R4D Tackling Corruption

Understanding success and failure of anti-corruption initiatives

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 06:14 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Heeks, R.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Heeks, R. Understanding success and failure of anti-corruption initiatives. U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, CMI, Bergen, Norway (2011) 4 pp. [U4 Brief, March 2011: 2]

Summary: Most anti-corruption initiatives fail. This Brief sets out to understand why that is, and what might be done about it. Anti-corruption initiatives fail because of over-large “design-reality gaps”; that is, too great a mismatch between the expectations built into their design as compared to on-the-ground realities in the context of their deployment. Successfully implemented initiatives find ways to minimise or close these gaps. Unsuccessful initiatives do not. Effective design and implementation processes enable gap closure and improve the likelihood of success. But, beyond enablers, it is the politics of the situation that determine the drivers to anti-corruption success.

Religions, ethics and attitudes towards corruption: a study of perspectives in India. Research Summary.

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:49 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Vinod Pavarala; Kanchan Malik

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Research Summary WP 53, Religions and Development Research Programme, University of Birmingham, UK, 2 pp.

Summary:

This Summary is based on Working Paper No. 53.

The study assembles a picture of people's religious beliefs, values, perceptions of corruption, and notions of tradition and modernity, based on interviews in several locations across India.

The role of religion in changing social attitudes towards corruption in India. Policy Brief 11.

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:26 GMT

Document Type: Briefing

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Policy Brief No. 9, Religions and Development Research Programme, University of Birmingham, UK, 2 pp.

Summary: This Brief assembles a picture of people's religious beliefs, values, perceptions of corruption and notions of tradition and modernity, based on interviews in several locations in India.

Evidence on the economic growth impacts of corruption in low-income countries and beyond: a systematic review.

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 04:11 GMT

Document Type: Key Document
Creator: Ugur, M.; Dasgupta, N.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, ISBN: 978-1-907345-21-0, 134 pp.

Summary:

Corruption is a symptom and an outcome of institutional weakness, with potentially adverse effects on a country’s economic performance. In the last two decades, a wide range of scholars, policy makers and practitioners have expressed concerns that corruption has gone hand-in-hand with extensive liberalisation reforms and led to poor economic outcomes, including slow growth and high levels of growth volatility. This systematic review aims to provide comparable, reliable and verifiable estimates of the effect of corruption on economic growth by controlling for study heterogeneity in terms of growth measures, data sources and country groupings.

Despite a residual risk of within-study dependence, the statistical significance of the estimated effect sizes suggests that there is a prima facie case for anti-corruption policy interventions in both low-income and mixed countries. However, economic gains from reducing corruption in low-income countries can be increased if anti-corruption interventions are combined with a wider set of policies aimed at improving institutional quality and providing correct incentives for investment in human capital. This systematic review also indicates that levels of corruption in LICs may be higher than in non-LICs, but the latter stand to gain more from reducing the incidence of corruption. With respect to implications for future research, we report that innovation is both necessary and feasible with respect to construction of better corruption data, estimation of indirect effects of corruption on growth, and addressing multicollinearity problems in cross-section or panel-data estimations.

The Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Policy. What has worked, what hasn’t, and what we don’t know.

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 04:00 GMT

Document Type: Key Document
Creator: Hanna, R.; Bishop, S.; Nadel, S.; Scheffler, G.; Durlacher, K.

Production Year: 2010

Citation: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK, ISBN: 978-1-907345-14-2, 122 pp.

Summary:

Public sector corruption is a key barrier to effective service delivery and an impediment to economic growth and development. This report provides findings from a systematic review on the effectiveness of micro-level anti-corruption strategies implemented in developing countries. Our exclusion criteria were applied to nearly 6,300 papers and resulted in the inclusion of 14 studies in our synthesis of results. We employed the ‘narrative synthesis approach’ to synthesise data extracted from the included studies. The review focuses on the distinction between interventions that utilised monitoring and incentives mechanisms and interventions that changed the underlying rules of the system. We find convincing evidence that monitoring and incentive-based interventions (both financial and non-financial) have the potential to reduce corruption, at least in the short term. We also find more-limited evidence that decentralisation, a strategy that changes the rules, has the potential to reduce corruption in certain settings. Strategies that change the rules are thought to be more sustainable in the long term, but additional research is needed to better understand the long-term effects of this and monitoring and incentives interventions. The review concludes with several policy recommendations and highlights pertinent areas for further research.

Religions, ethics and attitudes towards corruption: a study of perspectives in India

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:54 GMT

Document Type: Miscellaneous
Creator: Vinod Pavarala and Kanchan Malik

Production Year: 2010

Citation: Vinod Pavarala and Kanchan Malik. Religions, ethics and attitudes towards corruption: a study of perspectives in India. Working Paper No. 53, Religions and Development Research Programme. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (2010) 1-121. ISBN 978-0-7044-2868-3

Summary: This research aims to provide insights into whether and how religious values and organizations may support efforts to fight corruption. It is based on interviews with 120 representatives of a variety of social groups.

Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda: Challenges, Possibilities and Opportunities

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:16 GMT

Document Type: Miscellaneous

Production Year: 2010

Citation: Integrating Human Rights in the Anti-Corruption Agenda: Challenges, Possibilities and Opportunities, 2010. International Council on Human Rights Policy. Geneva, Switzerland. ISBN 2-940259-91-7, 104 pp.

Summary: This report looks at where and how the use of a human rights framework might strengthen national and local anti-corruption programmes and at how key human rights principles can be operationalised in anti-corruption work. Having explained the different approaches that the human rights and anti-corruption disciplines respectively take to regulation and core policy issues, it identifies opportunities for synergy and cross-fertilisation. The report seeks to be a practical guide for public officials and other anti-corruption practitioners. It includes cases and policy recommendations and addresses the obstacles and challenges that are likely to arise when anti-corruption programmes integrate human rights.

Corruption and Human Rights: Making the Connection

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:09 GMT

Document Type: Miscellaneous
Creator: Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona

Production Year: 2009

Citation: Corruption and Human Rights: Making the Connection, 2009. International Council on Human Rights Policy. Versoix, Switzerland. ISBN 2-940259-85-2, 119 pp.

Summary: The aim of this report is to show how links between acts of corruption and violations of rights can be described accurately; and second, to distinguish cases where acts of corruption do imply violations of rights from cases where they do not.

The report begins by discussing the definition of corruption, because the term is often applied loosely, and different definitions and classifications have been used by different organisations in various contexts. The report then elaborates upon the different acts of corruption as they have been defined by the UNCAC. Then, it examines where the human rights framework could add value to the anti-corruption work. Special attention is given to the impact of corruption on the human rights of groups exposed to particular risks, including women and children.

Subsequently, the report examines more closely the ways in which corrupt practices may violate specific human rights and the protection of human rights of anti-corruption advocates. Finally, it explores the possibilities of collaboration between human rights and anti-corruption organisations, and where such collaboration will create opportunities and obstacles. It provides some recommendations

Protocol - The Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Policy. What has worked, what hasn't, and what we don't know.

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 07:44 GMT

Document Type: Miscellaneous
Creator: Hanna, R.; Bishop, S.; Durlacher, K.; Nadel, S.; Scheffler, G.

Production Year: 2010

Citation: Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA, 31 pp.

Summary: This is the protocol for a systematic review which will review the evidence of the effectiveness of different approaches to reducing corruption. It aims to answer the following questions:

What types of policy levers are available to reduce corruption?
Which types of policies have been subjected to rigorous evaluation, and what have these evaluations found?
Which types of policies have not been subjected to rigorous evaluations, and need further testing?
What are the primary criteria that policy-makers should take into account when deciding on a particular policy?

The protocol provides background information and details of the methods to be used.

The Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Policy. What has worked, what hasn’t, and what we don’t know.

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:52 GMT

Project Status: Current
Project Background:

In many developing countries, corruption is a key barrier to effective service delivery. Corruption seeps into all aspects of life, from starting a new business to getting a passport to seeing a doctor. It can take many forms, from bureaucrats asking citizens for bribes to perform basic services, to hospital employees stealing medicines that were meant to be distributed to the poor, to bureaucrats receiving salaries for jobs that they do not accomplish.

Most scholars believe that corruption impedes economic growth and development. Mauro (1995) provides the earliest empirical evidence for this, and other recent studies have confirmed this finding. For example, Dreher and Herzfeld (2005) estimate that an increase of corruption by about one point on the International Country Risk Guide corruption perceptions index reduces GDP growth by 0.13 percentage points and GDP per capita by 425 US$. Furthermore, Transparency International points out that corruption may damage not only a country’s economy, but also its political systems and institutions, civil society, and natural environment. As such, most development agencies have incorporated anti-corruption policies into their core strategies, with the World Bank alone supporting over 600 anti-corruption programs since 1996.

However, eliminating (or even just simply reducing) corruption is a challenging task on many levels. Understanding the extent of corruption and how it affects service delivery is difficult due to the hidden and illegal nature of corruption. Most importantly, no one wants to talk about it or admit that they participate in it, for reasons that range from embarrassment to fear of punishment. This is problematic because if we cannot measure corruption or study its features, then it is difficult to determine how to actually combat it. Second, many individuals personally benefit from corruption, and often the amounts of money involved can be quite substantial. Therefore, it is always possible that the potential financial gains at stake will undermine any positive effect that a given policy intervention might otherwise have on reducing corruption. Finally, what works in one setting may not necessarily apply to another. The success or failure of a given anti-corruption strategy depends in large part on the specific context in which the strategy is implemented.

In recent years, the academic literature has made a fair amount of progress on developing methods for measuring the incidence of corruption, describing the channels through which corruption operates, and testing potential policy interventions to combat it. There is a need to synthesize the key lessons from these studies and discuss how they can translate to policy.

Project Objectives: To conduct a systematic review of the evidence of the effectiveness of different approaches to reducing corruption and provide guidance to both academics and practitioners about the types of programs that need more thorough testing and evaluation.

Intended Outputs: Outputs will consist of a protocol and a published review.