All over the world, nonviolent social movements, campaigns, and civic initiatives, along with civil society groups and community-based organisations, have undermined corruption — be it governments, businesses, or both.
Mobilised citizens can often be drivers of change to increase transparency and accountability. Building on Transparency International’s definition of the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain,” corruption can be understood as: “a system of abuse of entrusted power for private, collective or political gain – often involving a complex, intertwined set of relationships, some obvious, others hidden, with established vested interests”.
In democracies and non-democracies, when elites are indifferent to civic demands, beholden to special interests, unaccountable, and institutional channels are blocked or ineffective, civil society often wields power to push for policies and practices to disrupt systems of corruption.
