This paper sets out lessons from a mixed-methods study that identified and explored ‘positive outlier’ cases of bribery reduction in challenging governance environments. It discusses the two cases the research examined in depth:

• a 50 percent reduction in bribery in Uganda’s health sector while in other sectors bribery rates increased (2010-2015);
• an almost 15 percent reduction in police-related bribery in South Africa’s Limpopo province while in other provinces it reduced by less than four percent (2011-2015).

The findings suggest the importance of disrupting corruption patterns and of unintended consequences for anti-corruption policy and practice.