Future Leaders Programme 13: Rethinking Anti-Corruption Strategies

Development Leadership Dialogue (DLD) at SOAS University of London, co-directed by Ha-Joon Chang, Christopher Cramer, and Jonathan Di John, announces its 13th Future Leaders Programme (FLP) on ‘Rethinking Anti-Corruption Strategies’.

• When: 13–15 April 2026
• Where: London
• Deadline: 20 February 2026

About the Future Leaders Programme (FLP)

DLD promotes dialogue and mutual learning between the key actors that drive economic and social development – governments, private firms, civil society organizations, international organizations, trade unions, academia, and others – and that often operate in separate spheres, understanding each other poorly, even seeing each other as adversaries.

The FLP is one of the key programmes of DLD, bringing together a small number of people who will be in leadership positions in the next five to ten years in different sectors of the development community for a workshop of lectures, discussion sessions, and debates, led by speakers with a wealth of senior experience in government, international organizations, and academia.

Rethinking Anti-Corruption Strategies

Corruption is often seen by academics, policy-makers and private investors as one of the main obstacles to economic development. Many anti-corruption programmes aim to tackle corruption through promoting stricter top-down enforcement mechanisms. On paper these frameworks look reasonable; in practice the results have often been disappointing and have resulted in large-scale waste of public resources. The standard approach often treats corruption as a technical problem to be solved by advocating for transparency and accountability without specifying the conditions under which corruption can be tackled, let alone explaining why similar mechanisms of corruption have vastly different developmental outcomes across regions and countries.

DLD’s FLP13 is shaped mainly around the work of the SOAS-ACE (Anti-Corruption Evidence) team led by Mushtaq Khan and Pallavi Roy. The SOAS-ACE approach is marked by its commitment to crafting politically feasible reforms that can be effectively implemented within specific political economies. Rather than merely advocating for stricter enforcement mechanisms, it prioritises a systemic political economy perspective and develops strategies that aim to ensure that it is in the interests of enough players, with sufficient bargaining power, capabilities, and interests in a sector to enforce rules that prevent corruption. The FLP will contrast this approach with some of the other approaches that have been influential in anti-corruption policy advice over the past decades. 

The ACE-SOAS team and the DLD co-Directors (Ha-Joon Chang, Christopher Cramer, Jonathan Di John) as well as other speakers, will explain how and why some anti-corruption programmes work better than others, focusing on case study evidence in South Asia and Africa, as well as financial centres in high-income countries. We will direct participants to use the tools learned to design more promising anti-corruption strategies in group work. The group work will reinforce how and why the incentives and motivations of powerful actors decisively affect the extent to which projects and programs are implemented and enforced effectively.

Applications are welcome from people from different sectors – governments, the corporate sector, civil society, international organizations, trade unions, etc. Applicants need to complete the on-line application form.

Applicants should upload to the form a CV and a covering letter, explaining their work and their view on thinking strategically about issues related to corruption, anti-corruption strategies, and governance reform more generally.

Applicants are normally expected to have at least ten years’ experience in their fields. If they are from academia, they should provide evidence that they have worked with development practitioners – in national governments, international organisations, the private sector, or CSOs. The deadline for application is 20 February, 2026.

The fee for the programme is GBP 1,500. Participants are also expected to cover their costs of attending, travel, accommodation, and subsistence in London. However, there are full or partial scholarships available, and applicants who want to be considered for them should explain their financial circumstances and state clearly how much financial support they are seeking in their covering letters. 

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