Combatting grand corruption alongside state-building: the role of the South Sudan Anti-Corruption Commission and the Episcopal Church of South Sudan in defence of the common good

This thesis investigates experiential grand corruption, involving different actors, and institutions in the interim and post-independent South Sudan. The grand corruption phenomenon is critical as South Sudan also undergoes state building, especially after separating from Sudan in 2011. I examine two institutions that, in theory, are tasked to hold the government to account: the South Sudan Anti-Corruption Commission (SSACC), a state actor, and the Episcopal Church of South Sudan (ECSS), a non-state actor. I approached the study phenomenologically, using qualitative methods to analyse and interpret data.

When the SPLM/A transformed from a rebel movement into a government, first autonomous and later an independent state, South Sudan confronted levels of corruption that are detrimental to the common good and building an ideal-type state. Mutations of grand corruption showed a problematic increase in contest between moulding the government infrastructure around elites' private interests, against building and strengthening state institutions for the common good of citizens.

The thesis demonstrates that oversight institutions are constrained and hampered in their efforts to combat grand corruption for various reasons ranging from institutional foot-dragging to active menaces and threats by elites who chose to cross moral boundaries for private interests. The thesis shows that ECSS, collectively and individually, could —and are expected to— provide a counterweight to check the government. Albeit this role has gradually diminished post-independence, partly due to compromises to its moral standing, because of corruption itself and power struggle.

SSACC's effectiveness faced obstructions by top elites who used power to create procedural conveniences to limit capacities to combat grand corruption, for instance, through legislation. Consequently, this thesis argues that combating grand corruption requires an additional approach, the moral and ethical layer, a role churches could and ought to fulfil. This moral (integrity) layer contributes to the literature on (grand) corruption, which in the South Sudan context, is a role played by the ECSS, calling out elites and confronting their private interests to defend the common good.