Corruption, Legitimacy and Human Rights : The Dialectic of the Relationship

In this essay, I investigate the relationship between corruption and human rights discourses as well as the idea of legitimacy, and argue that the corruption discourse undermines a particular kind of legitimacy by discrediting a particular kind of State. The essay offers a critique of the corruption discourse, and its putative linkages with a rights-based conception of legitimacy. I argue that the corruption discourse re-legitimizes particular conceptions of development, democracy, rule of law and human rights, that are elitist, eurocentric and statist