QoG lunch seminar with Elin Bjarnegård

Abstract:

Why do institutional efforts to combat sexual corruption so often end up focusing on vulnerable individuals rather than on powerful institutions? This paper addresses this question by examining institutional practices aimed at addressing sexual corruption, understood as the abuse of entrusted power for sexual purposes. We argue that studying sexual corruption offers a fruitful entry point for a broader analysis of how power operates through institutional practices. A feminist institutionalist framework helps explain why anti–sexual corruption measures frequently take “the easy way out,” targeting vulnerable individuals rather than confronting the institutionalized power structures that sustain inequality.

We develop the Feminist Institutionalist Accountability Compass. Drawing on feminist institutionalism, we extend existing approaches to accountability that distinguish between backward- and forward-looking accountability by bringing power relations into the analysis through upward- and downward-looking dimensions of accountability and by emphasizing that accountability goes beyond individual actors to the institutions in which power is embedded.

Applying the compass to institutional efforts to combat sexual corruption in adult education in Tanzania, we demonstrate how certain norms and practices remain unquestioned and how silences are produced and maintained within institutions. We analyze how informal institutions guided by a logic of paternalism shape practices aimed at combating sexual corruption. We demonstrate how paternalistic understandings of empowerment reinforce existing hierarchies by shifting the burden of change onto the vulnerable, while leaving those in positions of power and the institutional status quo largely untouched. The study contributes to debates on anti-corruption and gender by showing how well-intentioned interventions can obscure rather than challenge the exercise of entrusted power.