New Podcast Episode, Featuring Lucio Picci

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.In this episode, host Liz Dávid-Barrett interviews Lucio Picci, a professor of economics at the University of Bologna, about his recent work on rethinking the current anticorruption paradigm. Professor Picci explains why he thinks we need to pay more attention to potential “side effects” of anticorruption discourse, particularly the risk that the anticorruption agenda will be hijacked by populists to support political goals–as we have seen, he notes, in Brazil, Russia, and the United States. Professor Picci also discusses his earlier work on corruption measurement, including approaches to measuring corruption at the subnational level. You can find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations: KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

Guest Post: The Need for Better Monitoring and Evaluation of Anticorruption Projects

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Today’s guest post comes from Tom Shipley, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex.

While the anticorruption field is rife with disagreements and debates about “what works,” one thing that pretty much everyone can agree on is the need for more and better evidence. This is why it is so important that governments and other organizations engage in appropriate monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities to assess the impact of their anticorruption work. Lots of organizations conduct M&E activity—but how good is it? A new report developed at the Centre for the Study of Corruption and published with the U4 Anticorruption Resource Centre seeks to provide a comprehensive review of anticorruption M&E in development cooperation. The report, which is based on a structured review of 91 evaluation reports published by 11 development agencies and non-governmental organizations, examines the M&E evidence available for a range of anticorruption measures implemented in a wide range of countries.

The findings are disappointing. Although there are some high-quality evaluations, the review demonstrates there are systematic problems with the quality of the evidence produced through M&E. Continue reading →

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Emmanuel Mathias

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available.(Actually, this one isn’t that new anymore–it was released a couple of weeks ago–but I was traveling then and wasn’t able to do the update. Sorry for the delay!) In this episode, host Liz Dávid-Barrett interviews Emmanuel Mathias, the Head of the Governance and Anti-Corruption Division at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The interview covers the main pillars of the IMF’s 2018 Framework for Enhanced Engagement on Governance, and provides insights into how the IMF approaches its anticorruption work.

You can find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:

KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

Announcement: Safeguarding Carbon Markets Challenge

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Phyllis Dininio, the Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge, contributes the following announcement:

Carbon markets, which enable the trading of carbon credits and emission allowances, can help reduce carbon emissions by channeling funds from those seeking to offset their carbon emissions to those who can reduce emissions through conservation, renewables, forest protection, and other initiatives. Yet carbon markets entail important corruption risks. To take just a few examples:

  • In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the head of the ministry that manages forests embezzled around $38 million of funding from REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which provides a framework to give developing countries payments in exchange for reducing deforestation.
  • Also in the DRC, a French oil company and its local partner leased 70,000 hectares of land from the government to offset emissions by planting acacia trees; local farmers claim they were displaced from this land without appropriate consultation or compensation by the government.
  • In Slovakia, the government sold about 15 million tons of carbon offset units for half their market price to a firm that turned out to be a shell company run by people connected to the government; that firm turned around and sold the units for their market value, making $47 million.

To help address these sorts of problems, the USAID-funded Countering Transnational Corruption (CTC) Grand Challenge, in partnership with BHP Foundation and the Global Partnership for Social Accountability, has launched the Safeguarding Carbon Markets Challenge. The CTC Grand Challenge team is hoping to make awards of up to $500,000 in February 2025. And will accept concept notes until mid-August. Possible innovations might ways to improve procurement, certification, and licensing practices in carbon markets; efforts to improve oversight, transparency, and accountability; employing data transparency and risk assessment tools; improving land use tracking; and empowering communities, environmental journalists, and diverse civil society groups. The CTC team is also looking for partners to help with disseminating the call for proposals, serve as judges, support solvers as mentors or in testing out their solutions, provide further financial support to the challenge, or in other ways so please check out the website and get in touch.

Whistleblowers in Ukraine: Successes and Challenges in Ukraine

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The Anti-Corruption Research and Education Center (ACREC), Kyiv, Ukraine, and the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) are pleased to invite you to the Fourth Annual Conference “Whistleblowers in Ukraine: Successes and Challenges,” which will be held on July 10, 2024, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Kyiv time.

The event aims to bring together activists, representatives of non-governmental organizations, judges, whistleblowers, authorized officials, employees of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), international experts, political figures, and compliance managers to discuss opportunities for improving Ukraine’s legislation on whistleblowers. The event will feature three panel discussions and two workshops.

The event will be held online via the Zoom platform, where viewers will be able to actively participate in the conference. Please confirm your participation in the event by filling in this short form: https://forms.gle/DaF6T32Jd5GXMLQa7.

International Parliaments Day June 30.  On It and Everyday Work with Parliaments to Combat Corruption

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This Sunday June 30 is the International Day of Parliamentarism, dedicated to the celebration of parliaments around the world, and the work they do for democracy. Today’s Guest Post, by Franklin De Vrieze, Head of Practice Accountability, Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) and Kristen Sample, Director of Democratic Governance, National Democratic Institute (NDI), reminds that parliaments can and should play an important role in taming corruption.

From June 18 to 21 more than 2,000 civil society activists, journalists, government officials and private sector actors convened at the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Vilnius, Lithuania, to discuss lessons learned and good practices for the fight against corruption.

The Conference was an excellent opportunity to highlight the stories of courageous activists and reformers from around the world.  Lithuania’s journey from Soviet subjugation to developed democracy in just a few short decades was an inspiring backdrop for discussions covering transparency, participation, and political integrity.

In an event that was otherwise impeccably conceived and executed, there was one blind spot: the limited discussion about and participation of legislators, an omission that is unfortunately far from the exception.

Continue reading →

Invaluable Guide to Fighting Corruption — at a Bargain Basement Price

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Mark Pyman and Paul Heywood’s Sector-Based Action Against Corruption: A Guide for Organizations and Professionals is not for everyone. If your goal is to improve a nation’s CPI score, attack grand corruption, or realize some other broadly stated, national level objective, stop here.

But if, as the authors explain, you “need to acquire competence in recognizing, analyzing and dealing with corruption” in a particular organization or process, and if you believe that “corruption Is as much a management issue as it is a political one,” download it immediately. (And thank whoever made this must-have book open-source.)

Pyman’s and Heywood’s careers both combine hands-on work helping government agencies and corporations curb corruption with serious engagement with the learning on corruption. And it shows. From the rigor they insist be brought to bear to specify identifiable, tractable corruption problems (corruption due to a non-meritocratic civil service is not one; conflict of interest in hiring is) to the disciplined approach they present for selecting the best measures for remedying them.

They break the process for “recognizing, analyzing, and dealing with corruption” into four steps labeled SFRA:

Continue reading →

Cautious Optimism: Leveraging Free Trade Agreements as Anticorruption Tools

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The international trading system has had a dire decade. There has been a stunning drop-off in the growth of global trade, and the most recent World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference did little, if anything, to halt the multilateral trading system’s decline. Yet anticorruption policy’s place in international trade negotiations has never been stronger. Many of the most prominent regional free trade agreements (FTAs) that have either come into force or been the subject of intense negotiations over the last half-decade have featured remarkably strong anticorruption provisions. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which came into force in 2020 as a replacement for NAFTA, included entirely new anticorruption protections alongside only modest, technocratic tweaks to actual barriers to cross-border trade. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the post-2016 replacement for the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), includes almost all of the anticorruption provisions that the U.S. championed in the TPP. The negotiations for an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), though much maligned for their failure to coalesce around meaningful trade liberalization, nevertheless produced a “Fair Economy” pillar that includes substantial initiatives aimed at fighting corruption. And these are not the only examples: Indeed, there has been a general increase in anticorruption provisions in FTAs and bilateral investment treaties.

Of course, lumping all of these different provisions together is a bit misleading, because the “anticorruption” provisions in FTAs take a wide variety of forms. Many, including the anticorruption provisions of the USMCA and the CPTPP, commit members to adopting laws that either directly criminalize certain behavior (bribery, facilitation payments, etc.) or require that firms adopt transparency measures, such as regular financial disclosures. Other FTAs, like the IPEF or the World Customs Organization’s Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Program, focus on capacity building through information sharing, technical assistance, and training programs. Still others, like the African Continental Free Trade Area (which is still being negotiated), attempt to tackle corruption in trade through measures like simplifying and automating the customs process. Yet despite this diversity, it is fair to say that anticorruption is now firmly part of the international trade agenda—thanks in large part to sustained advocacy by pro-transparency and anticorruption advocates since the 1990s.

While the incorporation of anticorruption provisions in FTAs has obvious symbolic importance, we don’t yet know as much about the practical impact of these provisions. This is partly because it’s just too soon to make such assessments: Other than a few exceptional cases, the inclusion of anticorruption language in FTAs is a relatively recent phenomenon). Very few studies have engaged in empirical assessments of how FTA anticorruption commitments actually fare as anticorruption tools in practice. But the limited evidence we do have appears encouraging:

Continue reading →

Guest Post: From Revolution to Reform — Tracing Armenia’s Anti-Corruption Landscape

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It is now two decades plus since the fight against corruption emerged as a major issue. One that has been a particular challenge in nations still struggling to overcome the legacy of communism. Today’s Guest Post tracks recent progress Armenia, where voters in 2018 traded a deeply corrupt, semi authoritarian government for one promising both less corruption and more democracy. Its authors: Jeffrey Hallock, a PhD candidate at American University researching anti-corruption reform strategies, and a researcher at the Accountability Research Center utilizing open government data to analyze U.S. foreign funding trends, and Karine Ghahramanyan, a senior at the American University of Armenia pursuing a degree in Politics and Governance.

Armenia, a landlocked country of 2.8 million, sits in the middle of a region defined by political uncertainty. Six years after Nikol Pashinyan spearheaded Armenia’s Velvet Revolution with a promise to eradicate systemic corruption, many regard Prime Minister Pashinyan’s efforts as stalling. Although corruption has noticeably decreased since 2018 (here), the government’s initial emphasis on anti-corruption measures has been overtaken by urgent security considerations, its 2020 defeat by neighbor and long-time adversary Azerbaijan followed by unsettling developments in neighbors Georgia, Turkey, and Iran.

Armenia’s burgeoning democracy and recent reforms have helped strengthen its position amid broader volatility, contributing to economic growth and deepening relations with democratic allies. Yet the government is under mounting pressure to recommit to the principles of transparency and accountability that gave legitimacy to the 2018 revolution.

The Pashinyan administration offers lessons on how to capitalize on a window of opportunity to advance consequential anti-corruption gains, as well as insights on when the spark of the revolution fades into the reality of quotidian government reform.

Continue reading →

Towards Preventing Corruption During Ukraine’s Reconstruction: Bilingual Compilation of Ukrainian Procurement Laws

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Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has inflicted massive damage on the country’s infrastructure, a half trillion dollars and growing daily (here). While Ukraine’s government is just beginning the massive task of letting contracts for the reconstruction of schools, hospitals, and other public works destroyed by Russian bombs and artillery shells, reports are already circulating that corruption has infected the procurement of some large works.

Fighting corruption in procurement is about much more than tightening and strictly enforcing laws on what to buy from whom. Rules governing political contributions, gifts to officeholders, conflicts of interest and business practices that facilitate bid rigging are all part of the equation. But preventing and detecting corruption in government contracting starts with what the law does (or doesn’t) say about who makes purchasing decisions and how specifications are drawn, contractors selected, and performance assured.

The fight against corruption in Ukrainian reconstruction just got an important boost. An online data base of some 450 Ukrainian statutes and Cabinet decrees along with English summaries is now available here. Included is everything from the text of ProZorro, Ukraine’s award-winning e-procurement law to statutes on permitting and land use to detailed rules governing the construction of roads and ports. A dropdown menu allows users to search by topic – critical infrastructure, damaged property, public procurement, urban development – or hone in on a specific area such as construction standards, PPPs, or telecommunications.

The database will help frontline corruption fighters – in the Ukrainian government, civil society organizations, and those overseeing reconstruction funding – determine if procurement rules are being observed in a project. Vigorous competition for procurement contracts is perhaps the most important way to curb corruption. By offering a free guide to Ukrainian procurement law, the database reduces the cost to new or foreign firms of preparing bids, increasing the chances more companies will bid on a project and thus spurring competition.

The database is the result of a heroic, pro bono effort by a squad of multilingual lawyers at the international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton aided by Ukraine’s Institute for Legislative Ideas. It was the brainchild of Jennifer Widner, Princeton University professor and director of the University’s Innovations for Successful Societies, and Oksana Nesterenko, head of the Anticorruption Research & Education Centre at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Both provided guidance and overall direction. Worth MacMurray, president and chief executive officer of the Coalition for Integrity, oversaw Debevoise’s work on behalf of ISS. The project is part of a larger effort by ISS and ACREC to prevent corruption during Ukrainian reconstruction.