Selective Application and Global Financial Inequality in the Politicization of Anti-Money Laundering Enforcement: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The article presents a bibliometric review of scholarly research on selective enforcement and politicization of anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement with a focus on how financial inequality worldwide influences enforcement patterns and research priorities in academe. With Scopus and Web of Science datasets for the period 2010–2025, and bibliometric tools such as co-citation analysis, co-word mapping, and temporal trend analysis, intellectual clusters, leading authors, and pioneering research themes are identified in this research. The conclusions highlight a growing academic focus from 2020 onwards on the political economy of AML, the spatially uneven distribution of AML scholarship, and persistent gaps in knowledge with regard to the nexus between enforcement selectivity and global financial inequality. The discussion shows that AML enforcement, while theoretically harmonised across the world, is politicised and disproportionately loads low- and middle-income countries. The paper sets out a future research agenda that integrates bibliometric information with political economy insight to frame equal and risk-based AML regulation.