Breaking institutionalized corruption: Is the experience of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption generalizable?

The literature on corruption has seldom analyzed how institutional changes and the management of anti-corruption agencies could affect the success in transforming a relatively corrupted society into a cleaner one. Using the institutional changes of Hong Kong after the establishment of its anti-corruption agency in 1974, we identify the key changes in its institutional environment and the management of the agency that led to its success. We discuss the possibility that this experience can be generablizable to other societies such as the China Mainland. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013