues, improve service delivery, stimulate public confidence and participation, and win elections. This book provides practical solutions and a set of incentives charting a path away from misgovernance toward effective local governance. The authors present case studies of both success and failure to underscore that addressing corruption is only an entry point to deeper public sector reforms. The challenge facing local government is to develop innovative ways of building effective, accountable, and transparent systems. The book brings these innovations together, providing both a conceptual and a practical framework as well as an international perspective based on concrete country examples such as Hong Kong and La Paz. To attain concrete and lasting results, a bold departure from traditional ways of doing business is often essential. Strong political will, citizen voice, appropriate technical support, and a realistic long-term implementation strategy are central to success. A major theme of this book is that fighting corruption in the right ways can become a lever to achieve much broader ends, not only financial survival but also remaking the relationship between the citizen and local government.