Corruption is a challenge to democracy.  The anti-corruption organization, Transparency International define the phenomenon of corruption as ‘the misuse of entrusted power for private benefit.’ Corruption is generally “an activity which undermines public confidence in the integrity of the rules, systems and institutions that govern society is corrupt”.

In poorer and developing countries where corruption is structural, pervasive and endemic, and despite its harmful impact on “good governance,” “sustainable development,” and “human justice,” it is considered to be something of a natural order.
It is the way things are done in the conduct of business and governance, “habitualized” and “institutionalized” into the social fabric, rationalized and justified. Reasons to fight it or oppose it are weakly internalized so as to sustain any significant counter collective action.

In fact corruption undermines the very idea of citizen and citizenship, and it is much in this light that presumed 'citizens' in states pervaded by such a phenomenon see themselves – as mere ‘inhabitants’ rather than as citizens. Yet the system continues to self-reproduce until “conducting personal and public affairs eventually collapses” and as “rottenness” strikes at the core, society and the State are rendered “incapable of facing major outside challenges. Then, the price is very high in terms of uncertainty, loss of trust, and risky supersession at best– and civil unrest, revolt, and bloody revolution at worst”.  

From the citizen perspective, control of corruption is always a significant question. The instruments of controlling corruption are both direct and indirect for citizens. At least in theory, the more direct the channels of influence are, the stronger the citizens’ role is in the control of corruption.

Corruption is seen as a primary threat to open and transparent governance, sustainable economic development, the democratic process, and business practices. Corruption is a multi-faced phenomenon, linking multiple issues together such as abuse of entrusted power for private gains, low integrity, taking bribes, maladministration, fraud, and nepotism. The big question is how to prevent the increase of administrative corruption in a single country? How to get a grip on the control of corruption in a singlecase study and how to properly identify the most important implications of corruption?

The proper diagnosis of the causes and logic behind corruption play an important role in combating it. The fact is that researchers will never be able to reveal all corruption to the public. Corruptio is an iceberg, in which only the tip can be seen and only known facts can be taken into consideration.  

Old boy networks and nepotism are examples of such subtle unethical structures of pay-offs. Other manifestations and forms of corruption are of course not so subtle and much more sinister and destructive of the entire integrity structure of society.

Under such conditions of pervasiveness citizens may accept and participate in corruption, even when conscious of the error of their ways.

This constitutes a “social dilemma”, where despite the fact that citizens do understand the situation and the disastrous consequences of their own attitudes, they are unable or continue to be unwilling to do anything about it

Through a continuous process of ‘denial’ they may condemn corruption verbally but resist attempts at breaking its networks as many adapt to its order of things. In other instances, political allegiances in modern democracies filter perceptions or negative attitudes toward corruption depending on whether a group of citizens supports the government or not.

Governments all over the world and international organizations have designed strategies to fight corruption. In most cases the same government will bring a policy on corruption immediately after being implicated.