Warriors unchained: critical junctures and anticorruption in Taiwan and South Korea

This article contributes to the emerging research agenda of anti-corruption. Specifically, it enquires into the factors that are beneficial for the fight against corruption by comparing corruption and anti-corruption in the Republic of China on Taiwan (henceforth: Taiwan) and South Korea (henceforth: Korea). These countries not only display considerable similarity in their context variables, but also began to implement anti-corruption programs after democratization. The study finds that democratization alone is not enough to initiate anti-corruption programs, but needs to be paired with or followed by a change in ruling parties. It also illustrates how a fundamental mismatch between the interests of the dominant political actors and the institutions that incentivize corrupt behaviour benefits anti-corruption. Counter-intuitively, this tends not to be the case when political corruption occurs in transient networks of little complexity, but when the new rulers are faced with sophisticated, complex and deeply embedded structures that make access for “outsiders” difficult.