Chapter 4 examines how politicians’ ability to influence bureaucrats’ careers creates opportunities for corruption in public procurement. Drawing on surveys and interviews with bureaucrats across local governments in Ghana, it finds that nearly half of bureaucrats believe procurement contracts are awarded uncompetitively, often in exchange for party financing. These perceptions highlight the vulnerability of procurement processes to partisan manipulation. A key mechanism through which politicians secure bureaucratic compliance is career control, particularly the threat of geographic transfers. Bureaucrats who resist corrupt demands risk reassignment to less desirable locations, a sanction that can disrupt both professional advancement and personal lives. Evidence from a survey experiment underscores this fear: bureaucrats anticipate that opposing corruption would trigger punitive transfers. By focusing on career management as a channel of influence, the chapter contributes to broader debates on bureaucratic autonomy and political interference. It also demonstrates that corruption is not merely the result of bureaucrats’ individual incentives but of institutionalized practices that bind bureaucrats’ careers to politicians’ partisan strategies.

Chapter 5 builds on the previous discussion of procurement by analyzing how politicians’ use of career control tools can distort the allocation of public contracts. Through qualitative accounts, it documents how mayors and bureaucrats manipulate bidding processes to ensure that contracts are awarded to firms with partisan ties. Contract-level data reveals striking patterns: despite the geographic proximity of districts, over 80 percent of firms that are awarded contracts operate in just one district. The geographic concentration of contract allocation indicates that entry into procurement markets depends on cultivating ties with local politicians and bureaucrats. The chapter also shows that politicized contracting is especially prevalent in competitive districts and where mayors harbor ambitions for higher office, as these contexts heighten incentives to trade contracts for political support. Survey experiments confirm bureaucrats’ expectations that partisan firms are favored over more experienced but politically neutral competitors. These findings converge to depict procurement as a highly politicized process that undermines efficiency, reduces competition, and ultimately produces lower-quality infrastructure. By linking political ambition, electoral competition, and procurement practices, the chapter illustrates how career control mechanisms translate into the systematic misallocation of public resources.

Chapter 5 shows that development banks provide policy-makers with the ability to address policy contestation. I document the varying policy contestation from labor unions, civil society organizations, and legislators to each type of internationalization support: acquisitions and greenfield investments, project finance, and mergers among domestic firms. I then show that this variation obeyed differences in the salience of associated domestic effects and in BNDES’ funding strategy for each intervention. The chapter shows that BNDES relied increasingly on providing equity financed through market sources to finance politically sensitive overseas investments. These dynamics reveal the “fragile autonomy” of states under democracy: their capacity to support national firms in global markets depends on their ability to strategically mobilize or obfuscate their interventions and pushes them toward more market-conforming instruments of industrial policy.

This chapter begins by introducing standards of conduct – implementing the integrity and independence attributed to the international civil service by the treaty-basis of international organizations. Second, the legal principles of conduct are identified, namely: (1) The interests of the international organization are paramount; (2) Abuse of authority must be manifest, to be contestable; (3) International officials must be uncorrupted; and (4) External authority must not compromise international officials. Third, three attendant legal duties of conduct are considered, as follows: (1) Integrity requires honesty and reputability; (2) Integrity requires reserve and respect; and (3) Integrity requires discipline and hierarchical authority. Fourth, the duty to report alleged beaches of the standards of conduct (sometimes styled, ‘whistleblowing’) is considered. Fifth, the chapter examines the interaction between the immunity typically possessed by international officials in the course of their duties and the exercise of national legal jurisdictions, notably when crimes may have been committed in connection to the workplace. Sixth, and in conclusion, this employment law of standards of conduct at international organizations is restated. The employment law of the enforcement of integrity and the independence of the international civil service – procedures to ascertain and sanction breaches of standards of conduct – is the subject of Chapter 10, ‘Misconduct’.

This chapter sets out a taxonomy of late ancient approaches to Christian political service. Historians of the Christianization of the Roman world have tended to take at face value the (oft-repeated) contemporary assertion that a traditional public career was irreconcilable with Christian piety and the true form of service: militia Christi. Yet as ch. 4 shows, this was just one of many ways in which late ancient observers thought through the compatibility (or otherwise) of officeholding and Christian commitment. Drawing inspiration from recent work which has read between the lines of ascetic texts to reconstruct the character of a more moderate ‘respectable’ Christianity, this chapter delineates the ways in which Christian officials could reconcile their careers and religious identities. Through this holistic account, I argue that there were numerous ways for individual officeholders to be presented, perceived—and indeed, to understand themselves—as virtuous political actors, according both to traditional Roman political assumptions, and to the more distinctly Christian norms which appropriated, problematised, and reframed them in late antiquity.

Chapter 3.3 examines informal payments. Informal payments are unsanctioned, unregulated payments made out-of-pocket by patients directly to their health care provider for services that are covered by third party purchasers. They are not recorded in routine administrative databases but can be captured in surveys, although they are usually underreported. Key learning includes that

• Informal payments (IPs) reduce access to health care and financial protection. They can undermine population health and reduce trust in providers and governments in the long run.

• IPs often stem from unmet desire for safe, timely or high-quality care and imply a mismatch between supply, demand and pricing in the formal health care payment system. When formal system payments are felt to be inadequate, IPs may also be used to express gratitude to providers.

• Settings with low physician density and / or where the share of GDP spent on health care is low, tend to have higher levels of IPs.

• IPs are also associated with settings with high reliance on formal out-of-pocket payments (user charges).

• Reducing or ending IPs is difficult and requires a combination of specific, targeted measures and broad health systems reforms that address underlying causes.

• The policy measures that may reduce IPs include

• – Formalizing out-of-pocket payments, with exemptions to protect vulnerable populations

• – Making clear and explicit what the health care benefits package covers

• – Better monitoring and enforcement of rules and penalties

• – Maintaining and expanding publicly-financed statutory coverage.

This chapter focuses on teaching the formation and analysis of concepts in research, emphasizing the importance of clarity in defining and measuring concepts. It presents a structured approach to conceptual thinking, outlining four steps: formulation, contextualization, operationalization, and measurement. Bussell highlights the role of examples and typologies to deepen understanding and discusses challenges in concept analysis, using “democracy” and “corruption” as primary examples. The chapter underscores the iterative process of concept development and its role in fostering rigorous academic research.

Chapter 4 explores Zambia’s transition to multiparty democracy and the consequent rise in political competition and regional favoritism, revealing a trend of diminishing accountability. Initially, under the United National Independence Party’s one-party rule led by Kaunda, favoritism was constrained by balanced leadership. However, the emergence of ethnic-based opposition post-1991 heightened pressures for patronage, leading to increased favoritism under subsequent regimes. Regional favoritism escalated under President Banda and peaked during the populist Patriotic Front (PF) government (2011–2021), which eroded checks and balances, appointed an ethnically imbalanced cabinet favoring Bembas and Nyanjas, and concentrated borrowed funds in strongholds. Legislative and judiciary institutions were also weakened, along with civil society organizations. Traditional financiers provided some constraints through conditionalities, while Chinese lenders aligned with elite interests, exacerbating the situation. Zambia demonstrates a case of democratization exacerbating ethnic patronage without sufficient accountability mechanisms.

Corruption remains a pervasive global challenge, undermining trust, governance, and economic stability. Despite increased regulation, arbitral tribunals have struggled to address corruption effectively, often due to the high evidentiary threshold and associated procedural complexities. Artificial intelligence presents an opportunity to enhance efficiency and accuracy in detecting corruption by analysing evidence supplied by the parties to a dispute or amici curiae for red flags of illicit activities, similarly to other fields like anti-money laundering. The chapter examines the procedural implications of using artificial intelligence in arbitration, including data acquisition, party consent, and the potential impact on due process. It underscores the need for arbitrators to collaborate with parties to design protocols that ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability. By carefully addressing these challenges, artificial intelligence has the potential to become a transformative tool, balancing innovation with procedural integrity.

This chapter explores the written and material evidence for civilian quartering of Roman troops in late antiquity. The civic duties to extend hospitium or hospitalitas are reconstructed from the Republic until the late Roman Empire, focusing on the period between the fourth century ce and mid-sixth century ce. By looking at the literary evidence for housing troops in civilian homes penned in the Republic and early Principate, the convention of using moralizing rhetoric to describe soldiers quartered in cities is established. This classicizing rhetoric is then used to reframe later allegations concerning the effects of Constantine’s alleged movement of frontier troops into cities. This reconsideration of the extant evidence for Roman troop quartering questions and amends how we should write the lived experiences of civilians living in late Roman cities.

This chapter shows that the use of bribery and corruption was a well-established multinational strategy over a long period. A striking number of ostensibly respectable industry leaders have engaged in grand corruption. Armaments and commodity trading were particularly prone to corruption, and the practice appears to be particularly prevalent in Africa. Grand corruption arose especially when business involved large contracts with governments. Bribery was fueled by the pervasiveness of corruption in the host economies in which multinationals operated, but the multinationals were active agents in facilitating corruption. The practice of bribery and corruption by multinationals was often the result of miscreant corporate cultures rather than rogue individuals. Governments were often permissive of corrupt practices by their multinationals, especially in Europe where bribes were tax deductible until recent years.