Tag Archives: prevention

New Resource Guide on Corruption Risk Assessment of Legislation

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As a too-familiar cliché has it, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and this is a message many in the anticorruption community have taken to heart. But talking in general terms about the  importance of preventing corruption is one thing; figuring out how to design specific, practical anticorruption measures is a much greater challenge. Among the preventative tools in the anticorruption toolkit, one that has shown some promise in a number of countries, and that has attracted attention in many others, is the pre-enactment analysis of proposed laws to assess the corruption risks associated with those laws. This process is sometimes referred to as “corruption risk assessment” (CRA). (It is also—rather unfortunately—sometimes referred to as the “corruption-proofing” of proposed legislation, a label that vastly oversells what this sort of assessment is capable of doing.) We have had a couple of posts on this technique on the blog previously (see here and here).

Last month, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) published a useful resource guide on CRA intended primarily for parliaments (and other legislative bodies), authored by GAB’s own senior contributor Rick Messick. (Full disclosure: I provided some comments on a very early draft of the guide, and I also worked as a consultant, though in a comparatively minor role, on a related project with the NDI’s Bangkok office.) To quote from the introduction, this guide “suggests how a CRA procedure can be incorporated into the standing rules of parliament and provides a checklist of issues the CRA should consider…. While primarily written for stakeholders in parliament, the guide can be adapted for use by anti-corruption agencies, executive branch agencies, civil society organizations (CSO) and other groups to detect and highlight the corruption risks that exist in legislative processes.”

The link above goes to the NDI page with information about the guide and related documents. You can also go directly to a PDF of the guide itself here. I hope some of our readers find this to be a useful resource.

Developing an Effective Corruption Prevention Strategy: Insights from Sierra Leone

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It is often said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and this is nowhere truer than in the fight against corruption. That insight has helped shape the approach of Sierra Leone’s campaign against corruption over the last several years. In 2018, Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), of which I am the Commissioner (Head), made a deliberate policy decision to emphasize prevention over enforcement. The ACC created a designated “Prevention Department,” which was empowered to work, in conjunction with other oversight bodies such as the Supreme Audit Institution and the Public Sector Reform Agency, to ensure that corruption prevention systems and processes are embedded in the national administrative and governance architecture.

Of course, talking generally about “prevention” is easier than actually implementing effective corruption prevention mechanisms. So, what are some of the key tools that Sierra Leone has deployed to enhance its corruption prevention system? I will highlight five that have been especially important and effective: Continue reading →

Guest Post: Time for UNCAC Mark II?

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GAB welcomes back international anticorruption consultant Alan Doig, who contributes the following guest post:

The United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), which came into force in 2005 and has been ratified by 187 countries, is the oldest and most comprehensive Convention solely devoted to the prevention, detection, and investigation of corruption. Yet today UNCAC, for all of its importance, is not serving as an effective blueprint or framework for promoting innovative and effective responses to corruption. There are four main reasons for this:

  • First, perhaps due to UNCAC’s genesis in the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, UNCAC is skewed too heavily toward the criminal justice aspects of anticorruption, as demonstrated by the fact that nearly 80% of UNCAC’s substantive Articles relate to law enforcement, asset recovery, and related issues.
  • Second, UNCAC left too many key terms undefined or underspecified, allowing for significant interpretation (or misinterpretation) of the Articles, and some 40% of UNCAC’s substantive Articles are non-mandatory; these factors tend to undermine the efficacy of the Convention.
  • Third, UNCAC’s review mechanism is too slow and fragmented, and fails to employ a sufficiently holistic framework that assesses performance and progress in implementation and impact.
  • Fourth, and most significant, UNCAC is not amenable to updating. This has meant that issues which were only emerging back in 2005, such as political-party funding or beneficial ownership transparency, only received limited attention. Issues that were once addressed, if at all, through ad hoc references scattered throughout the Convention are assuming more importance. The difficulty of updating the Convention derives in part from the insistence of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) that UNCAC may be used as a legal document suitable for treaty purposes—even though other international instruments serve similar purposes and its value as a treaty has been limited (as demonstrated by, among other things, the fact that UNCAC has been used for mutual legal assistance only 17 times in over a decade).

So, with a reboot of the existing Convention unlikely, maybe it’s time for a new Convention—an UNCAC Mark II. An UNCAC Mark II— which we might perhaps call the UN Convention on the Prevention of Corruption (UNCPC)—could provide a framework that promotes innovative, flexible, and forward-looking means to address corruption challenges, going beyond technical and compliance approaches.

The main focus of the proposed UNCPC, as the name implies, should be on mainstreaming prevention of corruption, both for its own sake and as a means toward wider objectives, such as trust in public institutions, good governance, and the rule of law. Chapters of such a convention could address, for example: risk assessment, developing strategic approaches, promoting public integrity, transparency and accountability, managing the political and partisan dimensions of public life, preventing profiting from corruption, prioritizing citizen-facing public services, and developing measurable progress and performance. In particular, and largely missing from the current Convention, a UNCPC should address the roles and expectations of a wide range of named in-country public and private sector organizations, as well as in civil society, to collectively mainstream the Convention as part of their work.

Such a Convention needn’t start from scratch. Its contents and coherence would come from synthesizing and integrating the wide range of the corruption prevention initiatives, most of which post-date UNCAC. These include, for example, the Kuala Lumpur Statement on Anti-Corruption Strategies, the international standard on anti-bribery management systems (ISO 37001), the Council of Europe’s work on public ethics, the extractive industries and other transparency initiatives, and the work of organizations like the UN Global Compact and the UNCAC Civil Society Coalition. The contents of a new Convention could also draw on the empirical evidence from GRECO reviews and Transparency International National Integrity Studies. Engaging with all these organizations, who have a stake in prevention, will foster a collective sense of ownership, and they can also take a leading role in monitoring and reviewing implementation of the Convention.

In contrast to UNCAC, this proposed new Convention should not seek global membership. Rather, the UNCPC should require both serious substantive commitments and acceptance of a rigorous whole-Convention peer-review system focused on demonstrable performance and progress. At the same time, evidence from practice on the ground will inform an equally rigorous review and revision of the Convention to ensure its relevance. The overall goal is a more comprehensive and dynamic Convention that provides a collective, mutually-supportive approach to anticorruption, one that seeks to achieve meaningful results within realistic timeframes.

Guest Post: A Behavioral Science Approach to Preventing Corruption

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Johann Graf Lambsdorff, Professor of Economic Theory at Passau University, contributes the following guest post:

Some of our current approaches to corruption prevention perform badly. One reason is that many preventive methods are built on distrust towards officials and employees, who are seen as potentially corrupt actors. Yet research in behavioral science has provided us with impressive evidence that (many) people are (mostly) trustworthy, intrinsically motivated, and responsive to encouragement, praise, expressions of gratitude, and criticism. The problem with assuming that everyone is prone to engage in corruption if not carefully monitored is not only that prevention strategies premised on that assumption are very costly, but also that such approaches can be counterproductive: The atmosphere of distrust that they create can reduce interpersonal trust, intrinsic motivation, and the self-esteem that people get from contributing to public goods and working responsibly.

Economists have labelled these adverse collateral consequences “the hidden costs of control.” In a recent paper entitled “Preventing Corruption by Promoting Trust – Insights from Behavioral Science”, I explain how taking this phenomenon, as well related insights from behavioral sciences about creating positive incentives for good behavior, can help us design more effective policies. The paper illustrates this with the help of six examples: Continue reading →