1. Introduction

The essence of this book is to apply relevant sociological and criminological theoretical approaches to the problem of corruption. The inspiration behind this book comes from Huisman and Vande Walle (2010) and the aim is to produce a text that I hope is useful to both those with knowledge of sociology and criminology and those with knowledge of corruption but rarely both. Most theoretical approaches that explain corruption fall under the disciplines of political science and economics with some reference to sociology and/or criminology. This book is an attempt to address this imbalance. This is not a criticism of the corruption literature but a contribution to the debates regarding international corruption. As such, this book expands on the theoretical frameworks currently used in the corruption literature and helps broaden the discussion on why and how individuals, organizations and states commit corrupt acts. Political science and economics focus on the measurement of corruption and on strategies of prevention and view offenders as mostly rational actors. This echoes some criminological approaches—such as rational choice (Wilson and Herrnstein 1985) and routine activity (Cohen and Felson 1979), but these, in both the corruption and criminology literature, do not really focus on why individuals and organizations resist corruption, since acts are considered only as rational and self-interested. In the literature on rational criminological approaches and corruption the primary focus is on making it difficult for such acts to occur by changing processes and structures to prevent access to openings and avenues of corruption.