As conventionally understood, anti-corruption programs rely on legal rules to define and control the abuse of official power for private gain. This study explores the limits to law-based standards of corruption where state officials obscure bribery and the abuse of power beneath a veneer of legality. Drawing on an empirical study of two public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Vietnam, it asks whether the failure of anti-corruption laws to curb malfeasance in PPPs is attributable to insufficient enforcement, to targeting the wrong behavior, or to both of these issues. It argues that if anti-corruption laws are blind to the opportunistic manipulation of laws in PPPs, then we must consider other ways of conceptualizing and controlling corruption. This argument links the way in which corruption is conceptualized to the efficacy of policy instruments used to curb corruption in PPPs. In particular, it examines whether public interest corruption provides a framework that makes malfeasance in PPPs visible and thus offers a mechanism for holding officials accountable. This study concludes that public interest corruption broadens the analysis of corruption in PPPs from transgressions of legal boundaries to an examination of public inclusion and exclusion from decision making.

中文翻译：

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为国家策划的腐败制定公共利益对策

按照传统的理解，反腐败项目依靠法律规则来定义和控制滥用官方权力谋取私利的行为。本研究探讨了以法律为基础的腐败标准的局限性，在这些标准中，国家官员在合法性的幌子下掩盖贿赂和滥用权力。借鉴对越南两个公私合作伙伴关系 (PPP) 的实证研究，它询问反腐败法律未能遏制 PPP 中的渎职行为是由于执法不力、针对错误行为还是由于这两个问题. 它认为，如果反腐败法律对 PPP 中对法律的机会主义操纵视而不见，那么我们必须考虑其他方式来概念化和控制腐败。这一论点将腐败概念化的方式与用于遏制 PPP 中腐败的政策工具的效力联系起来。特别是，它研究了公共利益腐败是否提供了一个框架，使 PPP 中的渎职行为可见，从而提供了一种追究官员责任的机制。本研究得出的结论是，公共利益腐败扩大了对 PPP 中腐败的分析，从对法律边界的违反扩展到对公共参与和排除在决策制定中的检查。