Category Archives: Announcement

Specialized Anticorruption Courts: An Overview

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I’m going to take a quick break from agonizing about the impending Trumpocalypse to share some news about a new U4 Issue Paper, which I coauthored with Sofie Schütte, on specialized anticorruption courts in countries around the world. (This paper builds on an earlier series of case studies.) Here’s the abstract:

Frustration with the capacity of the ordinary machinery of justice to deal adequately with corruption has prompted many countries to develop specialised anti-corruption institutions. While anti-corruption agencies with investigative and/or prosecutorial powers have attracted more attention, judicial specialisation is an increasingly common feature of national anti-corruption reform strategies. The most common argument for the creation of special anti-corruption courts is the need for greater efficiency in resolving corruption cases promptly and the associated need to signal to various domestic and international audiences that the country takes the fight against corruption seriously. In some countries, concerns about the ability of the ordinary courts to handle corruption cases impartially, and without being corrupted themselves, have also played an important role in the decision to create special anti-corruption courts. Existing specialised anti-corruption courts differ along a number of dimensions, including their size, their place in the judicial hierarchy, mechanisms for selection and removal of judges, the substantive scope of the courts’ jurisdiction, trial and appellate procedures, and their relationship with anti-corruption prosecutors. These institutional design choices imply a number of difficult trade-offs: while there are no definitive “best practices” for specialised anti-corruption courts, existing models and experience may provide some guidance to reformers considering similar institutions. They must decide whether such a court should adopt procedures that are substantially different from those of other criminal courts, and/or special provisions for the selection, removal, or working conditions of the anti-corruption court judges.

Anticorruption Bibliography–December 2016 Update

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An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written

Academics in Support of the Transparency International Secretariat’s Research Work

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As most readers of this blog are likely aware, Transparency International (TI) is the world’s leading advocacy organization focused specifically on fighting corruption. In addition to the important advocacy work done by the TI Secretariat and TI’s many national chapters, Transparency International has also played an important role in producing and supporting a variety of research activities.

Word on the street is that Transparency International is in the middle of some sort of internal reorganization. It’s apparently a complicated situation, and while I certainly don’t know much about the details (particularly concerning matters like German labor law), some of my academic colleagues have raised concerns about the possible implications of the reorganization for TI’s research capacity. In response to these concerns, a group of academics sent a letter (which I signed) to the TI Board of Directors, emphasizing the important contributions of the TI Secretariat’s research team. Although these “insider” organizational issues might not be of interest to all our readers, I thought that some of you might be interested, and perhaps might also like to make your voices heard, so I am providing (with the permission of those responsible for drafting and sending the letter) the full text of the letter here:

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Anticorruption Bibliography–November 2016 Update

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An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written

It’s Election Day in the United States. Please Vote (if you can).

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Today voters in the United States will go to the polls to elect the next President of the United States, as well as representatives in the legislature and other offices. For that reason, there doesn’t seem to be much point in publishing an ordinary post today.

This election is so obviously important–not just for the United States but for the whole world–that it might seem a bit forced to try to put an “anticorruption spin” on it. It’s nonetheless worth keeping in mind that, for all the U.S. government’s faults and mistakes–of which there are many–American leadership on anticorruption, both domestically and abroad, is vitally important. After we know the results of the election, I may try to write something up speculating about how those results might affect global anticorruption efforts. For now, I’ll just remind readers (who probably don’t need any such reminder) that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have starkly different histories and views regarding these issues (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). If you are a registered voter in the United States and have not already voted, please do so as soon as possible! If not, please cross your fingers, knock on wood, and pray.

Anticorruption Bibliography–October 2016 Update

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An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here.

A quick note: With the assistance of the library and my administrative assistant, I’m in the process of shifting the bibliography from a simple text document to a citation-management database. We’re still working out the kinks, and so you may notice a few weird or different things about the formatting. We’re hoping to get this worked out by the next update. We’re also hoping to eventually put the bibliography in a form where it will be searchable and sortable by field, instead of just one long pdf. So, as the standard line goes, “please pardon our appearance while we’re remodeling.”

As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.

TI’s Database of London Anticorruption Summit Commitments

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Last May’s London Anticorruption Summit seems a long time ago now, given everything that’s happened in the intervening months (especially Brexit and the resulting downfall of David Cameron, who convened the Summit in the first place). But many in the anticorruption community are still hopeful that the London summit, and perhaps future events like it, can help spur more serious international progress on the fight against corruption. As regular GAB readers might recall, shortly after the summit I went through each of the individual country statements to try to figure out what sorts of promises or announcements each of the summit participants had made with respect to several issue areas–those blog posts are here and here.

As I acknowledged in the posts, my efforts were quick & dirty & preliminary. I’m happy to report that Transparency International undertook a much more thorough and systematic effort to go through each of the country statements, identify each separate commitment in each statement, and give each one a 1-3 score on each of three dimensions: (1) whether the commitment is new; (2) whether the commitment is ambitious; and (3) whether the commitment is concrete. TI’s analysis also categorizes the country commitments into 20 different categories: anticorruption environment; anti-money laundering; asset recovery; beneficial ownership; bribery; defense & security; denial of entry; innovation; international anticorruption architecture; law enforcement; natural resources; OECD; open data; private sector; public procurement; public sector integrity; sports; tax; training & assistance; whistleblower/civil society space protection. (Several of the categories are further subdivided into “focus themes.”) The database also includes the full text of each commitment.

I may do a more substantive follow-up post later on, with my reactions to TI’s report and/or my take on the information contained in the database, but for now I just wanted to say kudos to TI for doing this, and to alert those GAB readers who weren’t already aware of this that they can check out the report and the database here.

Anticorruption Bibliography–September 2016 Update

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An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.

Anticorruption Bibliography–August 2016 Update

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An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.

Anticorruption Bibliography–July 2016 Update

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An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.