Official corruption: the misuse of public power for private profit or political gain. It represents a universal threat to democracy and development, a hazard to free trade and investment, and, in collusion with international crime, a danger to global and individual security, public health and safety. No policy issue affects citizens more.

Pervasive bribery, extortion, kickbacks, and collusion retard economies, kleptocratic predator elites promote political instability; unconventional dangers, risks from illicit traffic in drugs, biological, chemical, and nuclear materials; international organized crime; narcotrafficking; alien smuggling; and transnational bribery are all aided at critical junctures by official corruption.

From the quagmire of U.S. campaign finance to the prebendalism of Nigeria; from Tokyo's banking scandals to Indonesia's Suharto miracle, from the drug lords of Mexico to the warlords of the Republic of Srpska, from the global crime networks of the Russian Mafiya to the Japanese Yakuza ...what threats are posed?

In an era of cybercrime, encryption, and offshore banking, what could be effective levers of an anticorruption strategy? How effective is emerging international law and new initiatives of the Financial Action Task Force of the G-7? Transparency International?

Modern or modernizing, transitional or static, all societies are affected. All analyses involve institutional and cultural contention whose norms set the criteria? When is corruption functional? Beyond moralistic or fatalistic approaches, how can we investigate and contend with corruption?

As a core aspect of this course, EPIIC will continue to address the corrosive dilemmas of state crimes, crimes of obedience and the legacies of ousted repressive regimes. As we consider how societies attempt to reveal and redress past abuses, from Russia's Memoria to South African or Guatemalan truth and reconciliation commissions; from tribunals on genocide to lustration, what are the imperatives, the limitations of accountability?