Global Integrity Commons

What Kenyan Ministers are Driving Now

2009-07-09T15:03:00.015-04:00

With public pressure on to cut down on generous car allowances, Ministers in Kenya have been debating strategies to cut back... without compromising luxury.

The 2009 budget sets aside 70 million shillings (US$ 914,434) for vehicle spending based on a long-standing practice of providing a Mercedes-Benz to go along with the title of minister. Anticipating resistance from ministers, Kenyan Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta suggested last month that ministers’ automotive choices be limited to those vehicles with engine capacities of under 1800ccs.

What car did he have in mind? Kenyan newspaper The Daily Nation assumes “a 1796cc Mercedes Benz E- Class. The engine is small, but the luxury (not to mention the price tag) is exactly how ministers like it: Big.”

This week, conscious of the public’s eye on extravagant government spending, President Kibaki suspended a State House official, J.K. Mutua, for authorizing the purchase of a new presidential fleet of Mercedes limos without his personal approval. This publicity-stunt sends a message of self-regulation without the substance to back it.

The Daily Nation reports that this type of spending does not need presidential approval. By law, authorization must come from the comptroller, not the president. The problem is that the comptroller's position, which is subject to presidential appointment and approval, has been vacant since 2008, leaving little monitoring of government spending for executive or legislative goodies.

The President’s quick suspension of Mutua served as a very public action, acknowledging Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta’s view that “to [Kenyans], a Mercedes is a Mercedes and it is expensive ... as a government, that is not the kind of image we want to pass on to Kenyans” (as quoted by the Daily Nation). To this end, Kenyatta has been driving a VW Passat since his June directive to promote government officials as more populist and in-touch with Kenyan realities.

The government’s image may be pieced together for now, but the larger weakness remains. A finance official’s suspension is not an acceptable solution for the lack of a national comptroller: Mutua serves as a momentary scapegoat while the spending budget for government officials continues to go largely unmonitored.

-- Norah Mallaney

-- Mercedes-Benz E-class image by ChalieJ/Flickr (cc by/nc/sa)

Governance Metrics: Why “Fictitious” Numbers Can Be Useful

2009-07-09T11:25:00.005-04:00

What do Stalinist-era accounting practices in Hungary, financial reports, and post-WWII US property tax assessments have in common with measuring governance/corruption? More than we think, if we take the argument advanced by a former professor of mine Martha Lampland seriously.

In a working paper (PDF) published recently, Lampland (a historical anthropologist) suggests that numbers are accorded many meanings that vary greatly depending on how they are used in different science and policy domains.

The full paper is here:
"False Numbers as Formalizing Practices" by Martha Lampland

In particular, she distinguishes between provisional numbers and false numbers. Provisional numbers are just that: temporary metrics that can be useful tools for strategizing and planning. They serve as heuristic techniques and important benchmarks, even though they may appear to be stable entities in particular situations. False numbers subordinate relative accuracy to the accomplishment of other tasks and objectives. Making this analytic distinction allows her to show that numbers and quantitative measurement tools do not always have to be scientifically precise in order for them to be effective and practical.

Drawing on the work of other academicians, Lampland presents several vivid historical and contemporary examples to substantiate her claim about provisional numbers. The usage of quarterly financial reports, for instance, frequently relies on temporary metrics to make forecasts of potential trends in the market.

Another setting for the efficacious role of temporary numbers is the U.S. tax code. Isaac Martin has shown recently that property tax assessments were calibrated not with market prices but rather with local jurisdictions as well as voting and political alliances. The decoupling of market real estate values and taxation rates therefore served the interests of county tax authorities and tax payers. The tax revolts of the early 1970s were rebelling against the court-ordered movement to standardize tax rates.

Lampland’s own study of agrarian work science in prewar capitalist and socialist Hungary lends rich empirical support to her notion of false numbers. She shows how party officials during the Stalinist era strived to modernize the economy and society by increasing labor productivity, but were hampered by farmers’ indifference to formal/written bookkeeping and accounting procedures that were conceived by the socialist bureaucracy to document labor activities.

To remedy this deficiency, the Stalinist state embarked on a systematic campaign to teach bookkeeping in agricultural communities, held sporadic labor competitions, and thrust reluctant industrial workers upon equally reluctant cooperative farmers so that the former could review and correct the accounting practices of the “benighted” villager. In all of this, the party apparatus tolerated numerical discrepancies in written records early on because they were useful benchmarks of progress, learning, and the accumulation of knowledge, rather than misleading signs that were “bad” and “wrong.” (Over time, however, the level of tolerance diminished as the state increasingly punished those implicated in accounting misrepresentation.)

I recommend reading this piece, then, because it prods those of us in the governance and corruption indices business to take a step back and reflect more critically on how people actually construct and make use of numbers in context. Lampland’s material sheds light on why and how numerical indicators are not always fixed, stable signs that make claims to verisimilitude and definitive status. Rather, quantifiable measures can in certain situations be estimates that -- precisely because of their provisional and malleable character -- provide useful entry points to making more informed and discrete judgments, strategizing, and policy making.

Misreading provisional numbers obscures the social contexts in which they can be:

powerful tools and meaningful signs, despite their ephemeral character. They constitute forecasting benchmarks for investing in financial markets. They have formed the basis of tax schedules, while strengthening the ability of government officials to respond promptly to the demands of constituents. Provisional numbers enable scientists to think creatively about a problem: model its possible contours, consider various configurations, prompt new answers. In each instance, crucial tasks are achieved; significant investment in form has occurred. And in each instance, the actions devoted to formalizing practices are necessarily recursive, that is, they must be repeated over and over again to achieve the task at hand [quoting Lampland].

Take the Integrity Scorecard of our Global Integrity Report, for instance, as viewed from the perspective of a user. The Report assesses the existence and effectiveness of public integrity laws, institutions, and accountability mechanisms as well as citizen access to such mechanisms -- the ingredients that make up the foundation of a country’s good governance and anti-corruption architecture -- based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches.

The lead researcher assigns aggregate numerical scores to six major categories and twenty-three sub-categories that are generated from more than 300 indicators. In turn, these scores are used to produce an overall country score. (For more details on our methodology, see our Methodology White Paper.) These numbers can provide the user with a snapshot of how a particular agency or legal regulation functions and performs in a particular country.

But the numbers alone are likely to be more limited in their utility if, say, the user wants detailed information to identify specific areas of reform for planning purposes. Since the Integrity Scorecard complements quantitative figures with qualitative narratives, users are provided with a broader contextual analysis that can enable such data to be more “actionable.” The numerical scores found in the Global Integrity Report -- or other indices similar to it -- can thus be viewed as provisional numbers (in Lampland’s sense) if they are used as an entry point or benchmark for further analysis and planning.

The bigger point I wish to make is that we shouldn’t fetishize and get hung up on numbers per se when designing or using measurement instruments. This in no way implies that we should sacrifice rigor and accuracy when crafting and interpreting numbers. It is, however, a reminder that “the science of measuring corruption is more an art form than a precisely defined empirical process” (see our book A Users’ Guide to Measuring Corruption).

-- Raymond June

600 Words on Governance but No Mention of Policy, People or Politics

2009-06-30T13:01:00.000-04:00

If a country score on a Washington analyst's spreadsheet nudges from -0.79 to -0.75, should anyone care? Maybe not. In fact, here's a case where the appearance of insight provided by functionally hollow numbers is filling up a space that could be used to discuss actual governance issues.

Call it governance theater. It's as staged as a kabuki dance, and even more predictable: Player one is the respected international institution. Player two is the time-pressed journalist, who wants to write about corruption, but preferably without having to risk her neck or make a lot of phone calls.

Player one, the researchers, are using methods so dense and seemingly mysterious that it's hard to find a journalist who can even vaguely describe the source data or methods used to generate the results. Player two is just happy it all sounds official, and really doesn't want to know much more than that about the methodology.

The real example here is the brand new 2008 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), which we discussed here. The WGI are the most widely used source of governance data. In the role of Player Two in this production is GMA News, a Filipino news outlet.

In a story published yesterday, a GMA reporter dissects the WGI results for the Philippines at length -- some 600 words. The inevitable comparisons are there: wow, the Philippines scored the same as [insert really poor country]. Like this:

This year's ranking was a marginal improvement from negative 0.79 in 2007.The same score was received by the Union of the Comoros, which is located off the eastern coast of Africa on the northern end of the Mozambique Channel. About half of its 798,000 population live on less than $1.25 a day.

And then:

The Philippines’ neighbors fared better in their anti-corruption measures with Thailand, -0.38; Malaysia, 0.14; Indonesia, -0.64, and Singapore, 2.34. Only Vietnam got a worse score than the Philippines at -0.76.

I get the news hook here -- I'm not above a little of that on this very blog. But the kicker isn't what's in the story: it's what's left out. Take a look at the story again.

Notice anything missing? How about anti-corruption policy? Any anti-corruption policy? Or a politician involved in corruption. Or an anti-corruption reform platform. Or political movements working on the issue. Or the sense at any point that the Philippines scores were based on something specific, a set of observations that may or may not inform decisions about anti-corruption policy.

The WGI press release admittedly offers little in the way of specifics to our intrepid and time-pressed reporter:

"When governance is improved by one standard deviation, infant mortality declines by two-thirds and incomes rise about three-fold in the long run."

Not exactly in-the-weeds stuff for Filipino readers. There's no sense in the story of what, if anything, would improve those scores in the Philippines, or even why they are the way they are.

There's got to be a better way...

I'm reluctant to put the blame for this mess on the WGI authors: we get some crazy stuff written about our work too, and there's nothing we can do about it.

But the data itself, in the way it’s presented as more science and less an imperfect art, contributes to this. We need more than numbers, or we're going to keep getting these vapid, meaningless stories. Sure, that -0.75 country score comes from somewhere, and all the supporting documentation and spreadsheets are on file if you dig deep enough. But in practice, it's so abstract that few people outside of Western aid agencies and think tanks know where it comes from, much less what it implies for specific policy choices.

This makes me crazy. Because it's a lost opportunity to actually educate people about their options and empower them to plot a way forward.

Global Integrity has tried to lay out a different way -- a way that links policy choices and ongoing debates directly to the information being produced. For the theory of this, you can read A Users' Guide to Measuring Corruption. The issues of actionability and abstraction are the core themes of the book.

In practice, we've got our Global Integrity Report, and our new Local Integrity Initiatives. They aren't perfect by any means, but we're trying -- every source datapoint is right there on the website, with narrative and references and dissenting opinions. And we publish journalistic, no-numbers qualitative reporting alongside all of that data on the very same issues. The work itself is a shopping list for potential points of intervention. And sometimes, we get really great insights from reporters using that data.

But we still put out an index, with a top to bottom ranking, and it drives an awful lot of press for us. It's the same with the Corruption Perceptions Index for Transparency International: it's a devastatingly effective PR tool (note the index-release traffic spikes). But I'm starting to think I just can't do it anymore. I can't keep pretending these country rankings are worth talking about.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

Prime Minister of Timor-Leste Accused of Corruption

2009-06-30T11:20:00.009-04:00

Last week, Radio Australia broke the news that Xanana Gusmão, the Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, approved a multi-million dollar government contract to a company in which the PM’s daughter is a shareholder. This major case of alleged nepotism is catching all the headlines, but Radio Australia reporters uncovered other cases of alleged corruption and favoritism among Timor-Leste’s political elite.

Radio Australia reports that in 2008, Gusmão approved provided US$3.5 million in government funding to Prima Foods. His daughter’s investment in the company appears to put Gusmão in direct violation of conflict of interest regulations. Joao Goncalves, the Minister of Economic Development, was also targeted by Radio Australia for three contracts given to companies in which his wife is a part-owner. Café Pacific, a Pacific-focused free media blog, highlights the disappointment this brings in East Timor where Gusmão is a national liberation hero and a champion of many of the nation’s recent corruption reforms.

In 2007, the Global Integrity Report: Timor-Leste showed procurement regulations as one of the few strong spots in the nation’s anti-corruption framework. While the scorecard cites concern with the infrequency of investigations and penalties, there is clearly a robust anti-corruption system in place. Gusmão and other recent national procurement scandals highlight the credibility of this regulatory system, suggesting that when investigations do occur, conflict of interest laws can be employed to prosecute fraudulent acts. More fundamentally, in many countries handing a prime government contact to a family member is perfectly legal. Not here.

Whether or not these regulations will be used against Gusmão and other violators remains unknown.

It seems that those in power are sticking together and remaining largely silent. Gusmão has not spoken publicly but today, the President of Timor-Leste, Jose Ramos Horta released a statement in full support of the PM: "Just because someone became president, became prime minister, became a minister, does not mean his family all have to go into unemployment, all have to sell their business and stop."

Clearly, Ramos-Horta is missing the point. Conflict of interest safeguards are not meant to financially cripple the family members of government officials; but they are expected to eliminate any unfair advantages that come with an association with those in power and safeguard public trust in the process.

If the political will exists, Gusmão might be made an example of by his own anti-corruption agenda, serving as the ultimate model for anti-corruption reform.

-- Norah Mallaney

Fresh Data: Worldwide Governance Indicators

2009-06-29T18:10:00.009-04:00

The latest round of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) were released today under the auspices of... we’re not entirely sure. Ownership issues aside, the WGI remain the most widely used governance data in the world.

Previously an effort of the World Bank Institute under Dani Kaufman’s leadership, “The WGI are [now] produced by: Daniel Kaufmann, Brookings Institution, Aart Kraay, World Bank Development Economics Research Group, [and] Massimo Mastruzzi, World Bank Institute.” Except that, “The WGI do not reflect the official views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. The WGI are not used by the World Bank Group to allocate resources.”

A primary feature of the WGI is their near global coverage, thanks to the use of dozens of disparate surveys and expert assessments as component data, including Global Integrity data. We've discussed the use and potential misuse of the WGI at some length in our book, A Users' Guide to Measuring Corruption.

And once again, the Worldwide Governance Indicators can be found here.

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank the WGI authors (especially Aart and Massimo) for making two adjustments to the use of Global Integrity data in the WGI at our request. To quote their documentation:

One…

“At the request of Global Integrity, we have dropped the 2003 round [note: we call this our “2004 data”] of the Global Integrity Index from our indicators for 2003, 2004, and 2005, as there were changes in Global Integrity’s methodology between the first and subsequent rounds of this exercise, making the first round not fully comparable with subsequent rounds.”

This dovetails with the warnings we have made explicit for the past two years about compatibility issues between our 2004 data and newer data.

Two…

“Note that in 2007 & 2008 we have carried forward [Global Integrity] scores for those countries that were covered in previous years but not in the current year.”

We had asked that the authors document their practice of “flatlining” data (my term, not theirs) for years in which data sources (such as Global Integrity) did not carry out fieldwork but for which the WGI report the existence of data. Without disclosure of this, we felt the practice was easily misinterpreted to mean the authors had new source material when none existed.

Not sure whether you should care about these changes? Check out our A Users’ Guide to Measuring Corruption to beef up your methodological know-how.

-- Nathaniel Heller

Global Integrity Report: 2009 - Country List

2009-06-29T14:00:00.006-04:00

The fieldwork for the Global Integrity Report: 2009 is underway, and we're happy to announce our target countries for the upcoming year. The big news this year is that we are splitting our 70 target countries into two groups, which we will alternate on even and odd years in a two-year rotation.

You can see the country coverage in the 2004 pilot and 2006-2008 reports on the Global Integrity Report site. As always suggestions and criticism from our readers are welcome.

Our new core 70 countries rotating on a biennial cycle

The Global Integrity Report: 2009 will be the first in a series of more standardized rounds of future national-level fieldwork. Starting this year, we will begin to cover a core set of 70 countries on a biennial basis, covering half the first year and the other half the next year. This means that the approximately 35 countries chosen for 2009 will be covered again in the Global Integrity Report: 2011, 2013 and so on. The even years (2010, 2012, etc) will have the same pattern of coverage with a separate list of 35. In addition to these 70 countries, we expect that each year we will also include 5-10 countries of interest in addition to the core rotating cluster.

Over the past three annual cycles, we have observed that most countries' data stay relatively constant over a 12-month period. This reflects the reality that anti-corruption reforms can take decades before fully taking root. By allowing for a full year off between assessments, we expect that the Global Integrity Report will more usefully capture each country's progress. These somewhat smaller biennial samples will also allow us to shift resources towards scaling up our Local Integrity Initiative efforts in parallel to ongoing Global Integrity Report fieldwork.

Countries to be covered in 2009 include:

Algeria
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Bosnia
Brazil
China
Colombia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
India
Indonesia
Jordan
Kenya
Kosovo
Lebanon
Liberia
Macedonia
Malawi
Mexico
Mongolia
Nepal
Nicaragua
Norway
Rwanda
Serbia
Sierra Leone
South Korea
Tajikistan
Trinidad
Uganda
Ukraine
United States
Venezuela
Vietnam
Zimbabwe

How did we choose these 36 countries?

One extremely important criterion in our country selection process is the strength and availability of our in-country teams: Global Integrity's international network of local anti-corruption experts. The Global Integrity Report is created by our in-country experts who conduct interviews, compile data, write journalistic stories, and review their respective country assessments prior to publication. These 36 countries represent places where we have strong teams that are available to work with us in 2009.

In addition, beginning in 2009 we wanted to attempt to more systematically cover a "global" sample of countries each year. As such, we looked at the regional diversity of countries, population figures, and national income levels. It would be impossible for us to precisely replicate the worldwide distribution of those criteria in our small sample. However, as part of our new two-year biannual sample of 70 countries, we have attempted to include countries that roughly match global income, geographic, and population distributions, including the top fifteen most populated nations in the world.

Countries to be covered in 2010 include:

Albania
Angola
Argentina
Bangladesh
Bolivia
Bulgaria
Cameroon
Canada
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
Ethiopia
Guatemala
Hungary
Italy
Japan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Malaysia
Moldova
Morocco
Nigeria
Pakistan
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Romania
Russia
Somalia
South Africa
Tanzania
Thailand
Turkey
West Bank and Gaza
Yemen

-- Nathaniel Heller and Global Integrity

Introducing Indaba: RFP for New Research Technology

2009-06-26T14:04:00.003-04:00

Global Integrity is seeking bids for the design and build of Indaba, a new browser-based research platform. Indaba will be the Global Integrity's third generation of research software allowing rapid, flexible collaboration on research and reporting.

A bit about Global Integrity and technology...

Global Integrity works in 100+ countries via hundreds of contributors supported by a small core staff. We're able to do this because we're strategic: we tap into and support existing local anti-corruption networks, rather than replicating them.

Our diverse contributors need a way to collaborate. For this, we use a very cool technology platform that allows researchers and reporters to submit, share, edit and critique content from any Internet café worldwide. These days this approach is popular: it's called "cloud computing" or "software as a service" or "crowdsourcing." When we started doing this in 2001, we didn't have a name for it -- we just thought it might work.

It works. We have people in Sudan, Iraq, Cambodia working together online, building sophisticated databases via a web browser. It works pretty well: in the last three years, we've published roughly three million words of original research. That's the wordcount equivalent of the entire Harry Potter series, every six months.

About the Indaba RFP...

We've outgrown our existing system, as Global Integrity looks beyond national anti-corruption efforts to dig into local and sector issues. Increasingly, partner groups are looking to us not just for methodology and subject matter knowledge, but for our technology. We need a platform that can adapt instantly to these new demands.

So, we're starting from scratch. And we're looking for help.

Do you know a quality web/database shop that can help us? If so, please send them to this RFP, which includes much more detail on our vision for Indaba. Thanks as always for your suggestions and support.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

USA: New Data on Statehouse Financial Disclosures

2009-06-25T18:52:00.007-04:00

The Center for Public Integrity updates its decade long series on US statehouse legislative disclosures. The data is published in a new report States of Disclosure. Twenty of fifty states get failing grades for their financial disclosures, and three US states -- Idaho, Michigan, Vermont -- require no financial disclosures whatsoever.

They've got a nice map of the results.

This data is particularly striking when you contrast to our national level data on the subject in the Global Integrity Report. For instance, among the 50 diverse countries we studied last year, the only countries with similarly lax no-disclosure-required rules are Angola, Cambodia, China, Ethiopia and Somalia. Seeing a pattern here?

Vermont: grade-A maple syrup, and Somalia-grade financial disclosures.

There's lots more data in the Center's report that will be game-changing useful for local advocates fighting for more detailed, accurate disclosure forms. But it's also great for snarking at the states that aren't even trying, like Idaho: Angola of the West.

Michigan: where the statehouse financial data are worse than Kazakhstan... just like the roads.

Snark: it's so much easier than constructive solutions! If you'd like to play along, you can download our raw data here. No spreadsheet from CPI, but their results are here. Do let us know if you find anything interesting.

Family heritage...

The Center for Public Integrity's current statehouse report was an early inspiration for the Global Integrity Report scorecards, back in 2001.

I'm pretty sure no one working on the current update was there for that, but the granular, line-by-line analysis in their scorecard was a model for the early Global Integrity pilot work, which was started as a project of the Center for Public Integrity. We've since gone independent, and developed beyond those early pilots, but the family resemblance between the Center's methods and our own are still there. And because the data are unpacked and transparent, quick comparisons across datasets like the ones above are easy and valid (whether it's useful or fair to compare Vermont to Somalia at all is another issue).

I'd also like to point out that the Center website has never looked better. Nice work, folks.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

Indonesia's Rosa Parks: A Defamation Charge Launches a National Outcry

2009-06-24T10:54:00.008-04:00

An Indonesian woman sends an email to a friend complaining of poor medical treatment at a private hospital. After the email leaked, the 32-year-old mother of two is arrested and faces six years in an Indonesian jail for alleged defamation. Her case is sparking a national outcry over corruption and favoritism in judicial outcomes.

As Indonesia prepares for a presidential election on July 8th, the case has become a rally point for frustrations with a judicial system that critics say (including our Global Integrity Report: Indonesia) often favors the rich and connected over the rule of law.

Reuters reported yesterday on the case against Prita Mulyasari, an Indonesian mother who was hospitalized with mumps earlier this year. She was dissatisfied with the service she received at Omni International Hospital, a private institution, and complained in an email to one of her friends. The email leaked onto the internet and Ms. Mulyasari was fined $30,000 and charged with defamation.

She had been incarcerated while awaiting trial but has been released after journalists and and Indonesian citizens online took up her cause. At press time, a Facebook group in support of Prita had 94,116 members.

If convicted, she could receive as much as six years jail time.

Giving that the presidential election is less than a month away, all candidates have voiced their opinion on the matter. Current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (seeking reelection), spoke out for the need of fairness and transparency in the application of all laws in a recent televised debate. The current Vice President, Jusuf Kalla (also up for election) spoke with the police chief, and finally, the opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri visited Ms. Mulyasari while she was still behind bars.

All of this shows that corruption, both in the judiciary system and out, will play a large role in the upcoming elections. This is all the more emphasized because of a scandal earlier this year, in which the president of Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) was arrested for allegedly murdering an executive.

A key element of this case is the practice of pre-trial detention, a flashpoint for corruption and inequitable treatment. Global Integrity will be looking closely at this issue worldwide later this year. Stay tuned.

-- Jessica Mahoney

Iran’s Internet Snooping is Made in America

2009-06-23T11:00:00.022-04:00

In the days following Iran’s contested presidential Iran's Internet speed slowed to a tenth of its normal speed. What’s causing the slow-down? Western-developed technology that allows the Iranian government to analyze networks of information: who is transmitting, what exactly they are saying, and who is consuming it.

While Iran grabs headlines, the US Congress is quietly debating whether to continue use of similar technology against Americans. The US government has been intercepting and storing private emails and online reading habits of US citizens since at least 2001.

Iran's Online Spying...

This process is known as deep packet inspection, a technology developed and sold to the Iranian government by a joint venture of European companies Siemens and Nokia. Deep packet inspection is also allegedly used by the Chinese government. But unlike the layered “Great Firewall” of China, the Iranian technology is centralized at one point. This means that all information trading must be analyzed at a single location, leading to sluggish Internet speeds nationwide when monitoring increases.

Iran’s Internet slow-down has not yet meant an Internet shut-down: a move that would crush foreign and domestic media’s close-to real-time reporting on the election protests and vivid eyewitness accounts (although social networks and SMS have been blocked at times). For more analysis on Iran’s use of deep packet inspection, see yesterday’s Wall St. Journal.

As we have seen in other countries, Internet censorship is being coupled with the more traditional forms of media repression: Reporters Sans Frontieres describes Iran this week as "the world’s biggest prison for journalists" with a total of 33 journalists and online activists in jail. RSF details individual cases here.

UPDATE: Nokia Siemens Networks statement on "provision of lawful intercept capability" in Iran states they provide voice intercept capability only, not Internet filtering tech, disputing Wall Street Journal account.

-- by Norah Mallaney

We're All Iranians Now: US Online Spying...

Deep packet inspection and similar techniques being used in Iran are also being employed aggressively by the United States government, ostensibly in its search for terrorists online.

The US National Security Agency has a legal charter to spy on foreigners online. Unfortunately Internet traffic is nearly impossible to sort by nationality of user, meaning the NSA is snooping on all US Web and email traffic and storing it, with the cooperation of US telecoms companies. This has been extensively documented in court cases filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including testimony from an AT&T cable technician who worked on dragnet hardware spliced into the Internet backbone cables routed through downtown San Francisco. The technician, Mark Klein, has testified in court that the hardware made copies of the website preferences and email traffic of all AT&T customers and sent them to the NSA. The government did not dispute this.

The NSA has portrayed the collection of domestic email as limited, inadvertent and unavoidable, but every new trickle of information shows a more robust and aggressive domestic spying capability. As covered by the New York Times, Congress is quietly debating what to do about this, but the frame of debate is not encouraging for fans of limited government. New York Times:

“For the Hill, the issue is a sense of scale, about how much domestic e-mail collection is acceptable,” a former intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because N.S.A. operations are classified. “It’s a question of how many mistakes they can allow.”

While I might be comfortable classifying a massive government mail-reading system a "mistake," I dispute the suggestion that the creation of a secret, unaccountable system to intercept, sort and store records of all US email and online reading habits was somehow accidental. This is a matter of policy, and it's being conducted with little Congressional awareness, much less informed public debate. Not good.

For more on this topic, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation on spying; the Open Net Initiative on filtering; and Sesawe on countermeasures.

-- by Jonathan Eyler-Werve

-- image by Xeni Jardin (cc by/nc/sa)

USA: Supreme Court Maintains 1964 Election Safeguards

2009-06-22T15:27:00.012-04:00

The United States Supreme Court ruled today to side-step the challenge of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1964. To recap a March post to the Commons, Section 5 limits the autonomy of voting districts (mainly across the South) with histories of discriminatory policies to curtail the African-American vote.

According to today's ruling, these districts will still need federal approval to make changes to their voting laws as the justices deemed the issue too "delicate" of an undertaking for this time.

Possible interpretations: either this ruling a simple example of "if it's not broke don't fix it"... or the Court is sympathetic that Southern voting law still need the incentive of federal monitoring to ensure fairness.

-- Norah Mallaney

British MPs' Protect their Assets against Increasing Scrutiny

2009-06-19T13:42:00.010-04:00

The widespread misuse of state allowances by British legislators still has the public outraged. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised reform. But David Leigh, a Guardian reporter and Global Integrity contributor, is skeptical. Leigh argues that auditors may have trouble keeping Prime Minister Brown’s mandate that every claim made by an MP be checked due to the scattered British record-keeping system. On top of this, newly proposed disclosure regulations prove that legislators are reluctant to submit to full transparency.

In an op-ed piece, Guardian reporter David Leigh dissects the round-about process that the Daily Telegraph’s investigative team must have taken in order to successfully uncover details of the recent British MP disclosure scandal:

The investigative journalists had to check addresses on the disc acquired by the paper against the Land Registry files, which disclose in most cases who has bought and sold properties and for what price. The Land Registry also reveals the existence of mortgages and when they have been paid off. Those figures pointed towards the ¬profits some MPs made by buying houses in their constituencies or flats in London, renovating them at public expense by designating them as "second homes", and then selling them on.

Electoral rolls and Companies House records help to complete the picture. It then transpired that some politicians, not content with their taxpayer-funded profits in the housing bubble, switched their second-home designations to avoid capital gains tax on the proceeds.

If this wasn’t enough paper to track down, new regulations may make the auditors’ job even tougher. MPs are arguing that their addresses be blacked out of the disclosure forms in order to protect their privacy and ensure the security of their families. As Leigh puts it: “You don't need an overly suspicious mind to find this claim unconvincing.”

This would make it impossible for journalists and transparency groups (let alone the average citizen!) to compare the addresses on the MPs’ claims to those of their state-owned residencies and their private residences. Brown’s mandate of new levels of scrutiny will certainly catch legislators using funds on small items like groceries, but without address comparisons, moat-maintenance and even bigger projects like house “flipping” will slip by watch-dogs and auditors alike.

-- Norah Mallaney

Image of Gordon Brown, June 18 2009, courtesy Downing Street (CC by/sa/nc)

Afrobarometer: Key Findings, Analysis and a Critique

2009-06-18T12:20:00.008-04:00

Yesterday in Washington, Johns Hopkins-SAIS sponsored a presentation by Afrobarometer announcing the results to the end of their fourth round of surveying. Here we offer key findings and thoughts on methodology.

Afrobarometer is an investigative project which conducts survey-based research in twenty African countries. These countries tend to be the most politically and economically liberal on the continent, with the notable exception of Zimbabwe. Hundreds of researchers in each country conduct face-to-face interviews with randomly selected citizens in their native language in order to gauge their perceptions on issues ranging from perceived supply and demand for democracy in country, as well as perceived levels of poverty and corruption.

The results...

The results of these surveys are then compiled and presented in a series of charts and graphs. Afrobarometer is commendable in the sheer scope of its interviews with Africans – 105,000 total since they began in 1999.

Using an array of perception-based surveys can lead to interesting insights. In Tanzania, the supply of perceived democracy is higher than the perceived demand. This is counterintuitive, though as a colleague of mine said, it perhaps shows that democratic institutions are being pushed along by international donors without any domestic movements propping it up.

This meshes with results of the Global Integrity Report: Tanzania, which showed a “very large” gap between (not so good) legal frameworks and (mostly bad) actual implementation of governance and anti-corruption. In other words, the formal structures sometimes exist but lacking citizen demand for results, they aren’t doing much useful. It’s a pattern we see in many aid recipient countries.

(It’s also a nice example of how perception-based tools like Afrobarometer and expert assessments like the Global Integrity Report can complement each other; the key is having disaggregated data, not just a single mashed-up “country score”. More on this here.)

Other results were more expected – Kenyans in 2008 were less optimistic about the democratic situation in their country; Zimbabwe and Madagascar had some of the lowest perceived supplies of democracy.

Definition issues...

One note of concern was an issue we've discussed on this blog – how do you measure democracy if you have trouble defining it?

In his post yesterday, Nathaniel cites Gerardo Munck, who is very critical of the way many institutions define democracy, most notably Freedom House’s Freedom in the World data. Afrobarometer does not offer a definition of what democracy means, even though a large part of their survey is intended to measure perceived levels of democracy.

The speaker, Corolyn Logan of Michigan State University, acknowledges that one question on the survey – “What, if anything, does ‘democracy’ mean to you?” garnered a huge variety of responses from participants. Afrobarameter deserves credit for an evidence-based approach to this instead of just picking a noncontroversial definition.

But what do we make of the questions “In your opinion how much of a democracy is Kenya today?” or “Overall, how satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Kenya?” if every person has a different definition of democracy?

It calls to mind anthropology work in the former USSR that showed that (paraphrasing recklessly) the term "corruption" was being used to mean "corruption" or "market capitalism" or "everything that has happened to me since 1990" depending on context. This issue isn't new.

Further reading...

Global Integrity discusses the challenges of measurement in depth in our book, A Users’ Guide to Measuring Corruption.

For more on Afrobarometer, check out their website – www.afrobarometer.org – for charts and graphs.

Also of interest, a new briefing paper (No. 69) on the effects of improvements in media and telecommunications on democracy perception .

-- Jessica Mahoney

Book Review: "Measuring Democracy" Burns Down Freedom House Data

2009-06-17T10:00:00.005-04:00

If you follow this blog, then there’s a good chance you have an interest in how to measure fuzzy concepts such as governance and corruption; it's an issue Global Integrity tracks closely. If so, then you should read Gerardo L. Munck’s recently published Measuring Democracy. It's a hard-hitting critique of the conventional wisdom (and widely used data) used to measure democracy.

In Gerry’s slim but powerful volume, he takes up many of the same questions we’ve been wrestling with in the context of “democracy” and democracy-promotion. Can we measure “democracy”? And if we can, what are best practices to guide such a measurement exercise?

The book is Measuring Democracy: A Bridge Between Scholarship and Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). We should disclose that we've worked with Gerry in the past and think highly of his work.

In Measuring Democracy, the author promotes a series of simple yet powerful best practices that should be the basis for any scholarly or practitioner-based assessment of democracy at the country level. Those best practices focus around a framework (developed with Jay Verkuilen) that emphasize three key attributes of any measurement tool or resultant data:

the precision around conceptualization of data (in other words, are you precise in developing a tool to measure the concept you’re interested in?);
the consistency of actual measurement, especially the importance of clear and identifiable scoring criteria (or “coding,” to use the social science parlance);
and the rationale behind the selection of an aggregation methodology to transform disparate and disaggregated data into accessible indices.

None of this is rocket science, but Measuring Democracy lays bare just how many of the most widely used democracy data are either poorly constructed and/or misused. It saves its most strident critiques for Freedom House’s Freedom in the World data. Whether attacking Freedom House for its opaque and ill-designed aggregation methodology (“In short, the numerous conceptual and measurement problems that weaken the Freedom House indices are compounded by the blatant disregard of the challenge of aggregation.”), or what Munck sees as the organization’s simplistic conceptual approach to measuring democracy (“Freedom House includes so many attributes…and does so with such little thought about the relationships among such attributes…that it is hardly surprising that a large number of distinct or at least vaguely related aspects of democracy are lumped together.”), Measuring Democracy pulls no punches. As I read the book, I couldn’t help but compare Munck’s take-down of Freedom House to the deconstruction of the World Bank Institute’s Worldwide Governance Indicators offered in 2006 by Ardnt and Oman in their (also recommended) Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators. Ouch.

Why do these issues of measurement matter?

As Munck succinctly puts its:

Although this measurement movement is resulting in more and better data on politics, the limitations of current knowledge should be acknowledged. Such an acknowledgment is particularly critical because data on politics are increasingly used in the world of politics. NGOs use data for purposes of advocacy; a variety of actors regularly invoke statistical analyses on the causes and consequences of democracy to justify their support of, or opposition to, different policies; and governments, [intergovernmental organizations], and the [multilateral development banks] link data on politics to policy choices and governance-related conditionalities. Moreover, such an acknowledgment is key because information presented in quantitative form is generally accorded a special status. After all, one of the selling points of using data on politics is that they draw on the power of an association with science and hence are treated with considerable deference by public officials and the public. Yet this assumed scientific status verges on being a misrepresentation if the current state of knowledge regarding the measurement of political concepts.

Here's a real-life example: if you subscribe to Munck's critique of the Freedom House data and Arndt and Oman's critique of the WGI, then seven of the seventeen indicators used by the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation to make decisions on which countries to give large aid packages to are essentially bunk. This presents a bit of a challenge for an aid organization that defines itself by relying on third-party data for ostensibly objective and apolitical decision-making, noting that, "Before a country can become eligible to receive assistance, MCC looks at their performance on independent and transparent policy indicators." Houston, we have a problem.

You can grab a copy of Measuring Corruption on Amazon.com.

While you're shopping, check out Global Integrity’s A Users’ Guide to Measuring Corruption, which looks at issues specific to measuring corruption and governance.

-- Nathaniel Heller

UPDATE 18 June 2009 9:00 EST: My use of the term "bunk" was aimed at the misuse of the Freedom House and WGI data, not the actual data themselves.

USA: Why was the Inspector General of Americorps fired?

2009-06-15T10:52:00.022-04:00

On Friday, President Obama abruptly announced the replacement of Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General for Americorps. The reasons for this decision were not made clear, raising questions as to what motivated the firing. As a result, Rush Limbaugh and associated media are screaming cronyism.

The fired IG Walpin recently concluded an investigation of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a supporter of the President, which revealed mishandling of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Americorp grants. A recent settlement of the case required Johnson to personally pay back US$72,836 -- and now the investigator who busted him has been fired.

Obama’s letter to Vice-President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi detailing Walpin’s firing spoke in vague terms on the need for confidence in national integrity investigators. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, known as a protector of the IGs, has demanded better information on the firing in this letter (PDF).

Wagging the dog, basketball edition...

It is now conventional wisdom in right wing press (and has been repeated in major outlets) that Johnson and Obama are "basketball buddies", but characterizations of that relationship prior to Rush Limbaugh's comment on the issue do not seem to support this. Like most Democrats, Johnson supported Obama's presidential bid and was a donor to his campaign. Johnson attended a meeting with Obama along with other mayors while in town for the inauguration. Prior to this, the former NBA star turned mayor tried to get media attention by suggesting he would beat the President at hoops. There's no indication they ever played, and the group meeting at the inauguration appears to be the only time they have ever met. Johnson, like many local politicians has publicly described himself as "like Obama", but despite Obama's popularity, Johnson never suggested that the President was particularly aware of him. The former basketball player won his first election in November 2008.

But still...

Even so, Global Integrity reported extensively on the vulnerability of the Inspectors General to political pressure in the last Global Integrity Report: United States. Across the entire Global Integrity Report we find that political interference in accountability mechanisms is pervasive worldwide; clearly some close scrutiny of the firing is warranted. In the American context, this is especially relevant considering the recent failure in internal accountability processes in the Stevens’ corruption case and the White House's ambitious transparency rhetoric (and some legitimate progress) around stimulus spending and other topics.

Public trust is won not through rhetoric alone, but through increase in public access. The decisions, reasoning and actions of state-run, internal accountability processes must be transparent and open to public oversight. This includes the hiring and firing of inspectors. The President’s weak explanation for Walpin’s firing is also disconcerting because of Walpin’s proven track record investigating and recovering mishandled funds. Walpin should be a model for the Obama administration’s accountability initiatives, but instead he was forced out of his position. Why?

The Project on Government Oversight is calling for the release of more concrete reasons for the decision. In order to keep Americans’ trust in the leadership and functions of the government’s integrity institutions, Obama needs to immediately explain the details of his decision.

-- Norah Mallaney and Jonathan Eyler-Werve

UPDATE: left-leaning muckrakers at Talking Points Memo have dug into Gerald Walpin's record a bit. More here.

UPDATE: The Wall St. Journal reports that Walpin's firing just squeaked by new regulations set by the Inspectors General Reform Act of 2008: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124511811033017539.html

UPDATE: POGO's Executive Director, Danielle Brian, dissects the Walpin case, picking out the "teachable moments" for all agencies involved in the oversight of Inspector Generals: Congress, the White House and Federal Agencies broadly. See Brian's analysis here.

LATE UPDATE: The White House has responded to calls for explanation. TPM Muckraker has the play by play and some analysis.

On Bookshelves: The Corruption Notebooks 2008

2009-06-08T11:15:00.013-04:00

Global Integrity is proud to announce The Corruption Notebooks 2008 (preview here), a collection of stories told by local journalists of the daily struggle to rein in graft and protect the public interest. The authors are among the world’s best journalists, examining the politics of their home countries as no one else can.

Buy the book, preview or download free PDF here.

Corruption is everywhere. Countries worldwide, from the richest to the poorest, are infected by it. But the Notebooks show the culture of corruption varies tremendously from nation to nation. In Bangladesh, a generation of students is bribing its way into university. In Argentina, government fiscal policy filters down to angry shoppers at the grocery store and in Zimbabwe, “if you are not corrupt, people laugh at you.”

The Corruption Notebooks are written as part of the greater Global Integrity Report, an annual study of the existence and effectiveness of national-level anti-corruption mechanisms. In the Report, each country’s notebook is accompanied by an Integrity Scorecard, an indicator-by-indicator assessment of a nation’s governance framework. You can find the Global Integrity Report 2008 at http://report.globalintegrity.org

The new edition of The Corruption Notebooks is a collection of dispatches from 44 countries, including:

Canada, where a party gains power on promises to clean up government. Two years later, investigators are tracking down the money used to get there…

China, where simmering discontent and crumbling faith in public institutions creates nostalgia for harsher times—even among those who remember them…

Pakistan, where military action on the Afghan border undercuts efforts to clean up government. But corruption may tip the fight toward the Taliban…

Russia, where to have dark skin on the streets of Moscow means one better be prepared to pay a “foreigner tax” to bribe-hungry cops. From “survival bribes” to “comfort bribes,” these are unwritten laws of the land…

The Corruption Notebooks 2008 is being launched world-wide, with the journalists holding readings and book signings at their local community centers. We want to extend an invitation for you to join in the dialogue by attending a reading, reviewing a notebook, or holding a book party.

You can purchase a hard-copy of The Corruption Notebooks 2008 or download a free PDF on from our distributor, Lulu.com. For more Global Integrity books, including the entire Corruption Notebooks series see http://www.globalintegrity.org/books.

While corruption may not look or feel the same in any two nations, it truly is everywhere. Until we understand each culture of corruption, nothing can be done to change it.

-- Global Integrity

Africa’s New Boss: China’s Quest for Raw Materials Puts IMF on the Sidelines

2009-06-05T12:26:00.011-04:00

China’s pursuit of African raw material turns to a US$9 billion mining rights deal between China and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The International Monetary Fund is critical of the deal, saying it will only add to the DRC’s staggering debt burden. But with China’s new African clout, the IMF might not matter.

Currently, the details of the deal are as follows: China will invest a total of US$9 billion in infrastructural support (US$6 billion for roads, schools, hospitals etc. with the other US$3 billion going towards a mining project) and in return two of China’s largest state-owned companies, Synohydro Corp. and China Railway Engineering Corp., will receive mining rights to the DRC’s large cobalt deposits and roughly four percent of the world’s total copper reserves.

The IMF is concerned by a statement in the contract that holds Congo responsible for paying back the loan in its entirety should the deal fall through. The Chinese Ambassador to Congo Wu Zexian responded somewhat vaguely, saying that the Chinese Export-Import Bank is in fact shouldering the risk in this deal. As the situation stands now, the IMF refuses to grant Congo US$500 million in financial support and US10 billion in possible future debt relief until the details of the arrangement are changed.

The two powers, China and the IMF, have reached a stalemate, which raises interesting questions about the IMF’s influence in Africa. Many African countries remain suspicious of the IMF due to the often despised Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Now that China has emerged as a viable alternative for aid and development assistance, the IMF appears to be losing traction. In 2005 Angola refused to comply with IMF anti-corruption sanctions on a loan, largely because of a US$2 billion Chinese loan given at the same time. This apparent torch passing also brings new relevance to the ongoing debate over whether Western aid is working.

Ongoing Coverage!

We’ll be keeping our eye on this issue and China’s engagement with Africa generally on this blog. If you are new to this issue, the following articles will bring you up to speed.

This May 2009 piece from the Economist discusses how China (and other developed countries, especially those in the Middle East) have been buying up tracts of land in Africa and other under-developed areas in order to grow their own food and import it back to sell domestically.

This raises many issues, not least among them that these African countries are often receiving food aid from international aid organizations to prevent starvation; can they really afford to have locally grown food exported by private non-native actors?

Finally, this piece from Fast Company provides background on the recent close relationship between China and Africa, as well as highlights all of the controversies surrounding this relationship. Though it’s a year old, still worth a read.

-- Jessica Mahoney

-- Image: A wolramite miner in DRC. By Julian Harneis (cc by/sa)

Editor's note: we'd like to welcome Jessica to the Commons on her first post! More China in Africa coverage to come. -- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

With an Eye to London, More Transparency in US Expense Accounts

2009-06-04T10:18:00.012-04:00

Yesterday, US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that House office expenses will be published online, vastly streamlining public monitoring of Representatives spending habits. The move will put the current paper records online "at the earliest date," making each purchase publicly accessible.

This move can be read as a reaction to the ongoing scandal that is ejecting ministers from the British Parliament as well as a response to criticisms by the Sunlight Foundation that the old paper-and-filing-cabinet system doesn't live up to President Obama’s emphasis on transparency.

The Wall Street Journal reports that its recent probe into legislator’s official spending habits revealed “mostly routine spending on staff salaries, travel and office rent, as well as supplies, printing and mailing.” If the WSJ investigation is a guide, Pelosi's new initiative may not reveal anything shocking. However, opening these records to efficient online watchdog and media scrutiny will help to ensure clean spending habits are the norm in the future, avoiding the taxpayer-funded tennis courts and moat repairs that are riling Britain.

-- Norah Mallaney

Victory? Obama Improves US Lobbying Disclosure

2009-06-01T16:21:00.010-04:00

A few weeks ago, this blog joined Sunlight Foundation, ProPublica and others in calling for better disclosure around lobbying for US stimulus spending. Our suggestion was to skip the bans on lobbying and instead shine a big, bright spotlight on all correspondence between lawmakers and interested parties. This is pretty much what just happened.

I'll quote the key provisions of a new set of rules, summarized by White House ethics council Norm Eisen:

"First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program."

"Second, we will focus the restriction on oral communications to target the scenario where concerns about merit-based decision-making are greatest –after competitive grant applications are submitted and before awards are made. Once such applications are on file, the competition should be strictly on the merits. To that end, comments (unless initiated by an agency official) must be in writing and will be posted on the Internet for every American to see."

"Third, we will continue to require immediate internet disclosure of all other communications with registered lobbyists. If registered lobbyists have conversations or meetings before an application is filed, a form must be completed and posted to each agency’s website documenting the contact."

A few thoughts on this: we thought the ban on talking to lobbyists seemed unworkable and likely to drive the process underground, which ProPublica reported was already happening.

While it's not phrased as such, the second point above can be read as a roll-back of that face-to-face meeting ban to cover only the period between project bids and bid decisions, and a simultaneous expansion of the scope of the ban to cover everyone. So before and after a decision, Recovery Act officials can get lots of input, but during the decision cycle, they're in lockdown regarding non-written communication. Written communication between government and interested parties -- all of them -- has to be published online, and quickly. This seems like a pretty good solution to me.

By way of caution, we should note that this is a rule change, and we haven't seen it working in the wild yet. However, groups like ProPublica are watching carefully as the new guidelines are implemented.

But here's the take-home message: a bunch of watchdog groups -- ably led by Sunlight Foundation and ProPublica -- raise some noise about an important but technical issue, and in a few weeks it gets swapped out for a better and incrementally more transparent process. It's been a while since I've seen things work that way in Washington.

-- Jonathan Eyler-Werve

Does Foreign Aid Directly Contribute to Poverty?

2009-05-28T18:00:00.003-04:00

In a series of blog posts, this blog has been covering different assessments of the effectiveness and accountability of foreign aid. Where has aid worked? Where has it failed? What role do governance and monitoring platforms play in the success rate of overseas development funding? Debate rages.

In the past week, the Daily Telegraph and William Easterly’s blog AidWatch have featured commentary on the possible correlation between aid and increased levels of corruption and poverty. Writing for AidWatch, Diane Bennett says: “aid can facilitate worthy projects or encourage greed and graft.” As a director of an international NGO focusing on food-donation in south Sudan, she has seen the diversion of funds and food due to poor planning and implementation.

Daniel Hannan’s commentary highlights a more severe view of aid-induced deterioration in his column for the Daily Telegraph. There, Hannan features the views of Thompson Ayodele, a Nigerian free-market economist (and occasional contributor to this blog) who claims that foreign aid directly causes African nations to decline into deeper levels of poverty. To Ayodele, aid “isn't useless; it's actively harmful.”

Speaking only to the concerns surrounding corruption and aid, our philosophy at Global Integrity is that the potential for corruption is everywhere. Rather than taking on the impossible task of measuring corruption, we focus on the safeguards in place to prevent corruption. While Ayodele is correct to say that in some cases, foreign aid has done more harm than good, we see the harm not as a direct effect of the aid but more as a result of the lack of anti-corruption mechanisms to accompany this aid. Therefore, the solution may not be to banish funding, but instead to create proper safeguards and frameworks that define the roles of both international and domestic stakeholders. As it turns out, this is a pretty good strategy for things like democracy and political inclusion as well.

Buzzword of the day: “accountability.”

Accountability is hip, but as Bennett points out, the question is accountability to who? In her post, she discusses DfID’s approach to its aid of Kenyan schools. In this case, there were no safeguards or forums for local stakeholder input to accompany the funding. Instead of developing implementation and planning benchmarks with local school administrators, “accountability” to DfID meant hanging posters in classrooms to advertise the use of British Pounds. After the posters went up, there were no monitoring processes to both manage the funds and evaluate their effectiveness. Acknowledgment and recognition do not hold individuals or institutions accountable.

Hannan's column implies that Ayodele does not reject all forms of aid. Ayodele promotes funding that is proposed for specific projects (he uses bridge building as an example) which are then managed and monitored by both African and International stakeholders. The accountability frameworks that both Bennett and Ayodele envision rely on mutual dependency between donor and recipient for success. International donors should be judged on their facilitation of local implementation, while decisions surrounding the every-day, nitty-gritty should be lead by local actors. Aid can be effective with the right levels of public engagement to accompany project-based accountability structures.

In order to do this, Hannan encourages his own British leaders to move past their view of aid as empathy and recognize the fixed commitment of their investments. Aid accountability should not be about “self-promotion” (as Bennet puts it), but rather about engagement through dialogue and benchmarks that require defined commitment -- and results -- from all stakeholders.

-- Norah Mallaney

Disclosure: Global Integrity's funders include some aid donors.

Yahoo! Recognizes Ethiopian Reporter

2009-05-28T17:00:00.001-04:00

Abebe Gellaw, Global Integrity's reporter for the Global Integrity Report: Ethiopia has been named the 2008-2009 Yahoo! International Journalism Fellow. Congratulations to Abebe from the rest of the Global Integrity team!

Yahoo!'s video feature on Adebe is above or here.

--Norah Mallaney

Call for Experts: Last Chance for 2009 Applications

2009-05-26T11:59:00.014-04:00

We are currently winding down the application period for our national-level fieldwork to begin this year. If you are interested in working with us on the Global Integrity Report: 2009, please submit your application online by this Friday, May 29th. You can find the application at: http://www.globalintegrity.org/apply

Thanks! -- Global Integrity Staff

Tunisia and Fiji: Fresh Global Integrity Data

2009-05-20T09:00:00.006-04:00

New data on Tunisia are as bad as you'd expect -- maybe worse. And new Fiji data detail the workings of a tough military regime.

During the course of preparing and publishing the annual Global Integrity Report, there are always some countries that fall behind in terms of fieldwork, data gathering, and/or journalistic reporting. We're happy to announce that we've recently published Integrity Indicators data for Tunisia and Fiji, our first ever scorecards for both countries.

Let us know what you think about the Tunisia scorecard and the Fiji scorecard by commenting on our feedback page.

-- Nathaniel Heller

Zuma Advises Top Official to Keep Gifts

2009-05-19T16:06:00.028-04:00

South African President Jacob Zuma continues to appear entirely unconcerned with the potential for conflicts of interest among senior members of his government.

Last week, the Commons featured a story on the Mail and Guardian's probe into the financial holdings and business investments of the new South African executive cabinet. The M & G is now reporting that South African Transportation Minister, S'bu Ndebele, recently received herds of cattle and a Mercedes Benz as gifts from contractors who benefited from a government initiative to stimulate local business development in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Zuma and other top ANC leaders had no qualms with the gifts, and they advised Ndebele to keep the presents and simply declare them in an annual asset disclosure. Despite initial resistance, Ndebele decided to go against the advice of his party leaders and give back his new ride. Don't expect Ndebele to be trading this luxury vehicle in for anything less extravagant. He claims he can buy a car of equal value with the car expense allowance he receives from the government: close to R1-million!

Yet again, public pressure, not internal party or government ethics standards, have forced South African policymakers to reevaluate whether their personal connections pose a conflict with their official duties.

-- Norah Mallaney

Speaker of Commons Resigns over UK Expense Account Scandal

2009-05-19T12:37:00.015-04:00

Public outrage over the abuse of expense accounts ("moat cleaning"?!) by an overwhelming number of British MPs has forced Britain's Speaker of the Commons to resign. When Michael Martin leaves his post in late June, he will be the first Speaker to be pushed out in 300 years.

The hard numbers surrounding legislators' use of public funds for TVs, hotel rentals, house redecoration projects and even groceries, were first uncovered by the Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph's freedom of information act request to view the disclosures was fiercely opposed by Martin, a position that eventually cost him his political career. Justice Minister Shahid Malik has also been forced to step down as he awaits an investigation into allegations on preferential rent payments. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has insisted that no leader from within his Labor Party will be eligible to run for future office if he or she is found to have a faulty disclosure record.

The head of the Liberal Democratic Party summed up the culture of entitlement: “I think this Parliament will go down in history as a rotten Parliament, and we do need it cleaned out, renewed, and the people and the procedures in it changed completely.” Symbolism should not take precedence here, and the British public must hold Prime Minister Brown to his promise to clean up Parliament by investigating the legitimacy of each individual claim on the MP expense disclosures.

For more background on this story, see our previous Commons post on Brown's vow to increase the financial accountability of MPs.

-- Norah Mallaney

-- Image CC/by Steve Punter