GAB editor-in-chief Matthew Stephenson and I have been asked by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which serves as the Secretariat to UNCAC’s Conference of States Parties, to write a guide to support the development and implementation of effective and sustainable national anti-corruption strategies. The guide will contain an outline of the key stages in the development of a national strategy, an explanation of the role different stakeholders can play in developing it, models for implementing a strategy, and a discussion the methods for monitoring and evaluating its implementation. Good practices and success stories at all stages of the process — development, implementation, monitoring and reporting — will be highlighted.
We are in the early stages of collecting information and would welcome readers help in identifying useful materials: copies of national strategies, evaluations of their effectiveness, and so forth. We will of course build upon the fine analysis of Asian countries’ experiences with national strategies that the UNDP Bangkok office released in December, which I wrote about here. We also have the very useful policy notes posted on the websites of U4 and TI.
To date we have identified 60 plus the countries that have or have had a national anticorruption strategy. They are listed below. Additions to this list would also be welcome.
Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Bosnia And Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Southern Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, UK, Ukraine, Vietnam
Anything from newspaper stories to policy papers to academic analyses would be appreciated. Thanks to Google translate, we will be happy to receive material in any language. You can post suggestions either as a comment on this post, or send your input using the contact page. Thanks in advance!
GAB | The Global Anticorruption Blog 
Dear Rick,
I am from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I informe You that Bosnia had adopted a national anticorruption Strategy, where the main problem was non-implemation of the stratey. (useful link http://ti-bih.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Analysis-of-the-Strategy-implementation.pdf). The new anticorruption stratgy 2015-2019 is devoloped and waiting for adopting by the BiH goverment.
Many thanks, Rick
Congratulations for being selected for the assignment; me too have applied for the same assignment. Besides information related to earlier Asia Pacific Study, please do contact me for information related to Nepal.
Hi, wishing you the very best of luck. Strategies frequently, especially when relating to corruption, often / usually remain ink on paper, as, reading the response above, has obviously occurred in Bosnia Herzegovnia. BiH is not alone, much anti corruption legislation and regulation also remains mere ink on paper. Can I suggest you focus on what it takes to get strategies implemented more than the content of the strategy.
For example, in the early 2000s the fate of Indonesia’s anti corruption agency, the KPK, was determined when police retaliation at KPK arrests of senior police officers, saw KPK officials arrested by the police. The resultant outpouring of public support for the KPK on the streets played a key role in the then Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, coming in to support the KPK. These preconditions for successful strategies are, in my view, more important than the strategies themselves.
One key lesson of anti corruption literature is that vesting all preventative, investigative and even prosecutorial powers in one institution generally does not work – the institution then easily becomes a threat to the corrupt who are usually successful in ensuring that the agency:
– has a limited or flawed jurisdiction (or in the case of the Philippines, under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, there were two agencies with comparable roles that fought each other and achieved little)
– has little money,
– is run by a timid official, or, even worse, an official who makes the agency into a vehicle for harassment of the enemies of corrupt leaders.
Ironically a more dispersed range of functions makes political interference more difficult so long as the functions aren’t too closely duplicated as in the Philippines.
Any strategy has to pay attention to the interrelationship of existing agencies and why they have failed, more than look to the solve the problem of corruption by creating a new agency.
Can I suggest you take a look at a few National Integrity System surveys on the TI website. These usually give descriptions of what doesn’t work and often include practicable suggestions as to what might be done to fix things.
But I come back to my first point, a strategy, to be of any use, has to look at how a strategy can be made to work, rather than just include a rather pious wish-list of things that would solve the problem if they were to happen or be done. For example just saying that political will is required is insufficient when politicians are often the problem. How political will can be mobilised is a key part of a strategy – hence my reference to the KPK anecdote above. Strategies that recognise preconditions become much longer term and difficult to conceive of as coherent things in themselves, so developing an order in which things might be done should also form part of a strategy.
Good luck
Shane Cave (currently a fraud and anti corruption advisor in Papua New Guinea )
I would like to second Shane’s comments on looking at NISA’s on TI’s website. There should also be plenty of material on the thinking behind NISA – for example, why ‘pillars’ instead of an interweaved ‘bird’s nest’ etc.
I would add to your list the Brazilian National Strategy for Combating Corruption and Money Laundering – ENCCLA (http://portal.mj.gov.br/main.asp?ViewID=%7B7AE041E8-8FD4-472C-9C08-68DD0FB0A795%7D¶ms=itemID=%7B3239224C-C51F-4A29-9E51-74AC98153FD1%7D;&UIPartUID=%7B2868BA3C-1C72-4347-BE11-A26F70F4CB26%7D) or (http://enccla.camara.leg.br/).
The most important benefit of this initiative is certainly the network of Laboratories of Anti-Money Laundering (NETWORK-LAB), that is based on the cooperation of several national, regional and local agencies that put together work force, intelligence and corporate data basis.
The corruption scandals of the past years, including the recent one, involving Petrobras, the Brazilian giant oil company, were revealed and deeply investigated thanks to this strategy.
Rgds,
Thanks very much to all the commentators for pointing to additional strategies and for underlining the major challenge: implementation. Over the next few weeks I will post some ideas from my own experience and the work of others on implementation. Please do continue to offer your ideas and counsel.