Rebalancing the Agenda: Power, Funding, and the Politics of Knowledge in Corruption Research

This article examines how global research funding systems and institutional hierarchies continue to marginalize scholars based in the Global South (GS) within corruption studies. While the GS is frequently the site of empirical research, agenda-setting power, authorship, and legitimacy remain concentrated in the Global North. Drawing on existing work on research inequalities and the politics of knowledge production, alongside collective autoethnographic reflections from scholars working (or having worked) in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and South Asia, the article sheds light on how language, networks, credentialism, and risk unevenly shape what can be studied, who is recognized as an expert, and which experiences are rendered visible. By connecting these structural dynamics to lived realities of conducting corruption research under precarity, conflict, or institutional disadvantage, we interrogate the limitations of current “inclusion” efforts that leave funding flows and leadership patterns intact. We argue for a shift toward meaningful co-leadership by GS scholars, and outline practical steps to enable it, including resourcing existing knowledge infrastructures, reforming authorship norms, and systematically mapping funding to redistribute agenda-setting power.