In this episode, we spoke with Jessica Noll, who is a Ph.D. candidate at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany. From October 2017 to May 2018, she was a visiting research fellow at the DC think tank the Project on Middle East Democracy and in February 2019 published a research study titled Fighting Corruption or Protecting the Regime? Her study examined the history of anti-corruption drives and institutions in Egypt. In our talk, Jessica explains how corruption takes root in societies and the underlying motivations of some regimes when launching anti-corruption campaigns or establishing anti-corruption bodies.