It is common knowledge among scholars who write about corruption and among scientists with a historical perspective on politics that, for reasons that we still do not know for sure, the notion of corruption in public affairs has become salient. As part of this development, in the early 1990s international organizations and governments from various countries began to adopt wide anticorruption strategies and devices. Considering the reforms that took place in the 1970s because of Watergate and other scandals, this was the second wave of anticorruption attempts. Nevertheless, for more than a decade now there has been a new consensus in the scholarly literature that most of the second-wave measures against corruption have failed. In parallel, we are witness to the rise of the “anti-anticorruption” movement, which is popular among anthropologists and radical sociologists. This movement is not in favor of corruption, but rather against the apolitical approach to “the problem of corruption” and against the neoliberal logic of some of the anticorruption devices. Dan Hough's most recent book, Analysing Corruption, is part of the third-wave anticorruption movement, which is a synthesis between the second anticorruption wave and the anti-anticorruption reaction to it. The book is an example of a self-critical and reflective attitude to the problem of corruption.

In this readily accessible introduction to corruption, Hough rejects the corruption paradigm that characterized the early 1990s and several ideas that had constituted this paradigm, such as privatization, small government, deregulation, and the one-size-fits-all strategy to tackle corruption. However, at the same time, Hough does not adopt the anthropologist or constructivist approaches, and he shows great concern about the problem of corruption. This balanced approach has already produced an extensive literature, the highlights of which include Bo Rothstein's The Quality of Government (2011); Michael Johnston's Corruption, Contention, and Reform (2014); Alina Mungiu-Pippidi's The Quest for Good Governance (2015); and papers written by other scholars and practitioners, such as Heather Marquette. Hough's book is set apart by his introductory style and purposes and by providing a fine summary both of the study of corruption for those who are interested in the field and of how activists and scholars reflect on their activity and its problems.

Hough adopted not only a realistic approach but also an optimistic one, outlining the nature and dimensions of corruption problems in a variety of settings across the world and stressing that although we do not know a lot about how to tackle corruption, the attempt is worth it. Drawing on decades of comparative and theoretical research, Hough reminds us that corruption is seldom understood the way economics literature describes it, but there is no place for relativism either. For Hough, anticorruption is not a contemporary form of political frame, but neither is it a technical solution to the “corruption problem.” It is one of the greatest political and governmental challenges of our time. Hough advocates for a gradual and context-sensitive approach to anticorruption reforms, emphasizing that affecting change is extremely difficult.

According to Hough, the dominant anticorruption approach is unable to make a positive change because of its reliance on naïve assumptions and insensitivity to context. The key feature of the failed anticorruption model that has become prominent during the last two decades is the assumption that people are self-interested and that societies have the power to tackle corruption through a mix of free markets, institutional incentives, and property rights—that is, by adopting the Western democratic model. Hough finds these assumptions unconvincing, stressing the collective and habitual dimensions of corruption. Following Johnston, Hough reminds us that actually existing, clean democracies are governments run by a relatively stable group of elites who in the past tackled corruption because of their own selfish interests. These elites did not enact anticorruption reforms, but rather fought to protect themselves and, as a by-product, mitigated abuse of power.

Hough presents the analysis of corruption in an open and manageable manner, and his book is up to date and apt. Analysing Corruption is a readable and timely book that mounts a spirited critique of the first and second waves of anticorruption discourse and offers a realistic approach that is not reducible to the anti-anticorruption sentiment. I was also impressed by the way that Hough provides examples of recent anticorruption attempts that brought people back in. One point that I found less convincing is his conceptual discussion. First, while Hough wants “to say what corruption is,” he provides surprisingly few examples to back up his claims that the concept of political corruption is contested and that the contestability of corruption actually affects the way people think about corruption and judge politics (p. 171). Similarly, his classification of the four types of contemporary definitions is not self-evident. First, the rationale behind Hough's typology is not clear. Second, the types overlap; for example, while Joseph Nye's definition of corruption is an example of the legalistic definition (Hough's first type), Hough considers it as an example of the second type—abuses of entrusted power (p. 39). Third, Hough dismisses the democratic and institutional types, such as those formulated by Dennis Thompson and Mark Warren.

I read this book the week that tens of thousands of Israeli people took to the streets to protest corruption. Even in the harshness of the demonstrations, it was easy to see that while the Israelis share a similar understanding of corruption, they disagree about how to judge real practices and actual behavior. They all abhor corruption and bribery, but they disagree over whether presents that tycoons had given to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were actually bribes. Hough tells us, “In reality, those who look to tackle corruption will nearly always fail at some point” (p. 179). Yet, he says at the end of his book, there are examples and cases that can help inform our judgment and, if we take this approach, “all need not necessarily be doom and gloom” (p. 180).