Sexual corruption is increasingly recognized in policy and research as a distinct form of corruption. Yet, while global policy developments, advocacy reports, legal analyses and perception surveys have acknowledged and documented the phenomenon across diverse contexts and sectors, the concept remains largely undertheorized. Policy and research have outpaced the development of a coherent theoretical foundation to explain why and how sexual corruption occurs. Theorising sexual corruption is crucial not only to understand its root causes, but also to identify mechanisms through which it operates. A theoretical approach can transform seemingly isolated incidents into an observable pattern that explains the dynamics of sexual corruption. This paper contributes to filling this gap by developing a theoretical basis for understanding sexual corruption as a distinct and complex form of corruption. In doing so, it provides a foundation for further systematic empirical study and more targeted policy responses to address the underlying drivers of this phenomenon.
This paper presents an analysis of whether general theories of corruption can adequately explain sexual corruption. It draws on dominant theoretical approaches to corruption, including rationalist explanations such as collective-action approach or principal-agent model, and functionalist approaches to corruption. Adopting a conceptual and theory-driven analytical approach, this paper assesses the explanatory potential and limitations of these conventional understandings when the currency of transaction is sex rather than money or material benefit. Moreover, the dynamics of sexual corruption is embedded in deeply asymmetric power relations. In sexual corruption, bodies are inseparable from the exchange, and the gains of the perpetrators are non-financial. These dimensions challenge the common notion of rational reciprocity between the giver and the receiver in conventional corrupt theory. They also reveal how sexual corruption complicates assumptions of rational choice and functionalist behaviour.
The paper argues that theorizing sexual corruption requires extending or revising existing frameworks to account for the gendered and embodied nature of corrupt transactions. It concludes by identifying conceptual and empirical directions for future research, including the need for integration of feminist perspectives into mainstream corruption theories.
