Codes of Corruption: A Critical Realist Discourse Analysis of Illicit Transactions (Routledge Studies in Critical Realism)

Corruption is expanding internationally and so are strategic accusations of others being corrupt.It has become quite common for some politicians and their supporters to make false accusations of corruption against opponents in order to win power.A precise understanding of the phenomenon is therefore urgently needed for economic and political governance.The phenomenon has so far been investigated from the disciplines of sociology, criminology, politics, and economics, but rarely with a focus on the actual negotiation of corrupt deals.This is mainly because access to these illegal, often discursively mediated, practices is highly complicated.Empirical studies have therefore either focused quantitatively on the number of cases that came to light or on perceptions of and attitudes towards the phenomenon. Codes of Corruption attempts to fill this gap. It draws on a corpus of videos and audio recordings from Mexico secretly recorded by individuals who were present at the time and later uploa