What do zombies, halitosis and dams have in common?

 
Not much, you might think. But this unlikely trinity cropped up at an event in London, United Kingdom, earlier this week to illustrate the different characteristics of corruption.
 
The 29 June event, Corruption and development, brought together researchers, policymakers and anticorruption campaigners to discuss how global development organisations can tackle corruption more effectively.

Listening to the different speakers reflect on the challenges of analysing, measuring and fighting corruption, I was struck by the note of exasperation that ran through their conversations. Speakers turned to fairly off-the-wall analogies to illustrate their points — a symptom perhaps of how testing it is to decode and analyse corruption.

Let's unpick some of these analogies. Heather Marquette, director of the Developmental Leadership Program at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, used the image of zombies to reflect on the imperfect science of anticorruption strategies. Just as her young son imagined he could destroy zombies with a "nuclear blaster gun", she said, so donors and development agencies tend to pin their anticorruption hopes on single interventions.