Symposium: Understanding and Reducing Public Corruption

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12794
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017

632 Public Administration Review • July | August 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 4, pp. 632. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12794.

Call for Papers

• Yahong Zhang , associate professor in School of

Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) and

director of Rutgers Institute on Anti-Corruption

Studies (RIACS) at Rutgers University in

Newark. Her research focuses on the politics–

administration dichotomy, citizen participation,

and anticorruption. She is the editor of

Government Anti-Corruption Strategies: A Cross-

Cultural Perspective (Taylor & Francis, 2015).

• David Jancsics , post-doctoral associate in School of

Public Affairs and Administration(SPAA) at Rutgers

University in Newark (assistant professor in School

of Public Affairs at San Diego State University,

beginning date: September 2017). His research

focuses on corruption, organizational wrongdoing,

and informal practices. In 2014, his coauthored

paper, The Role of Power in Organizational

Corruption , was selected as the winner of the Best

Article Award of the Public and Nonprofit Division

of the Academy of Management.

• Adam Graycar , professor of public policy at

Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. He has

held senior academic positions at the Australian

National University and at Rutgers University. He

spent 22 years as a government official (Federal and

State) in Australia. His latest book is Understanding

and Preventing Corruption (with Tim Prenzler)

Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2013.

G lobally corruption costs governments and

businesses trillions of dollars each year.

It distorts public policy objectives and

damages trust. This makes for great difficulties for

public administration; however, scholarly analysis

of public corruption is meager, especially in public

administration and related fields. This symposium

seeks to better understand how corruption affects

public administration and how public administration

can mitigate corruption. It is intended to advance

research and generate a comprehensive knowledge

base on public corruption.

The Panama Papers, released in 2016 by the

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,

as well as the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and

issues related to the Tr ump Administration ’ s perceived

conflict of interest, favoritism, or reduced transparency

in various industries and sectors once again stir up

concerns about public corruption in democratic

societies. Such concerns urge us to study corruption

in the new era, in which corruption has evolved into a

more complex sociopolitical phenomenon.

We invite a broad range of manuscripts that promote

interdisciplinary dialogues, practical relevance, innovative

methodology, or international comparison in corruption

studies. Scholars and practitioners from various disciplines

and from around the world are encouraged to submit

their work to this forum. In particular, we welcome

theoretical, empirical, and practically relevant research

papers that contain, but are not limited to, the following:

• Conceptualization of public corruption that

integrates perspectives from multiple disciplines,

such as public administration, public policy,

political science, management science, sociology,

economics, criminal justice, psychology,

anthropology, and so on.

• Features of public corruption in the new era

related to the use of new information technology,

complicated organizational design, or public–

private partnerships; and the challenges for

corruption detection and anticorruption

institutions in the new era.

• The role of public participation, nonprofit

organizations, and civil society organizations

in corruption detection and in anticorruption

movement.

• Innovative approaches to measuring corruption

at different governmental and organizational

levels, such as “big-data” approach, lab or field

experiments, or qualitative tools seeking microlevel

evidence through an ethnographic approach.

• Examination of anticorruption strategies

targeting different forms of public corruption,

including bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement,

fraud, extortion, patronage, nepotism, cronyism,

conflicts of interest, and state capture.

• Comprehensive literature review that

systematically assesses the body of existing theory

and empirical research, or meta-analysis based on

empirical studies in public corruption.

• Comparative studies of anticorruption strategies

that may examine the mechanisms for certain

anticorruption initiatives to work or not to work

in different social and political contexts, or

comparative studies that provide lessons learned

from other countries.

Manuscripts are due by November 1, 2017, to Yahong

Zhang ( yahongzh@newark.rutgers.edu ) and David

Jancsics ( david.jancsics@rutgers.edu ). After initial

screening, authors of selected manuscripts will be

invited to submit directly to the Public Administration

Review ( PAR ) online site for double-blind review, with

final decisions regarding publication being made by

PAR ’s editors. All authors should comply with PAR ’s

style guidelines.

Symposium: Understanding and Reducing Public Corruption

Guest Editors