Gender and Corruption: Bureaucratic Integrity and Governance in the Global South

Research on corruption has traditionally focused on principal–agent models, collective action dilemmas, and institutional design. While these frameworks have generated important insights, they often overlook how bureaucratic hierarchies, informal networks, and political patronage systems are deeply gendered. In many contexts, women’s entry into public administration and oversight institutions has coincided with reforms aimed at transparency and accountability, yet the causal mechanisms linking gender and integrity remain contested.Existing studies alternately argue that women are less prone to corrupt behavior, that institutional context conditions outcomes, or that gender representation alone is insufficient to alter entrenched systems of rent-seeking. Meanwhile, gender mainstreaming initiatives within anti-corruption programs have proliferated without systematic evaluation of their effectiveness. This Research Topic responds to these gaps by fostering comparative, methodologically diverse scholarship that examines how gender interacts with state capacity, institutional reform, and bureaucratic governance across diverse political and developmental settings.Corruption remains one of the most persistent obstacles to democratic consolidation, effective public administration, and inclusive development across the Global South. At the same time, expanding evidence suggests that gendered institutional dynamics shape how corruption is produced, tolerated, and contested within bureaucratic systems. Yet scholarship often treats gender as either a descriptive variable (e.g., representation of women) or as a normative add-on to anti-corruption reforms, rather than as a structural mechanism influencing institutional integrity.This Research Topic seeks to reposition gender at the center of governance analysis. It aims to examine how gendered power structures influence bureaucratic behavior, oversight capacity, policy implementation, and public trust. We invite theoretical and empirical contributions that conceptualize gender as a factor shaping institutional incentives, accountability arrangements, and reform trajectories. By integrating perspectives from political economy, public administration, and feminist institutionalism, this collection seeks to advance analytically rigorous and policy-relevant debates on corruption and governance reform in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.This Research Topic welcomes theoretically grounded and empirically rigorous contributions that examine the intersection of gender, corruption, and bureaucratic governance in the Global South. We are particularly interested in manuscripts that address: 1. gendered mechanisms shaping institutional integrity and accountability. 2. women’s participation and leadership in public administration, regulatory agencies, and oversight institutions,3. the effectiveness and limits of gender mainstreaming in anti-corruption reforms,4. informal institutions, patronage networks, and gendered power hierarchies5. subnational governance and comparative integrity systems,6. public trust, representation, and democratic resilience.We invite Original Research articles, Comparative Case Studies, Policy and Practice Reviews, Theoretical Contributions, and Methodological Innovations. Interdisciplinary approaches drawing from political science, public administration, political economy, development studies, and gender studies are especially encouraged. Both qualitative and quantitative designs—including mixed methods—are welcome, provided they offer clear analytical contributions to debates on governance and institutional reform. Topic editors: Heidi Jane M. Smith, Brenda Coutiño, Alejandra Villegas, Nancy García Vázquez Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79248/gender-and-corruption-bureaucratic-integrity-and-governance-in-the-global-south