In recent years there have been an ever-growing number of protests and movements addressing their grievances in relation to corruption. In 2016 hundreds of thousands marched across Brazil, South Korea and Rumania protesting endemic corruption. In India, the anti-corruption movement featured various forms of civil resistance like hunger strikes in order to put corruption on the agenda. These are not the kind of actions generally supported by the donor community as they are deemed too political. While corruption has always been a highly elusive concept, I argue that what connects these struggles is an understanding of corruption that is based on a perception of injustice.
This paper attempts to analyse the nexus of corruption and injustice not only in terms of the injustices and inequalities caused or accentuated by corruption, but also in terms of the role of self-justification narratives of corruption based on perceived injustice, particularly in terms of inequality. Despite the fact that the common definition as an ‘abuse’ of power removes the possibility of legitimation of corruption, legitimation narratives do exist and they also do appear in various surveys or case studies. Furthermore I argue that the perception of injustice and inequality, present in such legitimation strategies may have a high impact on engaging in collective action and therefore deserves a closer look, if we are to reconnect political agency to the fight against corruption.
