4. Building a New World: Global Claims in the 1970s

The chapter examines the first anti-corruption discussions at global venues and the first instances of global institutional legitimation. Since the 1970s, claims on corruption within international organizations developed in two major directions. The chapter argues that these clashing interpretations of the same condition can be called the Chilean and the American (US) legacies. The major difference between these two approaches was that the Chilean legacy developed at the UN, and defined corruption as corporate influence on politics, while the American legacy developed predominantly at the OECD, and defined corruption as bribery. The chapter examines the content of global claims at the OECD and the UN in the 1970s, and argues that the successful campaign to establish corruption as a global governance problem in the 1990s can only be understood as the legacy of the 1970s. By showing that nation states pioneered the process of global social construction, the chapter lays the groundwork for the argument that state power is essential in the creation of global problems and that powerful states can be pro-active participants in this process.