Thomas Duke Labik Amanquandor

• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik (2026). Epistemic marginalisation in the fight against systemic corruption: Explaining the anti-corruption design-reality gap in South Africa. Public Administration and Development. ISSN 0271-2075. doi: 10.1002/pad.70101. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Anti-corruption reforms grounded in the International Anti-Corruption Consensus (IAC) consistently underperform across the Global South. While existing research attributes this to a design-reality gap—a mismatch between reform assumptions and contextual realities—few studies have empirically mapped the specific discrepancies between local knowledge solicited during participatory processes and the policy designs that ultimately emerge. This article investigates the reality side of this gap using South Africa’s National Anti-Corruption Strategy 2020-2030 (NACS) as a case study. Employing Critical Frame Analysis (CFA) of nine provincial consultation workshops, supplemented by documentary analysis of the NACS and 19 semi-structured interviews, the article compares local anti-corruption perspectives with the measures adopted in the final strategy. The findings reveal a stark tension between paradigmatic rigidity and pragmatic hybridity. The NACS offers a paradigmatic state-modernisation approach grounded in principal-agent theory. Drawing on colloquial evidence and the lived experience of systemic corruption, local actors, by contrast, articulate a pragmatic hybrid perspective that recognises corruption as embedded in collective action dynamics, legal pluralism, and social norms. The article speaks directly to the concern in public administration and development studies research regarding how participatory procedures can simultaneously promise inclusion while producing epistemic marginalisation.

• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik (2026). Critical time points in multi-stage anti-corruption policy formulation: Understanding why a design-reality gap problem occurs. Journal of Economic Criminology. 11. doi: 10.1016/j.jeconc.2026.100209. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article examines why a design-reality gap emerges in national anti-corruption strategies despite policymakers’ adherence to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) best practices intended to mitigate it. Using a theory-building process-tracing approach with a single case study, i.e., South Africa’s National Anti-Corruption Strategy 2020–2030 (NACS), this article uncovers critical time points (CTPs) as a novel causal mechanism that explains the emergence of this gap. CTPs are conceptualised as moments in the multi-stage formulation process when either or both of problem tractability and actors’ certification shifts. The article’s findings suggest that such shifts can reconfigure the learning environment and, consequently, influence which actor’s knowledge is privileged during the formulation process. South Africa’s NACS case indicates that, even when procedural safeguards are adhered to, specific decisions made at CTPs can shift the learning environment from an expert-driven to a hierarchical one. This shift increases the likelihood that knowledge from below about local contextual realities, emerging from the lived experiences of local actors, will be deprioritised in the formulation process, leading to the design-reality gap. CTPs are often overlooked in the policy process literature and policymaking in practice. As an analytical tool, CPTs emphasise the temporal dimension of knowledge utilisation in policy formulation and suggest explanations for why design-reality gaps persist even when procedural safeguards are followed.

• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik (2024). Limitations of the international approach to anti-corruption: a systematic review of South Africa’s compelling case of failing anti-corruption. Crime, law and social change. ISSN 0925-4994. 82, s. 493–516. doi: 10.1007/s10611-024-10152-y. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In the Global South, anti-corruption initiatives continue to fail despite varying commitments to the international anti-corruption agenda. Concurrently, as this study demonstrates, researchers investigating this paradox appear confined within orthodox explanations for failing anti-corruption efforts. Through a systematic review of 58 studies, this paper demonstrates that South Africa’s anti-corruption corpora from 1995 to 2022 fall to this critique. By employing socio-legal theoretical perspectives, the paper elucidates how and why the orthodoxy dominates the corpora and subsequently suggests a more nuanced understanding of the country’s ongoing failure to combat corruption. For example, the paper argues that the intricacies of South Africa’s corruption challenge the perspective that anti-corruption measures fail simply due to widespread rule-breaking. Through the prism of legal pluralism, this paper demonstrates that adherence to rules is indeed prevalent in South Africa, albeit often not aligned with formal state anti-corruption legislation and regulations. Finally, the paper posits innovative approaches to enhance and broaden our comprehension of why anti-corruption efforts fail, especially in the Global South.

Se alle arbeider i NVA

• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik; Lie, Martine S.B. & Barker, Vanessa (2024). Critical perspectives on legal mobilization. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Legal mobilization is generally understood as the mobilization of law—as a resource—by civic actors to pursue equality and justice. Paradoxically, the law’s mobilization can result in the deterioration of equality and justice. In certain instances, this negative outcome is unintended, undesired, unplanned, and unfortunate. In others, the law is mobilized with the intention to suppress critical voices, or prevent justice or equality. Consequently, recent studies argue that the use of law by civic actors to advance social change should be distinguished from the use of law by states and other powerful actors “to subvert the rule of law or to suppress critical voices”, construing the former as legal mobilization and the latter as lawfare. This panel draws on varying underexplored empirical developments from Norway (litigation in the name of “eco justice” to stop licensed wolf hunts in Norway), Ghana (the criminalisation of LGBTQI rights and identities) and Sweden (far rights movements and anti-immigrant legal campaigns), to offer a critical perspective on legal mobilization and discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of separating it from “lawfare”.

• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik (2024). Beyond the orthodoxy: towards new pragmatic paths to combating corruption. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik (2023). Corruption is not always the problem. GhanaWeb. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik (2023). Limitations of the international approach to anti-corruption: a systematic review of South Africa’s compelling case of failing anti-corruption. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik; Svensson, Måns & Mattsson, Andreas (2022). The Role of Social Norms in Reducing Corruption in Education: A Case Study of Schools in Hanoi-Vietnam. Swedish International Center for Local Democracy. ISSN 9789186725532. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This research report presents empirical findings from an ethnographic study of the role of informal social norms in reducing corruption in public and private schools in Hanoi. The study begins by building a theoretical framework that inculcates the significance of local informal social norms in analysing/understanding corruption and designing counteraction strategies, especially at the sub-national or local level. After a two-month ethnographic study in Hanoi, a rich stock of ethnographic data was collected through observations and informal interviews. The informal social norm and practices found in various public and private schools in Hanoi included parents’ payment of teachers for extra classes to ensure better school results for their children, showing gratitude and respect to teachers by providing them with gifts on 5-6 occasions per school year, and parents’ contribution of money towards the provision of equipment in school classrooms. Our findings suggest that within the context of the school system, these informal norms persist as pragmatic responses to the weaknesses in the country’s educational system. Consequently, they are not in themselves dysfunctional or corrupt, and are widely accepted as the "normal things to do". Notwithstanding, some of the parents and teachers also admitted that these informal norms and practices sometimes result in unequal and discriminatory treatment of students whose parents cannot afford to conform to them. Consequently, they sometimes become dysfunctional and/or corrupt practices that hinder the quality of education. Hence, from a collective action perspective, we argue that efforts to reduce the levels of corruption resulting from the dysfunctional aspects of these informal norms and practices must acknowledge them as institutionalised social practices that are part and parcel of everyday life. Therefore, anti-corruption interventions must not focus on eradicating/suppressing these informal social norms entirely, as this might threaten social fabrics. Instead, anti-corruption interventions should actively engage teachers, parents and school administrators in reforming the dysfunctional aspects into functional norms and practices in line with educational quality.

• Svensson, Måns; Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik & Mattsson, Andreas (2022). Multi-Level Perspectives on Anti-Corruption: A Systematic Literature Review. Swedish International Center for Local Democracy. ISSN 9789186725488. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This systematic literature review investigates the extent to which recent anti-corruption literature goes beyond the established paradigms (i.e., principal-agent perspective, macro-level, structural, and legal centralistic approaches) to focus on society’s informal norms, everyday micro-level power relations and non-monetary currencies (e.g. respect, prestige, social status and trust). By reconceptualising the various meanings and morality of informal, non-legal practices and transactions in the frame of the ’multi-level orders of corruption’ perspective, the paper also assesses the extent to which the current canon focuses on the complex articulation and interdependencies between (1) global, transnational anti-corruption laws, initiatives, discourses, and institutions, (2) national/central level initiatives, policies, and laws, and (3) local, micro-level social norms and practices. Based on one-hundred and three systematically gathered peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2015 and 2020, we found that most studies conducted within this period focus on anti-corruption at the national level and mostly employ analytical and quantitative methods. However, the local level received scant attention, and qualitative methods were employed in a few studies. Also, even though a significant number of studies focus on anti-corruption at multiple levels, these are mostly either the global-national level or national-local level. None of the articles gathered for this review studies anti-corruption in a complete multi-level approach that explores the global-national-local level. Lastly, we found that most of the studies across the levels are shaped by the principal-agent perspective and indicate a predominance of the perspective within anti-corruption policy and practice across the world. Consequently, irrespective of the entity of focus (i.e., country or institution), method (quantitative, qualitative, analytical or experimental) or level of analysis (i.e., global, national, or local or multi-level), most of the studies attribute the ineffectiveness of anti-corruption interventions to the inability of ”principals” to be principled, and hence call for increased sanctioning, supervision, monitoring and political commitment towards combatting corruption. Thus, there is the need for more qualitative anti-corruption studies at the local level and alternative theoretical perspectives that go beyond the aforementioned established paradigms.

• Amanquandor, Thomas Duke Labik (2020). Amammerɛ ne Amanneɛ: Towards the indigenisation of the sociology of law concept of norms. Lund University Open Access. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The global coverage of sociology of law (SoL) has remained limited to the Western world, due to the difficult and problematic application of its current theories and concepts in non-Western societies. Thus, the sociology of law norm concept was studied in relation to the culture of Ashanti people of Ghana. This was done to identify and valorise culturally specific issues of their society that are relevant when employing the socio-legal concept. After a 5-week ethnographic study, the Ashanti conceptualisation of norms was explored and contrasted with the sociology of law norm concept, to unearth relevant culturally specific issues. The study found that, a direct lexical translation of the word (norm) from English into the Ashanti-Twi does not exist. However, the Ashanti concepts of Amammerɛ (tradition) and Amanneɛ (custom) showed to be closest to the sociology of law concept. However, contrasting them to the essences of norms developed by Hydén and Svensson, unearthed “the role and expectations of ancestors and gods” as an accidental attribute of these Ashanti concepts, making them specific types of norm, rather than norm itself. Consequently, the new Ashanti-Twi word “saayɔ” was coined to evanesce the accidental attributes of the Ashanti concepts and represent a more accurate translation of Hydén and Svensson’s SoL norm concept. This accidental attribute highlights an important culturally specific issue crucial to the application of this SoL norm concept in Ghana, and also points to the Eurocentrism in Hydén and Svensson’s norm concept. It shows that, what makes Hydén and Svensson’s (2008) conceptualisation Eurocentric, is the fact that, to a large extent, it was developed within the perceptive framework of a utilitarian thinking society where individuals possess scientific mentality and are free from culture, religion, and ideology. That is, the First and “natural” world. In fact, the accidental attributes of the Ashanti amammerɛ and amanneɛ type of norms, was found to exert relatively high levels of fear among people, making them more likely to conform to them, and more difficult for people to accept new contradictory norms. Therefore, it is very important for socio-legal researchers who employ this SoL norm concept in the Ashanti-Akan society, to be wary of this culturally specific attribute which characterizes the Ashanti specific type of norms. It is only when the user of the SoL norm concept disregards this, that the application of the concept will be problematic.

Se alle arbeider i NVA