Publications

In 1999, eight years after emerging from decades of Soviet domination, Kyrgyzstan began an ambitious effort to officially recognize property ownership throughout the country and lay the groundwork for a vibrant real estate market. During five and a half decades of rule by the Soviet Union, citizens were not allowed to own land, and after Kyrgyzstani independence in 1991, the country began a nationwide program of privatization in a bid to stimulate economic development. The question was how to register and document property rights so that people could transact efficiently in a new land market. To meet the challenge, a new land agency, known as Gosregister, had to hire and train staff in completely new responsibilities, establish performance management and funding structures, improve efficiency by introducing new technologies, and ensure that staff did not engage in corruption. Despite political upheaval—including the overthrow of two governments in the space of five years—Gosregister steadily built its capacity and evolved into an effective land registry. By 2012, the agency had registered 92% of the country’s privately held parcels, and in 2017, the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings recognized its services as among the best in the world.

In the early 2000s, the 500,000 smallholder farmers who collectively produced more than three-quarters of Colombia’s coffee gave little thought to the impact of their activities on the environment, as they struggled to earn a living. Many carelessly used dangerous chemicals and dumped contaminated water into rivers. Aiming to protect biodiversity in coffee-growing regions of Latin America, the Global Environment Facility, an intergovernmental environmental fund, granted US$12 million to a United Nations Development Programme project led by the Rainforest Alliance, a New York–based nongovernmental organization (NGO), to help farmers in Colombia and five other Latin American countries meet a certification standard designed to enforce good agricultural practices and protect the environment. Crucially, the funding also enabled the Rainforest Alliance to cultivate a global market for sustainably produced coffee by promoting the product to companies and consumers. By 2017, about 10,000 Colombian farms covering about 70,000 hectares had earned Rainforest Alliance certification, and about 5% of coffee production globally was Rainforest Alliance certified. Other NGOs and coffee companies had developed similar but less-demanding systems, and collectively, they covered more than one third of Colombia’s coffee production. By comparison to other countries that produced agricultural commodities, that rate of participation was high, and the inclusion of smallholders, who were usually hard to organize, was distinctive. However, many farmers did not participate in the voluntary systems, and Colombia’s water and forest resources remained under threat in some areas.

In the early 2000s, deforestation accelerated in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and global environmental groups began to raise the alarm. Greenpeace, one of the most vocal groups, published a report that placed the blame partly on the soy industry, which had grown rapidly in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. In response, industry representatives joined with nongovernmental organizations, financial institutions, supermarkets, and others in the soy supply chain to form the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS). Following the model of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which worked to transform the environmentally destructive palm oil industry in Southeast Asia, the RTRS wanted to implement a supply chain certification system to help identify whether harvests came from land deforested without regard for environmental impact and nudge soy farmers into a new era of sustainable production. The roundtable participants successfully developed a standard for responsible practices, and enrolled a number of large farm enterprises. But low demand for certified soy and the high cost of becoming certified slowed progress, especially among smaller producers. As of 2017, less than 1% of soy produced in Brazil was RTRS certified, and uncertified landholders continued to convert important natural ecosystems into soy farms. Although the RTRS succeeded in bringing together key players in the soy industry to talk about sustainability for the first time, it was clear that complementary efforts were necessary to shift the soy industry as a whole toward environmentally friendly production.

In 2007, multinational consumer goods company Unilever launched a partnership with the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) to help bring Kenya’s more than 500,000 small-scale tea farmers up to the certification standard set by the Sustainable Agriculture Network, a global coalition of environmental organizations. To participate, farmers had to fulfill dozens of criteria related to worker safety, environmental management, and agricultural practices. The KTDA, a private company that had been government run until 2000, was able to roll out certification quickly and on an unprecedented scale, thanks to its large market share, its rapport with farmers, the willingness of multinational companies to support high-quality sustainably grown tea, and funding by donor organizations. By mid 2016, all of Kenya’s smallholders had met certification standards, and Unilever’s flagship Lipton brand was selling 100%-certified tea. Soon after, other major global brands met the same target. Farmers pointed to increased yields, stronger health and safety procedures, and improved livelihoods as benefits of the certification initiative.

In June 2012, Rwanda’s national land registry completed a nearly four-year project that mapped every one of the country’s 10.4 million parcels and prepared title documents for 8 million landholders. It was an unprecedented accomplishment in a country in which lack of land titling had weighed on the economy and led to escalating conflict over access to land. The mapping program promised to reduce tensions by establishing an orderly system for registering and transferring landownership. However, the system could work only if Rwandans registered every transaction, and in 2012, a survey found that only about one of every eight landowners had even bothered to pick up their official titles. The registry urgently had to both make it easier to register transactions and build public awareness about the importance of keeping the land database up-to-date. A registry team launched a nationwide campaign to raise awareness about the importance of titling and of reporting all land transactions. Managers simplified procedures and registration forms. And to provide greater access in rural areas, where titling was nearly unknown, the registry decentralized services and introduced a new software platform to speed transactions. By mid 2017, more than 7 million people had collected their titles, and registrations of sales, purchases, and other kinds of transfers had begun to improve. Still, the number of transactions reported in 2016 fell short of the registry’s target, indicating that further work lay ahead.

In April 2006, six international donor agencies established a program to help Mozambique’s government register community land rights and improve tenure security for rural residents. Under Mozambique’s constitution, the state owned all land. A 1997 law, adopted after a 15-year civil war, sought to recognize rural communities’ customary tenure rights while encouraging commercial investment through the issuance of 50-year leaseholds. But many communities failed to register their holdings with the central government, leaving their rights vulnerable to powerful state and corporate interests. To address the problem, the donor group established the Community Land Initiative (iniciativa para Terras Comunitárias, or iTC), a program to register community parcels in the government cadastre and empower communities to negotiate with potential investors. The iTC coordinated with national and local governments as well as nongovernmental organizations to map the borders of community lands. The program informed community members about their land rights and how to use and protect them. It also established natural resource committees, which enabled communities to receive shares of the natural resource taxes paid by commercial investors working on communal lands. The iTC further created producer associations to support budding commercial farmers, resolved boundary disputes, and worked with provincial cadastral offices to issue certificates that specified property boundaries. By mid 2016, the program had registered 655 communities in the government cadastre—nearly four times the estimated 171 community registrations carried out before the iTC was established. The registrations covered 6.9 million hectares and 10% of the country’s rural population.

In 2011, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), a global environmental group, launched a pilot project to help 349 Indonesian palm oil farmers reduce the environmental impact of their farms. The initiative was a first step towards ushering more than one million small-scale palm oil farmers into a new era of forest-friendly production that would help to save rain forests across Sumatra, Borneo, and other Southeast Asian islands. While some large plantations had already agreed to engage in sustainable practices, designed to improve yields while reducing social and environmental impacts, about 40% of Indonesia’s production came from growers who cultivated small plots—often in remote areas. Aiming to open the door to widespread adoption of sustainable practices in the palm oil industry, the WWF’s pilot project targeted a small group of farmers, introducing them to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a global organization of palm companies, retailers, financial institutions, and environmental groups. The RSPO operated a voluntary certification system for sustainable palm oil production. In July 2013, the WWF pilot group became the first independent small-scale farmers in Indonesia to get certified under RSPO standards. During the next three years, a handful of similar groups followed, but significant challenges remained ahead for efforts to shift the palm oil industry as a whole toward sustainability.

Over the past decade, scholars and practitioners have constructed various indices of general, or specific legislative power, including Fish and Kroenig (2009), the Parliamentary Centre (2011) and Chernykh, Doyle, and Power (2017). In particular, Wehner (2006) developed a comparative framework to assess ex-ante legislative budget capacity, which captured legislative power to formulate and amend the national budget, before its enactment. Combining a set of variables into an index to measure legislative budgeting capacity, Wehner provided scholars with a ‘ … methodological toolkit for cross-national research on the legislative power of the purse’. His analysis highlighted the weaker relative power of the purse of legislatures in countries with Westminster parliamentary forms of government, namely Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, than those with presidential or other parliamentary forms of government.

Africa has experienced a boom in extractive industries since the beginning of this century. Extractive companies often are exposed not just to government patronage, but also to requests co consider local third-party agents, vendors or applications for employment. But is corruption a necessary evil? While there is conscensus that multi-faceted strategies are required to curb corruption, hietherto, there has been little research on how Parliamentary oversight can help reduce corruption in general and on Parliamentary oversight in the extractive industry in particular. This chapter presents a review of Parliamentary oversight of extractive industry in two African countries:- Ghana and Tanzania.

By measuring perceptions by significant players in Uganda's legislative arena, new research set out to determine how successfully Uganda's parliament is fulfilling its oversight function. Legislative oversight tools, potential, will, and a combination of external and internal factors for oversight were all considered in the analysis and data regarding keeping power excesses in check and ensuring developmental intentions met the optimum outcome for all citizens. The research data was collected by interviewer-led and self-administered questionnaires, completed by forty-seven respondents (13 MPs, 10 Parliamentary Staff, 12 CSO representatives, and 12 media representatives), as well as additional research on oversight and anti-corruption in Uganda.

In Myanmar, the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Assembly of the Union) is charged with the oversight of existing anti-corruption provisions. In this report, therefore, the effectiveness of the Hluttaw in its oversight capacity is examined. This report is divided into three sections: contextual factors, external oversight institutions, and internal legislative tools. Within each of these, each relevant element is analysed, particularly for its effectiveness in curbing corruption.

This report draws on results from an international survey of more than 20,000 public servants in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from a UK Department for International Development (DFID)-British Academy grant for this project (http://www.britac.ac.uk/node/4662/). In Uganda, the survey was implemented with the authorization of the Ugandan Government’s Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST) and the Ministry of Public Service. The authors would like to thank the over 1,500 public servants who took the time to complete the survey and share their experiences in public service. Without them, there would have been no report. The research would not have been possible without the excellent team of research assistants and enumerators: Faith Achan, Carol Asio, Richard Kalema, Justine Lubuga, Henry Muhairwe, Joshua Nabimanya, Sylvia Nabisusungu, Jenipher Nakabugo, Rebecca Nalinya, Christine Ndagire, Owen Owamani, Catherine Tabingwa, Pius Tibaingana, John Paul Wanambwa. The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of any government, funding agency or university

Accountability through practical norms: Civil service reform in Africa from below' (2016-2017) was part of the Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme funded by the British Academy and the Department for International Development (DFID) (£399,000).
The project explored ways to improve service delivery and levels of integrity by drawing on empirical evidence on practical informal norms in key government departments (health and education) in Sierra Leone, Senegal, Togo, Niger, Tanzania and Malawi.
It is the first comparative, cross-country study employing anthropological and socio-legal methods at a large scale to generate systematic empirical evidence on practical norms covering francophone and Anglophone countries in two regions, West and East Africa.
Practical informal norms at shop-floor level play an important role in regulating bureaucratic practices in settings where there is a wide discrepancy between official rules and lived realities. This might be negative, justifying or facilitating corrupt practices, but it might also be positive, resulting in hubs of integrity.

Since its independence in 1991 Kyrgyzstan has experienced mixed developments, oscillating between democratization and semi-authoritarianism. In comparison to other Central Asian regimes, Kyrgyzstan has a much more competitive political environment, having had a succession of four different presidents within 25 years,[1] and is considered to be a semi-authoritarian country with a parliamentary system.

As Kyrgyzstan constructs a modern national identity, a social institution long considered to be a vestige of the past – lineage identity – continues to exert significant influence over the process. This fact needs to be recognized and addressed.

Lineage affiliations have gained new relevance in Kyrgyz society in the post-Soviet era. Most ethnic Kyrgyz people can trace their lineage to one of 40 lineage groupings, each with a common geographic origin and unique history and genealogy. Some have now chosen to affirm these ties by creating informal lineage associations that exert behind-the-scenes influence over daily life, as well as in national politics.

The post-Soviet landscape of Central Asia, characterized by an intricate web of cultural ties, shared histories, and political ambitions, presents a unique case of regional integration that has both fascinated and perplexed international observers. From 1991 to 2005, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan worked assiduously to develop regional cooperation, an effort that had to contend with conflicting national interests and external geopolitical pressures.

The early years following the Soviet dissolution ushered in a moment of hope for a “Golden Age” of integration. Between 1992 and 1998, regional leaders embarked on ambitious initiatives aimed at constructing a new order that would facilitate collaboration and mutual development. However, as idealism gave way to pragmatism, the stark realities of internal and external challenges emerged.

As Kyrgyzstan constructs a modern national identity, a social institution long considered to be a vestige of the past—lineage identity—continues to exert significant influence over the present-day processes. This fact needs to be recognized and addressed. Lineage affiliations have gained new relevance in Kyrgyz society in the post-Soviet era. Most ethnic Kyrgyz people can trace their descent to one of 40 lineage groupings, each with a common geographic origin, graves, unique history and genealogy. Some have now chosen to affirm these ties by creating informal lineage associations that exert behind-the-scenes influence over daily life, as well as in national politics. Most importantly, lineage associations hold significant power to mobilize voters, control patronage, and organize protests. In essence, they can function as lobby groups, or even rudimentary political parties that reach deep into local and regional institutions. At the same time, lineage associations are increasingly striving for greater recognition in Kyrgyz politics and society. Some advocate for a formal constitutional role, including the creation of a special governmental assembly to represent them. Despite wielding considerable influence, kinship associations largely operate in the political shadows. The country’s law on public associations restricts such groups from engaging in open political activity. I argue that lineage associations function as a kind of constraint and control mechanism on the political sphere, ensuring that no single leader is able to gain sufficient enough power to become a dictator, and at times also help to contain local corruption. Kyrgyzstan is not the only society in the region (or in the world) to consist of myriad lineage groups. One can see the emergence of the lineage groups in other Central Asian societies and elsewhere in the world (Lewis 2004; Hoehne 2016), but the Kyrgyzstan’s exceptional in the way in which they have begun to come out of the closet and into open politics in the post-Soviet context.

In the early 2000s, Tanzania struggled to protect the land rights of the 75% of its citizens who lived in rural areas. Rapid population growth and rising investment in commercial agriculture had increased land scarcity and created the potential for violent conflict in parts of the country. In accordance with the provisions of a new law, the national lands ministry launched a pilot project in 2001 to title 158 villages and more than 1,000 individual parcels. Building on lessons from the project, the government passed a new land-use planning act, created a new implementation program, and drew up a strategic plan to title rural land throughout the country. Starting in 2008, the lands ministry worked with community leaders to grant villages and their residents title documents that protected them from land grabbing. Villages also decided how they would use communal land and how they would set up committees to resolve boundary disputes. Officials constructed registry buildings in villages and districts to house title documents before surveying individual land parcels and handing over titles to village residents. By 2017, more than 11,000 of Tanzania’s approximately 12,500 villages had mapped their outer limits, and about 13% of villages had also adopted land-use plans. Of the approximately 6 million households located within rural villages, about 400,000 also had obtained individual title documents.

The eruption of large-scale corruption and money laundering cases during 2016 has shown that we are still far from rooting out corruption. Very significant sums of money continue to be stolen each year from countries that struggle from lack of resources to sustain a meaningful development path. At the same time, the fact that these cases have been detected and are pro-actively investigated shows that there is continuous and indeed growing energy in this field. That being said, in most countries the investigation and legal techniques required to not only jail the criminals but to also recover their assets are still little understood. And with the criminals becoming more sophisticated every day, even experienced law enforcement agencies need to learn and adapt. ICAR’s support therefore remains as critical as ever

In Mexico, mordida is a widely used ‘euphemism’ for a petty bribe (Morris 2003). The word literally translates as ‘bite’ from Spanish. While the origins of this euphemistic use of the word are contested, probably the most recurrent explanation given by Mexicans is that it alludes to police officers and other public officials being seen as dogs, on the lookout for an innocent citizen to ‘have a bite of’. It is significant that several studies (Del Castillo and Guerrero 2003; Bailey and Paras 2006: 64) have found that mordida is the one practice consistently identified by Mexicans as linked directly to corruption, whereas average citizens appear to struggle with articulating the meaning of corruption in a more abstract sense (Del Castillo and Guerrero 2003)

This paper analyses how consulting firms enabled state capture in South Africa’s state-owned enterprises. It shows how weak procurement rules, manipulated success fees, and the reputational cover of global firms like McKinsey allowed local partners Regiments and Trillian to embed themselves within Transnet and Eskom. By sidelining internal expertise and justifying inflated contracts, consultants became active facilitators of corruption—undermining state capacity and exposing systemic governance risks.

Despite very substantial investments in anti-corruption, progress is frustratingly limited and in some cases insignificant. The resources devoted to the issue in the last fifteen years have been sizable, stemming from intense activity on the part of multilateral organisations, bilateral donors and private companies across numerous countries. These efforts have focused for the most part on ensuring the implementation of the OECD and UN conventions as well as regional instruments, building capacity, providing technical assistance and offering educational programs – to the point one can speak of the emergence of a veritable “anti-corruption industry”. Given that the anti-corruption agenda is frequently and correctly linked to those of rule of law, good governance and sustainable development, the funds and human capital applied to this issue are even more significant.

In this article we challenge the prevalent anti-corruption approaches in three ways. First, rather than discussing the failures of anticorruption reforms and the normative anticorruption rhetoric of the leadership in Mexico, Russia and Tanzania, we explore patterns of informal governance that work effectively, allowing the authorities to stay in power and citizens to access services and resources. Second, we link these practices to the impossibility of a clear public/private divide and identify those practical norms that enable its seamless crossover in these countries. Third, we find that the resilience of corrupt behaviours is associated with the fact that the informal governance norms that we identify across the three cases are permeated with ambivalent meanings and implications. This approach is expected to generate insights relevant to the development of a new generation of more effective anti-corruption measures for countries that suffer from high levels of corruption.

This article applies a novel conceptual framework to characterise and assess the repertoire of practices used by informal networks to redistribute power and access to resources. These distinct norms and practices are typologised as co-optation, control, and camouflage. Co-optation involves recruitment into the network by means of the reciprocal exchange of favours. Control is about ensuring discipline amongst network members by means of shaming and social isolation. Camouflage refers to the formal facades behind which informality hides and is about protecting and legitimising the network. All three are relevant to a more fine-grained understanding of corruption and its underpinnings. Findings from our comparative research in three East African countries (Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) suggest that these informal practices are relevant to an understanding of the choices and attitudes of providers and users of public services at the local level. Adopting this analytical lens helps to explain the limited impact of conventional anti-corruption prescriptions and provides a basis to develop alternative strategies that harness the potential of social network dynamics to promote positive anti-corruption outcomes.

This paper identifies how structural weaknesses in voluntary carbon markets create corruption risks—and outlines evidence gaps for future research. It examines how market volatility, poor oversight, and regulatory ambiguity expose VCMs to fraud, threatening their credibility and effectiveness.

GI ACE and Spotlight on Corruption released a landmark report presenting the findings of interdisciplinary academic research that explores the contested role of lawyers in relation to kleptocracy, state capture and grand corruption. Focusing on the role of solicitors in England and Wales, the research analyses the different narratives used to criticise and defend lawyers and law firms who act for the beneficiaries of kleptocratic wealth.

This briefing reveals how BGFIBank DRC was transformed into a vehicle for grand corruption by Congo’s ruling elite. It details how illicit financial flows were enabled through mis-invoicing, fictitious loans, and compromised oversight. The findings expose systemic failures in banking governance and highlight the urgent need for regulatory reform.

Illicit financial flows have surged in the Western Balkans and the Black Sea region following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This increase is closely linked to the re-export of dual-use goods from the EU to Russia through established smuggling routes and trade misinvoicing practices.

To assess the effectiveness of international efforts to combat illicit financial flows (IFFs), we need a map of how and when specific reforms have been implemented in key jurisdictions around the world over the past few decades.

This publication focuses on groundbreaking research revealing significant shifts in the pattern of global illicit financial flows (IFFs). The study, led by Dr. Daniel Haberly, reveals how and where different types of illicit money flows around the world.

Governments are usually the largest purchaser of goods and services in an economy, which creates significant opportunities for corruption. We study whether training procurement officials in fifty Ugandan districts to publish procurement actions in an online public portal, as is legally required, increased compliance.

Unexplained Wealth Orders, introduced in the United Kingdom in 2017, were designed to tackle the problem of transnational kleptocracy. However, our research on real estate purchases in the UK by elites from post-Soviet kleptocracies dem-onstrates that incumbent elites are invulnerable to attempts to question the legality of their wealth while exiles from these states often lose their property. The researchers elaborate an exemplary case of transnational kleptocracy (Kazakhstan's Dariga Nazarbayeva and Nurali Aliyev) revealing how British legal services actively, passively, and structurally enable specific acts of money laundering. They further expose how they effectively explain kleptocratic wealth and why they are likely to continue to do so despite recent changes to laws and regulations.

This paper summarises research exploring patterns of global shell company formation and regulations governing offshore financial secrecy. The research uses big data analytics both to examine existing assumptions held by campaigners, practitioners and policy-makers, and to provide an evidence base for future anti-
corruption policy-making.

Chapter abstract: Corruption is one of the major hurdles to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally. Money is lost due to illicit financial flows and the lack of progress in updating policies and improving the technical capabilities of key departments at the national level. In addition to that, many African countries face the challenge of reforming colonial-era public administrations, making them more accessible and accountable to the people they serve. In turn, successfully localizing the SDGs requires a competent and ethical public service, including at the local government level, which is the primary state-citizen interface. This chapter sets out to connect the aims of SDG 11 and SDG 16 through exploring the potential of the urban planning profession as a key custodian of transparency, accountability, and, ultimately, urban integrity. Drawing on research among urban and regional planners in Zambia and South Africa, done as part of the Cities of Integrity project and funded by DFID/FCDO, we argue that planners are among the key stakeholders to engage when addressing corruption and maladministration at the local level. We further maintain that it is worthwhile to move from a narrow focus on legalistic compliance with anti-corruption measures towards a more proactive promotion of professional integrity and collective accountability mechanisms. This is especially true in the African context. Finally, using a case study involving planning professionals in Lusaka, we explore the opportunities and challenges faced when addressing corruption and promoting integrity among the local community of practice.

3 Research Case Studies: Targeting corrupt behaviours in a Tanzanian hospital: A social norms approach; Leveraging informal networks for anti-corruption in East Africa; Exposing the networks behind transnational corruption and money laundering schemes

While many studies on corruption in emergencies address challenges with emergency spending, this research further considers the gaps in our understanding of these issues and provides recommendations for interventions to make emergency responses less vulnerable to fraud and corruption. The research adopts a framework for analysis that examines the regulatory and policy landscape and practices for emergency responses focusing on four dimensions: people, processes, challenges, and interventions; in five selected countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Hungary, South Africa, Nigeria; and also looks at the World Bank as a donor.

Ensuring that lawyers stay on the right side of the fight against money laundering and alerting law enforcement to suspicious funds is essential to the integrity of the UK
financial system and to the UK’s national security. Up to now, the legal profession has largely been allowed to regulate itself when it comes to money laundering – with anti-money laundering (AML) supervision falling to nine different professional bodies in the sector. This system is broken.

Our report, which is based on a comprehensive review and analysis of existing supervisory data over the past three years, finds that there is a long way to go in achieving this goal.
The legal sector supervisors tasked with holding legal firms to account for breaches of the UK’s AML rules remain fragmented, with enforcement action uneven and inadequate. Our five main findings are listed below.

Ensuring that lawyers stay on the right side of the fight against money laundering and alerting law enforcement to suspicious funds is essential to the integrity of the UK
financial system and to the UK’s national security. Up to now, the legal profession has largely been allowed to regulate itself when it comes to money laundering – with anti-money laundering (AML) supervision falling to nine different professional bodies in the sector. This system is broken.

Our report, which is based on a comprehensive review and analysis of existing supervisory data over the past three years, finds that there is a long way to go in achieving this goal.
The legal sector supervisors tasked with holding legal firms to account for breaches of the UK’s AML rules remain fragmented, with enforcement action uneven and inadequate. Our five main findings are listed below.

The commodity trading sector has historically presented particular corruption risks. From the extraction of raw materials to the final sale of refined goods, commodities pass along complex supply chains with multiple overlapping intermediaries. For each firm along the chain, commodity trading is a low-margin, high-volume activity, where profits depend on arbitrage. In this market, offshore financial centers (OFC), minimally-regulated global financial hubs and professional “enablers” facilitate everything from questionable deals to outright theft. Corruption at this cross-national scale does not simply distort competition and prices. It can erode political stability, exacerbate conflict, and jeopardize national security by allowing powerful actors to behave with impunity.

This report is about the professionals around the world, from accountants and lawyers to realtors and art dealers, who each day (wittingly or unwittingly) facilitate illicit financial flows (IFFs) of money, which in turn allows crime and corruption to flourish. To date, the global community working to combat IFFs has focused its efforts on targeting criminals: the individuals and organizations generating revenues from illicit activities (e.g., kleptocrats, drug cartels, etc.). Considerably less attention has been paid to the enabling professionals (collectively referred to as
‘enablers’), often located in the Global North, that facilitate the process of obscuring or laundering illicit funds often originating in the Global South.

Daniel Haberly and Dariusz Wójcik offer a novel theoretical framework for understanding financial networks, which is richly illustrated with data, figures, and visualisations and argues for a new way of thinking about money, finance, and their implications for the world economy and society.

Much of the existing research on corruption does not focus on real-world problems, engage sufficiently with the power dynamics and incentives that underpin corrupt activity, or communicate findings in ways that are useful for anti-corruption practitioners. More broadly, too much research is focused on describing or analysing corruption, without testing effective mechanisms to do
something about it.

To help address some of the factors that underpin this problem, the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence (GI-ACE) Research Programme commissioned a series of research projects focused on developing anti-corruption interventions that, if applied within context-specific and politically feasible settings, may result in practical reforms and improved policy prescriptions

Drawing on the systematic methodologies behind investigative journalism, open source intelligence gathering, big-data, criminology, and political science, this series maps the transnational corporate, legal and governmental structures employed by organisations and figures in Central Asia to accumulate wealth, influence and political power. The findings will be analysed from a good governance, human rights, and democratic perspective, to draw out the big picture lessons. Each instalment will feature a digestible, analytical snapshot centring on a particular thematic, individual, or organisation, delivered in a format that is designed to be accessible to the public, useful to policy makers, and valuable to civil society.

Urban corruption can hinder integrated planning, skew the equitable distribution of public investments, and capture urban management processes to the detriment of the public. Yet, we argue in this article, the city scale has been largely overlooked in contemporary anti-corruption research, and – by the same token – urban scholars only recently started paying attention to the role of corruption in urban development. Based on extensive quantitative and qualitative research with planning professionals in South Africa and Zambia, we firstly explore the complex dynamics of urban corruption and the challenges it poses in the respective national planning spheres. Based on this exploration, we then motivate for the need to move beyond compliance-focused understandings of corruption as the sole basis for developing strategies against city-level corruption. Finally, we outline an agenda for possible future research and action on urban integrity.

What role do bureaucrats play in the development of the resource curse in countries that have recently discovered oil? Much of the resource curse literature argues that political leaders spend natural resource revenue in ways that entrench their political power but undermine longer-term economic development. This literature has largely overlooked the role of bureaucrats – those responsible for the day-to-day operations of the state. Bureaucrats may support or constrain political spending in ways that minimize the resource curse. Using results of a survey experiment with over 3,000 government employees in Ghana and Uganda, two countries with recent oil and gas discoveries, we find that bureaucrats treated with information on oil revenue are more likely to disapprove of spending practices that benefit political supporters. The results also suggest that material motivations may be at play: bureaucrats in Uganda who are secure in their jobs and outside of government patronage networks are most likely to oppose the political use of oil revenue. These findings challenge unitary state assumptions underlying much of the resource curse literature, especially for new oil producers. They also suggest that policymakers ought to engage civil servants in efforts to avoid or curtail the resource curse.

This brief highlights key takeaways and recommendations of “Recognizing Local Leaders as an Anti-Corruption Strategy: Experimental and Ethnographic Evidence from Uganda” (2022), a published as GI-ACE Working Paper No. 17 by Mark Buntaine, Alex Babago, Tanner Bangerter, Paul Bukuluki, and Brigham Daniels. It is one of two studies designed and implemented as part of the project “Can positive public recognition lead to good governance?” funded as part of the Global Integrity-FCDO Anti-Corruption Evidence Program (2019-2021).

This project set out to answer the research question: can identification and tracking of Beneficial Ownership (BO) in Nigeria be improved to increase the likelihood of recovering the proceeds of grand corruption? Our research question necessitated an analysis of grand corruption in Nigeria and the use of beneficial ownership and Nigeria’s anti-corruption and asset recovery regime, especially its actions regarding beneficial ownership. While the Final Report (‘the Report’) does not offer a ‘silver bullet’ to the problems of grand corruption, the answer to our research question is a qualified ‘yes’.

This Policy Brief distils recommendations for Collective Action practitioners based on empirical insights on certain forms of corruption involving private-sector actors.

Field research carried out in Tanzania and Uganda produced detailed case studies that show how informal networks link private and public sector actors to pursue common illicit goals, such as gaining an unfair business advantage, avoiding a sanction, decreasing taxes owed or jumping the queue at the point of delivery of public services. Corruption, most often bribery, is the currency that works to cement and nurture those networks.

This Policy Brief is based on that research and a series of in-depth interviews with Collective Action practitioners working in Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The goal is to extract insights from what we have learned about the networks that fuel corruption and discuss implications for anti-corruption Collective Action initiatives.

Corruption is frequently associated with money alone and the behaviours of a few individual “bad apples” operating in otherwise healthy governance systems. This is too simplistic. As the latest research shows, including research in Tanzania and Uganda on which this Policy Brief is based, corruption is a networked phenomenon. This Policy Brief explains what this means and its implications for anti-corruption practice.

We investigate whether positive recognition of elected community leaders improves the administration of public projects and fosters expectations for good governance. This approach contrasts with most anti-corruption interventions that focus on detecting or punishing the misuse of public funds. In a first field experiment, we test whether prospectively offering eligibility for positive recognition increases local leaders' effort and effectiveness at administering public projects according to legal guidelines designed to deter corruption. In a second field experiment, we test whether retrospectively learning about leaders who received awards for the effective administration of projects increases leaders' and residents' expectations for good governance and norms against corruption. Prospective eligibility for recognition did not improve the management of public projects or change norms about corruption. Retrospectively learning about local leaders who earned recognition likewise did not change behaviors or attitudes about corruption. An ethnographic study embedded in all stages of both field experiments shows that the possibility for recognition generated excitement among local leaders, but was not able to overcome structural constraints that limited local leaders' ability to shape the outcomes of public projects.

Small-scale cross-border trade is important to livelihoods, regional integration and food security in East Africa and beyond, yet corruption and harassment are serious problems that need to be better understood for improved interventions. Jacqueline Klopp is joined by colleagues Brian Baraza and David Orega to present for the GI-ACE Weekly Event Series.

Mobile phones present new opportunities to support cross-border traders in Africa in addressing corruption and harassment. This paper describes an experiment involving traders using a reporting feature on mobile phones to provide data on cross border experiences. Traders answered basic questions around payments, waiting time and overall comfort level of one cross border trip each week. Two hundred and eighteen traders were recruited to participate and received remote onboarding in June 2021. From April 17th to 3 September 3rd 2021, we collected and tracked data from the reporting feature on a dashboard. We also conducted two surveys of all traders: one early on to gauge initial problems with using the platform and a final exit survey of users and non-users of the reporting feature. One hundred and ninety-nine participants stayed in the study with 87 becoming users of the reporting tool (44%) and 112 or (56%) who did not. Younger, more educated traders had a higher likelihood of using the reporting feature, suggesting more training and support would boost participation. Towards the end of the experiment, a core group of users were reporting in a regular, sustained way. Besides being too busy or forgetting to report, non-users explained barriers to participation including misunderstandings around compensation and/or the mistaken belief that reporting entailed costs. A majority of all traders suggested that compensation or exchanging useful information from other traders would
be necessary to incentivize sustained reporting.

The Framework for Countering Corruption and Economic Crime is informed by the team’s extensive research on law enforcement and high-level corruption in Nigeria (Page, 2021 “Innovative or Ineffective? Reassessing Anti-corruption Law Enforcement In Nigeria”) and Malawi (Anders, 2021 “Law Enforcement And High-level Corruption In Malawi: Learning From Cashgate”). For brief summaries of findings and recommendations see the project’s policy briefs on Nigeria and Malawi.

The resource curse literature argues that oil production reshapes the fiscal contract between citizens and the state: politicians become less responsive to citizen taxpayers and more likely to use public revenues for their own benefit. This paper examines whether and how bureau- crats influence this breakdown of the fiscal contract. Analyzing results of a survey experiment conducted with government employees in Ghana and Uganda, we find that, when primed to think about oil revenue, bureaucrats do not generally express attitudes indicating that they con- tribute to the resource curse. Although oil revenue does lead some Ghanaian bureaucrats to become less interested in responding to taxpayers, this finding does not operate as predicted, i.e. by bureaucrats expressing greater partiality toward the ruling elite. Instead, we attribute this outcome to ‘disgruntled employees’ – political outsiders with low salaries – who, unlikely to benefit from oil revenue, become disaffected from citizen service. The results shed new light on processes through which resource extraction changes state institutions.

Public service motivation (PSM) is a core concept in public administration, studied in surveys across numerous countries. Whether these studies accumulate comparable knowledge about PSM crucially depends on PSM measurement invariance: that PSM has a similar measurement structure in different national contexts. Yet, large-scale cross-country research to address this conundrum remains scant. Drawing on an original survey of 23,000 public servants in ten countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, our paper addresses this gap. Replicating Kim et al.’s 16-item scale, we find partial metric invariance for the four PSM dimensions in eight countries, but scalar non-invariance. This suggests that results from structural equations about the causes and consequences of PSM may be compared across most countries, yet means of PSM and its dimensions are not generally comparable. PSM research thus cannot adjudicate in which countries public service motivation is higher or lower on average but can compare relationships between PSM and individual characteristics or management practices between countries. Our findings underscore the cross-cultural basis of public service motivation and its limits.

Our team conducted four mobile phone surveys of over 1600 Kenya- based small-scale cross border traders in Busia, Malaba and Taveta. Surveys started in December 2020 and ended in June 2021. We asked questions on the impact of COVID and COVID restrictions on their businesses, the kinds of payments including irregular payments they are asked for, levels of comfort and also their thoughts on current policy initiatives including the One Stop Border Post, Trade Information Desks and cross-border market development. We discussed and validated some of the results from the surveys in a meeting with traders in Busia on 15, November 2021. Traders overwhelmingly asked for results from our research to be shared with government agencies and civil society organisations. With this in mind, this policy brief highlights high-level findings and concrete policy action points.

This project set out to answer the research question: can improvements be made to the identification and tracking of Beneficial Ownership (BO) in Nigeria to increase the likelihood of recovering the proceeds of grand corruption? This executive summary lays out recommendations based on several years of investigation on behalf of this research team.

Gerhard Anders presenting for the GI-ACE Weekly Series

This report is based on publicly available data on MNREGA for the period 2011/12-2018/19, and PMGSY for the period 2000/01-2018/19. The Government of India (GoI) revised average budget of MGNREGA over this period has been INR 40867 crore per year while for PMGSY it has been INR 8949 (till 2016-17) crore per year. How efficiently have states used this budget?

Education is central to theories of how bureaucracies professionalize. Going back to Weber, the process towards a capable and professional bureaucracy has been viewed as driven by the entry of well-educated, professional recruits. We argue that this perspective misses important dynamics within professionalising bureaucracies – in particular how bureaucrats inside government react when bureaucracies professionalize. Building on this insight, we argue that incumbent bureaucrats face incentives to acquire greater expertise when educated entrants arrive, in order to remain competitive for organizational rewards (such as promotions) inside government and jobs outside government in case educated entrants "outcompete" them. We provide empirical support for these propositions with a priming experiment with 3,000 bureaucrats in Chile's central government. Bureaucrats primed about the professionalization of other bureaucrats put a greater premium on their own expertise acquisition. Our findings suggest that bureaucratic professionalization is a contagious – and thus self-reinforcing - process inside government

Jackie Harvey and Sue Turner presenting for the GI-ACE Weekly Series

Laura Nkula-Wenz and Gilbert Siame presenting for the GI-ACE Weekly Series

Claudia Baez Camargo presenting for the GI-ACE Weekly Series

This case study presents sheds light on the functioning of informal networks in East Africa, based on evidence collected in Tanzania. The report presents evidence, consisting of four mini-case studies from Uganda that describe informal networks associated with bribery and procurement fraud. The ten cases are also analysed and implications for anti-corruption practice discussed in the larger report.

This case study presents sheds light on the functioning of informal networks in East Africa, based on evidence collected in Tanzania. The report presents evidence, consisting of six mini-case studies from Tanzania that describe informal networks associated with bribery and procurement fraud. The ten cases are also analysed and implications for anti-corruption practice discussed in the larger report.

This report presents findings from a research project entitled “Harnessing informality: Designing anti-corruption network interventions and strategic use of legal instruments”. The project follows from a previous research project where the Basel Institute on Governance, in partnership with University College London and SOAS, researched informality and its relationship with corruption and governance in seven countries in East Africa and Central Asia.

The findings from that research project, which can be explored at length here, suggested that corruption often takes place according to informal, unwritten rules. The present report sheds light on the functioning of informal networks in East Africa, based on evidence collected in Tanzania and Uganda. The report presents evidence, consisting of ten mini-case studies (six from Tanzania and four from Uganda) that describe informal networks associated with bribery and procurement fraud. The ten cases are also analysed and implications for anti-corruption practice discussed.

This paper proposes new composite measures of relative and dynamic state performance to improve governance and delivery of public programs in developing countries with a federal structure. We rank the performance of 19 major Indian states on two large development programs launched by the Indian government over the last two decades using publicly available data. Although we find volatility in performance over time, there exists a positive correlation between measures of state capacity, development and accountability with program outcomes. Our findings have important implications for both the design and implementation of public service programs of such large scale.

In developing countries with weak enforcement institutions, there is implicitly a large reliance on electoral incentives to reduce corruption. However electoral discipline works well only under some conditions. In this paper we study the effect of electoral competition on corruption when uncertainty in elections is high (or accountability is low), as in many developing countries. Our theory focuses on the case of high uncertainty and shows that in this case there is a U-shaped relationship between electoral competition and corruption. We illustrate the predictions of the model with village level data on audit detected irregularities and electoral competition from India.

Democratic backsliding has multiplied “unprincipled” political principals: governments with weak commitment to the public interest. Why do some bureaucrats engage in voice and guerrilla sabotage to thwart policies against the public interest under “unprincipled principals,” yet others do not? Despite its centrality in contemporary governance, this conundrum has not seen quantitative research. We address this gap with survey evidence from 1,700 Brazilian public servants during the Temer Presidency, widely perceived to lack democratic legitimacy and integrity. We focus on one key explanator: public service motivation (PSM). We argue that bureaucrats with greater PSM are more likely to engage in voice and sabotage of “unprincipled policies,” and exit to avoid implementing “unprincipled policies.” Structural equation models support these hypotheses. Public service-motivated bureaucracies are thus short-run stalwarts against “unprincipled” political principals. Over time, they look to depart, however, leaving “unprincipled” principals a freer hand to pursue policies against the public interest.

Our evidence addresses the question: How should the FCDO take account of and mitigate potential inhibiting factors to investment (such as corruption, security, human rights abuses)? It is specifically focussed on the subject of corruption. Much of the global approach to AML and anti-corruption is predicated upon the formal banking system (as exist in the developed West) and the prevention of criminal access to it. Intervention measures also assume access to good quality and accurate data and formal methods of record keeping both by the financial sector and the law enforcement agencies.

Nigeria is a country of paradoxes. It has the highest economic ranking on the African continent, with a nominal GDP of $443 billion, followed by Egypt: $350 billion and South Africa: $283 billion in 2020. On the other hand, per capita income is amongst the lowest on the continent, ranking the country 17th (out of 20) in 2019. Nigeria is a country of paradoxes. It has the highest economic ranking on the African continent, with a nominal GDP of $443 billion, followed by Egypt: $350 billion and South Africa: $283 billion in 2020. On the other hand, per capita income is amongst the lowest on the continent, ranking the country 17th (out of 20) in 2019. Nigeria also has the unenviable position of being perceived as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. As forms and perception of petty corruption have been monitored by organisations such as TI and UNODC, this working paper will be devoted to grand corruption.

The Urban planning landscape world over has experienced considerable dynamics and planners have experienced various aspects of planning. Whereas there has been emphasis on the need to uphold integrity, it is a contested matter. Planners from diverse backgrounds have shared their experiences on the various aspects of how they experience integrity and corruption in urban planning.
The qualitative action experiments are thus a platform to (get data from working paper) which have yielded much results with regards to offering insights into the plight of planners. With the first QAE held in October 2019 in Lusaka, which meant to equip planners with tools, that will foster integrity in the urban workspace. The second workshop was held as a follow up to build on discovered data and asking of instruments such as the urban and regional planner’s Act and brought together over 25 planners that joined in physically and virtually from various planning institutions across the country.

Ongoing research study examining law enforcement efforts against high-level (grand) corruption in Nigeria and Malawi funded by FCDO (part of the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Research Programme). In the context of this project pathways to impact working closely with Ministry of Justice and anti-corruption agencies in Nigeria and Malawi. As part of this research, we collected narratives among government officials about the impact of the law enforcement response to the 2013 Cashgate scandal.

There is a growing recognition that the enablers of large-scale (‘grand’) corruption lie in transnational financial networks. Literature suggests that a large proportion of illicit flows from Nigeria are invested in the UK. But illicit flows are, by their nature, illegal and deliberately hidden from view, making them a particularly challenging object of research. By presenting the findings of three Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence (GI-ACE) projects that analyse UK-Nigeria business connections from different perspectives, this discussion will examine and problematise the international financial architecture that allows for proceeds of grand corruption looted from Nigeria to be laundered in the UK. It will furthermore discuss the role of Western professional service providers in facilitating kleptocratic practices.

Small-scale, cross-border trade is critically important to livelihoods and food security in East Africa, but bribes, harassment and violence remain a serious problem. This paper critically and systematically reviews a growing and diverse literature on small-scale, cross-border trade, corruption and gender. The aim is to synthesize and assess the current state of knowledge, highlight progress and gaps, and assess the potential of anti-corruption programs to address the needs of traders, lowering bribes and reducing harassment and violence. We found that research is drawing on diverse methods, leveraging ubiquitous cell phones and focusing on trader networks, their gendered interactions with state border actors. More work could focus on state actors and their internal interactions, including the police. Questions remain around what determines how bribes function, the norms around them and their levels as well as how well trader associations, civil society and formal and informal platforms for dialogue between traders and border government actors work to improve conditions. Understanding how traders choose between formal and informal pathways and how dynamics around how these different pathways interact is also critical. We see a growing variety of anti-corruption strategies drawing on the accumulated knowledge, as well as some experimentation in approach, with some successes.

This brief highlights key takeaways and recommendations published in the report ‘Innovative or Ineffective? Reassessing Anti-Corruption Law Enforcement in Nigeria’ (2021) GI-ACE Working Paper No. 9 by Matthew Page (Chatham House) 1. It is one of two country case studies of the project ‘Fighting high-level corruption in Africa: Learning from effective law enforcement’ funded by the Global Integrity-FCDO Anti-Corruption Evidence Program (2019-21). The research project is the first systematic study of law enforcement efforts targeting high-level (grand) corruption in Africa, presenting case studies of Nigeria and Malawi. It aims at identifying both enabling and constraining factors for effective law enforcement. The focus on the specifics of enforcement practice is new and provides evidence that has been missing in anti-corruption research.

This brief highlights key takeaways and recommendations published in the report ‘Law Enforcement and High- level Corruption in Malawi: Learning from Cashgate’ (2021) GI-ACE Working Paper No. 8 by Dr Gerhard Anders (University of Edinburgh).1 It is one of two country case studies of the project ‘Fighting high-level corruption in Africa: Learning from effective law enforcement’, which is part of the FCDO- funded Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE) (2019-21). The research project is the first systematic study of law enforcement efforts targeting high-level (grand) corruption in Africa, presenting case studies of Nigeria and Malawi. It aims at identifying both enabling and constraining factors for effective law enforcement. The focus on the specifics of enforcement practice is new and provides evidence that has been missing in anti-corruption research.

This paper is based on a case study of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) framework as applied in Nigeria and has arisen from a cross-disciplinary (comprising of a team of academics and practitioners) funded research project that considers beneficial ownership as part of the global fight against corruption and money laundering (the AC Project). The AC Project is focused on Nigeria, a country that whilst described as the “powerhouse” of West Africa, is also evaluated as weak for transparency and accountability by Africa Integrity Indicators. The AC Project pays particular attention to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations, 24, 25 dealing with transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons and arrangements, and 38 covering Mutual Legal Assistance, asset freezing and confiscation. In addition, countries are required to maintain and share accurate and up to date information regarding the legal and beneficial ownership of companies and trusts. This part of the AML framework forms a focus of our case study.

GI-ACE Annual Report for 2020

Nigeria’s anti-corruption law enforcement efforts are incrementally growing more effective as practitioners adapt, innovate, and leverage recent legislative reforms as they navigate many persistent challenges. Sometimes caricatured as sclerotic, politicized, or error-prone, high-level anti-corruption efforts are becoming noticeably more innovative and pragmatic. Instead of being abandoned under pressure or grinding to a standstill, high-profile corruption cases increasingly involve new, more pragmatic resolutions. These include plea bargains and asset forfeiture as well as probationary and non-custodial sentences. In instances where political stakes are high and the likelihood of conviction is low, these tools are now seen as faster, more straightforward, and more viable than traditional criminal prosecutions.

This report presents the findings of a study on the dynamics of law enforcement in high-level corruption cases in Malawi. The research project, Learning from effective law enforcement, is the first systematic study of law enforcement efforts targeting high-level (grand) corruption in Africa, presenting case studies of Nigeria and Malawi. It aims at identifying both enabling and constraining factors for effective law enforcement. The focus on the specifics of enforcement practice is new and provides evidence that has been missing in anti-corruption research.

Poor governance is a major problem affecting outcomes as diverse as economic growth, the environment, and security, all of which impact people’s wellbeing. Big scams make headline news but it is rare for media outlets to follow up on investigations years down the line. In order to design anti-corruption policies, we first need to understand the determinants of corruption; we argue that audit data can offer a rich source to understand the determinants of corruption and such data should be made available in a way that it does not violate any privacy norms.

John Heathershaw contributes to a piece in the National Endowment for Democracy that makes the case that the global health pandemic will bring into sharp relief the debilitated state of social services in many countries, which could lead to greater citizen discontent and activism. The International Forum for Democratic Studies asked four leading experts for their views on how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect trends in transnational kleptocracy.

Website on the Curbing Corruption in Procurement project, funded by the Department for International Development Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme. The research analyses how procurement can be manipulated for corrupt ends using a prize-winning ‘red flags’ methodology developed by Mihály Fazekas. The project collect datasets of procurement tenders and contracts, with a range of variables that indicate corruption risk, and analyse the data to identify suspicious patterns and trends, by procuring entity, supplier, and over time.

Responding to COVID‐19 presents unprecedented challenges for public sector practitioners. Addressing those challenges requires knowledge about the problems that public sector workers face. This essay argues that timely, up‐to‐date surveys of public sector workers are essential tools for identifying problems, resolving bottlenecks, and enabling public sector workers to operate effectively during and in response to the challenges posed by the pandemic. This essay presents the COVID‐19 Survey of Public Servants, which is currently being rolled out in several countries by the Global Survey of Public Servants Consortium to assist governments in strategically compiling evidence to operate effectively during the COVID‐19 pandemic.

The article argues that the impact of law enforcement efforts against corruption deserves more scholarly attention. Drawing on a mixed-methods study from Malawi in southern Africa, where a large-scale law enforcement operation has been investigating and prosecuting those involved in a 2013 corruption scandal known as ‘Cashgate’, the article explores the potential for corruption deterrence from the perspective of government officials in the Malawi civil service.

The SFRA approach has evolved over a period of several years, through a combination of practical engagement with reformers in sectors such as defence, health and education, across a range of countries at various stages of development, and from challenges to the existing research on anti-corruption. It has been married with a deeper understanding of what ‘strategy’ is, based on a review of modern thinking about strategy in military, business and politics, presented by Heywood and Pyman (2020) in a companion paper.

Heather Marquette and Caryn Peiffer lay the groundwork for analyzing interventions in their Corruption Functionality Framework. Their four-step approach helps those designing anti-corruption interventions to understand why ‘everyday’ corruption appears to provide solutions to problems that formal structures and systems fail to address.

In this paper, the authors have argued that in order to develop effective strategies to combat corruption, one first needs to recapture the proper meaning of ‘strategy’. In doing so, they have returned to the roots of the term in its military and business usage to explore how that can inform the way we should focus on anti-corruption. In particular, they have placed emphasis on different scales of reform, distinguishing between international, national and tactical to show how they may call for different types of reform strategy.

In this paper, the authors have argued that in order to develop effective strategies to combat corruption, one first needs to recapture the proper meaning of ‘strategy’. In doing so, they have returned to the roots of the term in its military and business usage to explore how that can inform the way we should focus on anti-corruption. In particular, they have placed emphasis on different scales of reform, distinguishing between international, national and tactical to show how they may call for different types of reform strategy.

Mobile phones and other technologies have transformed the nature and dynamics of informal social networks in Kyrgyzstan. Some scholars argue that new technology (electronisation, digitalisation) helps to prevent corruption and reduce the risk of bribery, informal social networks and bureaucracy. In their view, new technology has the potential to create transparent and efficient ways to access public services. This is usually done by implementing electronic queue systems, online payment platforms, registers and other public services, as well as transparency portals providing access to government data, statistics and state laws and regulations.

Following scandals about corruption in foreign aid, and in a political climate that increasingly questions the legitimacy of development assistance, donors are under pressure to better control how their funds are spent. However, there is little evidence on precisely how to control corruption in development aid. This article assesses under which conditions donor regulations are successful in controlling corruption in aid spent by national governments through procurement tenders.

On the Declarations Human Rights Podcast, this week, in partnership with Global Integrity, we are joined by Dr. Jackie Harvey of Northumbria University and Dr. Pallavi Roy of SOAS University of London to discuss the structures of political power in Nigeria and the underlying systems of corruption that culminated in the protests of the #EndSARS movement. This episode is the first in a two-part series focusing on human rights abuses in Nigeria and the protests fighting to #EndSARS and end police brutality.

This paper begins by taking a deep dive introducing the popular imperatives for researching corruption, the common methodological approaches that ensue, and how such research usually gets translated into action. The paper argues that studies of corruption and integrity would benefit from supplementing somewhat orthodox corruption research methodologies – such as randomized control trials and large-scale perception surveys – with applied qualitative methodologies that allow for in-depth data gathering on human behaviours and more immediate translation of knowledge into action.

How can governments manage civil servants to enhance public service motivation (PSM)? Despite the centrality of PSM in public administration research, the effects of management practices on PSM remain understudied. We address this gap through a conjoint experiment with 7,300 public servants in five countries in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Our experiment assesses two personnel management practices: merit-based competitions for recruitment versus discretionary appointments; and permanent tenure versus temporary job contracts. We find that merit competitions are associated by respondents with greater PSM in four countries, yet have no significant effect in a fifth. Permanent contracts are associated with greater PSM (two countries), lower PSM (one country) and have no significant effect (two countries). The effects of personnel management practices thus appear to vary across contexts. A common practice in public administration research – generalizations about the effects of management practices from single- country studies or cross-country averages – requires rethinking.

This is an interim project report for Jackie Harvey's project based out of Nigeria. The primary focus of this anti-corruption project is on beneficial ownership (BO). BO refers to the natural person(s) who ultimately owns or controls a customer and/or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction is being conducted.

Between 2015-17, small scale informal trade in Kenya was valued at $300 million. Eighty percent of this trade is carried out by women with a majority of them depending on it for their daily sustenance. Over 81% of all women traders also mentioned that they face regular bribery, red-tape and sexual harassment during their daily trade journeys while using either formal or informal routes. Exploring if improving accountability through community monitoring can help reduce corruption and improve trader journeys, the Earth Institute is leading the project “Ethical Border Trading between Kenya and Uganda for Small-scale Businesses.”

Do management practices have similar anti-corruption e????ects in OECD and developing countries? Despite prominent cautions against 'New Zealand' reforms which enhance managerial discretion in developing countries, scholars have not assessed this question statistically. Our paper addresses this gap through a conjoint experiment with 6,500 pub- lic servants in three developing and one OECD country. Our experiment assesses Weberian relative to managerial approaches to recruitment, job stability and pay. We argue that, in developing countries with institutionalized corruption and weak rule-of-law - yet not OECD countries without such features - 'unprincipled' principals use managerial discretion over hiring, firing and pay to favor 'unprincipled' bureaucratic agents who engage in corruption. Our results support this argument: managerial practices are associated with greater bureaucratic corruption in our surveyed developing countries, yet have little effect in our OECD country. Alleged best practices in public management in OECD countries may thus be worst practices in developing countries.

Question: Can improvements be made to the identification and tracking of Beneficial Ownership to increase likelihood of recovering the proceeds of corruption? Jackie Harvey's project explores the nature of problem of money flows and corruption in Nigeria.

As part of the ‘Curbing corruption in procurement’ research project, the team has collected, cleaned, standardised, and analysed national public procurement data from a diverse set of countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, including India (federal level). This research involves mining large amounts of government contracting data from government portals and repositories in order to analyse how procurement can be manipulated for corrupt ends. The team analyses the data to identify suspicious patterns widely associated with corruption, such as tailored bidding conditions and only a single bid being submitted on a market with multiple potential bidders.

Mushtaq Khan & Paul Heywood on populism, digital technologies & RCTs (Part II). The interview picks up on a discussion about research on social norms and corruption, mentioning the distinction between descriptive and injunctive norms.

Given a widespread sense among donors that mainstream anti-corruption reforms over the past 25 years have failed to yield results, there is a move towards more targeted interventions. Such interventions should, in principle, overcome implementation gaps and make it easier to evaluate impact, supporting learning. However, when interventions are narrowly targeted, there is a risk that corrupt actors simply adapt, shifting their focus to areas with weaker controls, so that overall corruption is not reduced but merely displaced. We analyse data points from World Bank-funded development aid tenders over 12 years in >100 developing countries, and observe the heterogeneous effects of a 2003 anti-corruption reform aimed at increasing oversight and opening up competition. Our tight matching estimations suggest that the reform is effective in the targeted area: it decreases corruption risks due to low competition (the share of single bidding falls from 22% to18%). But we also find that evasive tactics largely cancel out these positive direct effects: buyers switch to non-treated less competitive procedure types (whose share increases from 7% to 10%) and exploit them more intensively (single bidding goes from 61% to 81%). Our results demonstrate how data analytics can be used to observe public procurement at the system level to inform more adaptive and effective anti-corruption programming. More broadly, we underline that technical interventions might not represent the best way to tackle systemic corruption, instead strategies should target the root causes of corruption and contribute to building a culture of integrity.

The episode features Christopher Starke and Nils Köbis from The Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN) interviewing GI-ACE’s very own Paul Heywood, as well as SOAS-ACE’s Mushtaq Khan, regarding their respective approaches to anti-corruption.

How can governments manage civil servants to enhance public service motivation (PSM)? Despite the centrality of PSM in public administration research, the effects of management practices on PSM remain understudied. We address this gap through a conjoint experiment with 7,300 public servants in five countries in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Our experiment assesses two personnel management practices: merit-based competitions for recruitment versus discretionary appointments; and permanent tenure versus temporary job contracts. We find that merit competitions are associated by respondents with greater PSM in four countries, yet have no significant effect in a fifth. Permanent contracts are associated with greater PSM (two countries), lower PSM (one country) and have no significant effect (two countries). The effects of personnel management practices thus appear to vary across contexts. A common practice in public administration research – generalizations about the effects of management practices from single- country studies or cross-country averages – requires rethinking.

This book discusses parliamentary oversight and its role in curbing corruption in developing countries. Over the past decade, a growing body of research at the global and regional levels has demonstrated that parliamentary oversight is an important determinant of corruption and that effective oversight of public expenditure is an essential component of national anti-corruption strategies and programs. However, little research has been undertaken at the country level regarding how parliamentary oversight is undertaken, which oversight mechanisms are effective or on how national parliaments interact with other anti-corruption stakeholders. This book presents the results of a new large-scale, quantitative analysis which identifies the mechanisms through which institutional arrangements impact corruption, specifically through country case studies on the Caribbean region, Ghana, Myanmar, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. Addressing a gap in scholarly knowledge while presenting practical policy advice for parliaments and for anti-corruption assistance agencies, this book will be of use to scholars interested in development, anti-corruption, public finance, as well as members of parliament, anti-corruption practitioners, and organizations working in parliamentary strengthening.

Literature using gravity specifications to investigate dirty money flows see several limitations both because of the lack of a solid theoretical underpinnings and reliable data. The goal is to develop a method to pinpoint origin-destination (country) pairs that may present a higher risk of dirty money flows.

This post on the Basel Institute's site provides findings from Baez Camargo's research project on social norms and how they drive behavior and perpetuate corruption.

Tackling corruption in urban development is a key policy challenge of our time. Activating the professional integrity of the urban planning community is a particularly promising and underexplored response to this challenge, especially in the context of Africa. These are the two key messages that this working paper seeks to advance, referencing some of the most pertinent empirics on urban corruption (section 1), as well as the latest thinking and learning in anti-corruption (section 2). As such, this paper seeks to speak to scholars, practitioners, and activists in both the anti-corruption and urban development fields – two largely disconnected communities that could greatly benefit from a crossdisciplinary conversation on building cities of integrity

Update on datasets collected on development projects, public tenders, and contracts for three major donor agencies: the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and EuropeAid. The datasets not only republish structured data gathered from official source websites, but also contain corruption risk red flags developed by the research team.

The project analysed a dataset of World Bank-funded development aid tenders over two decades in >100 developing countries. With data points from multiple stages of the procurement process and key outcomes, the project observe the heterogeneous effects of a 2003 anticorruption reform aimed at increasing oversight and opening up competition.

This policy brief provides options for reducing corruption in procurement in the Zambian construction sector. The construction industry is predominant in Zambia and involves purchase of goods, payment for all kinds of services, building of schools and roads and industrial complexes by the government with public funds. However, corruption has crippling effects on national socio-economic development and governance systems. Despite many anti-corruption measures being implemented over the years, most governance and corruption indicators show that corruption remains a major challenge in Zambia.

This policy brief describes the sources of corruption in the Zambian construction sector and identifies best practices shown to reduce corrupt practices in the sector.

Parliamentary oversight is a key determinant of corruption levels. This article presents research findings on parliamentary oversight in two Caribbean countries: Trinidad & Tobago and Grenada. The results cast doubt on the results of previous research and also indicate that certain facets of ‘the Westminster’ system need to be relaxed, to reflect contextual reality in smaller island economies. Political will to adopt recommended reforms is critical, but, as in other countries, inertia often dominates the political environment. Until citizens demand that their elected representatives establish various oversight and anti-corruption mechanisms and ensure these mechanisms are free of political influence, the institutions will be ‘window dressing’ and corrupt actions will go undeterred and unpunished.

Case study on the challenges inherent in implementing "National Anti-Corruption Strategies" across different countries. The case series profiles Ghana, Mauritius, Indonesia, South Africa, and Brazil during the period 2004-2017. Each country aspired to accomplish some “easy” things—tracking implementation action items, for example, and creating a code of conduct—as well as much harder objectives, such as strengthening asset declaration, securing law reforms, and assessing actual impact.

Bureaucratic behavior in developing countries affects development centrally, yet remains poorly understood. Why do some public servants – yet not others – work hard to deliver public services, misuse state resources and/or participate in electoral mobilization? A classic answer comes from Weber: bureaucratic structures shift behavior towards integrity, neutrality and commitment to public service. Our paper conducts the first experimental test of the effect of two important bureaucratic structures: merit examinations and job stability (tenure). It draws on a thus far unused method in studying bureaucracies: a conjoint experiment. The experiment was embedded in a survey of public servants in the Dominican Republic.

Case study on the implementation of Ghana's National Anti-Corruption Action Plan, adopted a decade after the West African country signed the United Nations Convention against Corruption. Ultimately, the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan was very broad. It included a wide variety of commitments across government, civil society, and the private sector. The strategy’s framers said that a far-reaching strategy was necessary given the widespread prevalence of corruption in Ghana.

Case study on Indonesia's obligations to meet UN standards to expand the government's anti-corruption measures and align with the UN's Convention against Corruption. By 2014, the agencies had met 88% of the targets they had committed to. Civil society observers said the program had not treated many of the root problems, however, thereby underscoring the need for further work.

Policy Brief presenting key Issues and lessons learned about Parliamentary oversight and corruption in Tanzania. Using in-country, interviewer-led interviews and self-administered questionnaires with 49 respondents (13 MPs, 10 Parliamentary Staff, 11 Civil Society Organization (CSO) representatives, eight staff of the parliament, and seven journalists), the researchers undertook country-specific research to determine how successfully the National Assembly is in fulfilling its oversight function. Legislative oversight tools, potential, political will were all considered in the data analysis

Case study based on interviews conducted in South Africa in 2017. The study assesses the reform efforts of procurement systems, specifically after the appointment of finance ministers and procurement officers bent on making procurement processes more efficient and rooting out corruption.

Case study based on interviews conducted in Mauritius in December 2016 to examine decentralized graft prevention in Mauritius and the efficacy of a corruption prevention program that proposed a bottom-up strategy to reduce opportunities for bribe taking, nepotism, and conflicts of interest in the public service.

Case study based on interviews conducted in Brazil from 2016-2017 to identify the factors at play during the prosecution of the country's biggest corruption case. The case study defines the actors, history and legal ramifications of this historic legal battle.

Journal article co-authored by Claudia Baez Camargo about informal governance and the public/private crossover in Mexico, Russia and Tanzania. The article argues that scholars' focus must lie not only on harnessing the informal practices that lead to effective outcomes and sustain political structures, but ensure they can be used to promote positive change and improve development outcomes.

Case study based on interviews conducted in São Paulo, Brazil during August and September 2016 to assess the sustainable ranching movement and cattle certification process in Brazil in order protect forests. The case study was published in Innovations for Successful Societies.

Article in the British Academy Review, authored by Paul Heywood, Director of the GI-ACE Programme, that outlines why anti-corruption efforts have so far been disappointing, and how a new British Academy / Department for International Development research programme is seeking to change that. He argues that the ACE Programme moves away from the "one-size-fits-all" approach that has led to ineffective anti-corruption interventions in the past.

This report assesses the effects of a range of civil service management practices – from recruitment to promotion, pay and performance management practices – on the attitudes and behaviour of civil servants. To understand the desirability of these practices, our survey covers a spectrum of civil servant attitudes and behaviour which are core to civil service effectiveness: work motivation, job satisfaction, public service motivation, commitment to remaining in the public sector, performance and integrity. With these indicators, we can identify which civil service management practices tend to have positive effects and which do not – thus providing a foundation for evidence-based civil service reform designs.

This report presents the results of a survey that was conducted among civil servants and public employees in Albania in May and June 2017. The survey is part of a global project on the consequences of civil service management practices. The project includes ten countries from Eastern Europe (Estonia, Kosovo and Albania), Latin America (Brazil, Chile), Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal) and Africa (Ghana, Uganda and Malawi). With more than 23.000 participants, the project has generated the largest survey of civil servants that has ever been conducted.

"This report seeks to inform the efforts of the Government of Bangladesh to
modernise the civil service. It is part of a larger project led by Jan-Hinrik MeyerSahling (University of Nottingham), Christian Schuster (University College London) and Kim Sass Mikkelsen (Roskilde University) on ‘Civil Service Management in Developing Countries: What Works?’. The project includes ten countries Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia including Bangladesh. With more than 23.000 participants, it has led to the largest-ever cross-country survey of civil servants."

Spanish-language version of Meyer-Sahling country report depicting results of a survey conducted among civil servants and public employees in Albania in May and June 2017. The survey is part of a global project on the consequences of civil service management practices.

This report presents the results of a survey that was conducted among civil servants and employees in Estonia between April and June 2017. The survey is part of a global project on the effects of civil service management practices. The project includes ten countries from Eastern Europe (Estonia, Kosovo and Albania), Latin America (Brazil, Chile), Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal) and Africa (Ghana, Uganda and Malawi). With more than 23.000 participants, the project has generated the largest survey of civil servants that has ever been conducted.

Report providing evidence from a survey with over 1,600 public servants in Ghana. The purpose of the survey is to identify the main attitudes and behaviors of public officials, such as work motivation and job satisfaction, in order to develop civil service management practices for a more motivated, committed and ethical public service. The findings of the report suggest that public servants in Ghana are, by and large, strongly committed to their work. They are motivated and express values consistent with the spirit of public service. While there is little evidence that public servants regularly use their positions to benefit political actors, public servants more regularly derive personal benefit from their positions and/or use their positions to benefit friends and family.

This report seeks to inform the Public Administration Reform Strategy of the Government of Kosovo. It has a twofold objective. First, it introduces ‘civil service surveys’ as a new instrument to monitor and engage civil servants in the reform and modernisation of public administration in Kosovo. Second, it provides original evidence on civil servants’ attitudes and behaviour, their experience with human resources management and their evaluation of the quality of leadership. Overall, the report hence aims to contribute to the professionalisation of the civil service in Kosovo in accordance with the European principles of administration.

This report seeks to inform the efforts of the Government of Nepal to professionalise the civil service. It has a twofold objective. First, it introduces ‘civil service surveys’ as a new instrument to monitor and engage civil servants in the reform and modernisation of the civil service in Nepal. Second, it provides original evidence on civil servants’ attitudes and behaviour, their experience with human resources management, including integrity management and the role of public service unions and their evaluation of the quality of leadership. Overall, the report aims to contribute to the professionalisation of the civil service in Nepal in the context of the Government’s aim to become a middle-income county by 2030.

Evidence from a survey with over 20,000 public servants in Uganda and other countries. This report draws on results from an international survey of more than 20,000 public servants in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. It includes 3 major policy recommendations to reform Uganda’s Public Service.

This report summarises the results of a socio-anthropological inquiry on the daily functioning of educational and health services in Togo. The study is part of a research programme entitled « Accountability Through Practical Norms: Civil Service Reform in Africa From Below » financed by the British Academy-DFID AntiCorruption Evidence Programme. This anthropological research focuses on “practical norms” that regulate daily behaviours of civil servants, by comparing several French and English speaking countries in West and East Africa (Togo, Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Tanzania).

This report provides findings that show that civil servants in the education and health sectors in Tanzania have developed a range of practical norms to get their job done especially due to tremendous pressure from poorer sections of the population, complicated bureaucratic procedures and interference of political leaders. In this project, therefore, using a case study approach they examine the everyday experiences of Tanzanian civil servants in health and education and the importance of practical norms. The impact of practical norms on service delivery in these two public service sectors in the context of resource scarcity and the organisational environment is the focus of this study.

This report examines the shared bureaucratic practical norms in the education and health sectors in Niger and highlight the variations between them. The report then describes the practical norms particular to healthcare staff and to teachers. This is followed by an attempt to elucidate the place of corruption within these practical norms. Finally, report concludes by considering what can be done to improve public service provision based on an analysis of the challenges and obstacles involved in any attempt to modify these practical norms and a presentation of innovative potential approaches to reform in this area.

This report presents the findings of a qualitative field study in Malawi for the project Accountability Through Practical Norms: Civil Service Reform in Africa From Below. The objectives of the study were twofold: to examine the extent to which official rules are being applied and to what degree everyday practices in health and education ministries, district hospitals and health centres, district education offices and schools are governed by practical norms; and to examine the interdependence between site-specific norms, profession-specific norms and general practical norms of bureaucratic culture.

This research aims to deepen understanding of the links between decentralised governance and corruption, and what this implies for the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures at the local level by exploring these connections in Bangladesh and Nigeria. To do so, it explores the performance of decentralised governance arrangements in particular settings, analyses the nature and dynamics of corruption in those settings, and identifies implications of both for the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts at local levels.

This report demonstrates that while the existence of legislative oversight tools matters in that such tools improve the quality of governance and the legitimacy of the political system, their impact is conditional and it depends on the presence of contextual factors. In this regard, the contextual factors that determine the effectiveness of legislatures and that internal factors, such as oversight tools, are only supportive. Having explained the context for this study and the framework for data collection and analysis, this report is divided into three sections: external factors, external oversight institutions and internal factors. Within each of these, using a combination of survey data (collected in 2009/2010 and 2016), focus group data and a review of existing literature, each relevant element is analyzed, particularly for its effectiveness in curbing corruption.

Legislative oversight in any democracy is essential to limiting the exercise of power and ensuring the accountability of government. In Nigeria, the National Assembly (NASS) is charged with oversight of the anti-corruption framework. This paper comprises three sections: (i) contextual factors, (ii) external oversight institutions and (iii) internal legislative tools. Within each of these, each relevant element is analysed, particularly for its effectiveness in curbing corruption.