Indira Carr

As is the case with most pre‐modern philosophers of India, very little historical information is available about Bhartṛ‐hari. There are many interesting legends, some turned into extensive plays and poems, current about him. However, it is impossible to determine on their basis even whether there was only one philosopher called Bhartṛ‐hari. The appellation “philosopher” could unquestionably be applied to the author or authors of at least two Sanskrit works that are commonly ascribed to Bhartṛ‐hari.

Since the 1990s, business corruption is a topic that has been discussed widely. Its emergence in modern times as an important issue can be traced to the 1970s and the US Watergate scandal. Whilst we had a raft of legislation during the 1990s from regional and international law-making institutions such as the OECD, the African Union and the United Nations, business corruption remains a major issue of concern due to difficulties surrounding the enforcement of anti-corruption laws. Against this background, this chapter considers whether self-regulation in the form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a better tool to tackle business corruption. Or is it, lacking enforceability, a creature without teeth, and therefore incapable of bringing about a sea change in business attitude towards business corruption? Should we instead focus more on ethics and integrity to find a feasible solution to tackle corruption in the business sector? This chapter argues that the anti-corruption narrative needs to move beyond regulation and self-regulation to bring about meaningful change in tackling business corruption.

The OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions was adopted in 1997. During the last ten years the OECD has been extremely busy monitoring the implementation of this Convention in contracting states. During this process a number of issues have emerged. This article examines some of these: (1) the role and impact of the functional equivalence approach, (2) the effect of gaps and flexibility surrounding international business transactions and corporate liability, and (3) Article 5 and the defence of necessity available to a State under customary international law in the context of the UK decision to end the BAE investigations.

Since the 1990s a number of anti-corruption conventions have been adopted due to pressure from international financial institutions, donor countries and governments of major industrialised nations. One of these conventions is the Anti-Corruption Protocol adopted by the Southern African Development Community. This article examines this Convention against the backdrop of the principal-agent-client (PAC) model which influences much of the current anti-corruption measures ranging from legal and civil service reform through to privatisation of the public sector. In focusing on the efforts to fight and prevent corruption through legal and public sector reform this paper highlights the limitations of externally imposed solutions largely driven by donors. Using Tanzania, a country that has seen extensive technical input from donor agencies in reforming the law and bureaucratic structures, as an illustration, this article argues that the limited success of such donor driven anti-corruption strategies is attributable to a number of reasons ranging from reform policies of donors and paternalistic attitudes to political shifts and antipathy towards external demands for reforms that are fuelled by the colonial past. This paper recommends that for a recipient country to take ownership of the anti-corruption strategies it is important to tailor the PAC model to the cultural, social and political context of the recipient country so that the solutions are seen as an indigenous initiative thus enabling sustainable change in attitudes and behaviour.