Iranian Journal of Public Policy

Iranian Journal of Public Policy

A Realistic Perspective on Anti-Corruption Policies

Document Type : Research Article

Author
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Arak University, Arak, Iran
10.22059/jppolicy.2026.109042
Abstract
Anti-corruption policies are based on positivist and interpretive epistemological assumptions. In the positivist paradigm, two theoretical approaches, good governance and political economy, and in the interpretive paradigm, two approaches, collective action theory and the plan-reality gap, are proposed in the context of examining the causes of the failure of anti-corruption policies. These approaches are not without their problems in terms of paradigmatic components. In general, the positivist and interpretive paradigms, with their approaches, do not have a comprehensive and sufficient view of the intervention processes, program mechanisms, context, neutralizing mechanisms, and the discussion of causality. For this reason, its alternative, the realist perspective, is introduced. The realist paradigm offers analytical combinations in the philosophical epistemological, social ontological, and applied methodological fields that are inherently integrative. The realist approach believes that the success or failure of anti-corruption policies can be examined by combining the intervention-context-program-mechanism-outcome program theory. In this way, the theory of the program, its causal mechanism, and the context in which a policy is supposed to be successful are identified.
Keywords

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