The growth of global corporations is synonymous with the spread of market capitalism. Market capitalism looks to regulated market economies and stable growth to expand and this in turn assumes states committed to economic liberalisation and the reduction in the barriers to trade. Such preconditions are assumed achievable through the promotion of democratisation—the liberal democratic model of government, now the favoured developmental template of multilateral and bilateral donor agencies. One major challenge to this approach is corruption at state and local level—and a major indicator of its acceptance is addressing corruption. As agencies who espouse a strong ethical stance internationally, corruption has appeared to be a highly visible reform issue for them during the 1990s. In spite of—or because of—such attention, levels of corruption appear to continue to rise and become more entrenched, while donor commitment may be under pressure to adapt, both as a possible consequence of the continued promotion of democratisation. This will force them to face the question of whether corruption may be an integral component of the model and whether they either confront the risks associated with it, or start to ignore corruption in favour of some wider agenda objectives that have less to do with international ethics and more to do with international realities of market capitalism.