Political will and government anti‐corruption efforts: What does the evidence say?

“Political will” is oft‐cited as the major obstacle to government's anti‐corruption efforts. Notwithstanding, there is remarkably little systematic analysis of the concept, with some scholars describing it as the “slipperiest concept in the policy lexicon,” whereas others are calling for its empirical relevance. This paper tries to unpack the “black box” of political will by making it an empirically relevant concept drawing on evidence from two Asian countries; Singapore and Bangladesh. Four key indicators based on the works of earlier scholars are used including origin of the initiative; comprehension and extent of analysis; credible sanctions; and resource dedication and sustenance are used. The paper also uses Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, World Bank's World Governance Indicators (Control of Corruption and Government Effectiveness), and Political, Economic and Risk Consultancy's annual survey in Asia, as outcome measures. Based on the empirical evidence from the two countries, the paper shows that political will indeed has a positive influence on government's anti‐corruption efforts. Although political will may not be sufficient, it is a necessary condition to fight corruption, and that the difference between the positions of Singapore and Bangladesh on various global corruption league tables may be attributed to political will.     

Schools with a Difference: Policy Discourses and Education Reform in Britain and Germany

Throughout the 1990s, corruption cases, policy failure and scandals tarnished Belgium's international reputation. In this article, we analyse the effect of federalism and political culture on corruption and policy failures and their impact on the likelihood of such occurrences becoming scandals. Survey material suggests that there are few differences between French- and Dutch-speakers in the perception and tolerance of corruption. We then list a number of variables that can explain corruption in Belgium and argue that the independent effect of federalism is very limited. Next we demonstrate that federalism has played a much more significant role in lowering the risk of policy failure, while at the same time creating a few new vulnerabilities. Finally, we argue that the regional political elites do not often engage in policy learning and frequently put forward federalism as the main solution to the avoidance of policy failure and scandal. In this sense, regional political elites do not seize the opportunity for policy experimentation and transfer that is generally seen as one of the main virtues of a federal system of government.     

State‐Building and the European Union's Fight against Corruption in the Southern Caucasus: Why Legitimacy Matters

This article asks under which conditions the state‐building efforts of external actors in areas of limited statehood are likely to be effective. We argue that the legitimacy of the specific norms promoted by external actors among local actors is crucial for their success in strengthening state capacities. International efforts need to resonate with prevalent social norms. To substantiate this argument, we focus on the European Union's (EU) anticorruption programs and their implementation in one of the most corrupt regions in the world, the Southern Caucasus. We show that legitimacy can explain why the EU's fight against corruption helped reduce corruption in Georgia but not in Armenia. In both countries, political elites could selectively use anticorruption programs as an instrument against political opponents, using enhanced state capacities to stabilize the incumbent regime. Only in Georgia, however, was the fight against corruption facilitated by sustained domestic mobilization for anticorruption policies that added pressure on political elites “from below.”     

The impact of governance on education inequality: Evidence from Bangladesh

Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in increasing education access in the last 20 years. However, substantial inequalities in educational attainment remain even though equity in education is a central government objective. The article argues that weaknesses in education sector governance are crucial to understanding these persistent inequalities. At the level of the budget, anti‐poor biases in allocation decisions are shown to be the result of the budget's role in political management and the lack of effective accountability mechanisms. The spearhead of government attempts to address education inequality at the primary level has been the conditional cash transfer programme for poor children. The article shows that the programme has failed to target the poor and suggests that this has been due to the weaknesses and contradictions in the governance of the programme. Strengthening the links between policy and implementation through improvements in the governance of the sector are crucial if inequality is to be addressed and national education goals achieved. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional quality and economic growth: Evidence from South-Asian countries

The current study investigates the relationship between institutional quality and economic growth, focusing on South-Asian countries entailing Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, from 2002 to 2018. The data are analysed using the dynamic heterogeneous panel (panel autoregressive distributed lag [ARDL] model) approach, specifically the dynamic fixed effect (DFE), mean group (MG), and pooled mean group (PMG). Based on the findings, the three governance indicators, namely corruption control, accountability, and the rule of law, positively and significantly affect economic growth. All the nations have consistent long-run estimates but varied short-run estimates and adjustment speed for the long-term equilibrium. This is due to governance volatility that is evident in all the nations. This article offers both practical and theoretical contributions. This article contributes to the institutional quality and economic growth literature from a theoretical perspective from the South-Asian perspective. From a practical perspective, the study findings are significant for policymakers, particularly those from the countries that demonstrate major fiscal and external imbalance due to war and terrorism, low oil prices and weak trade. Hence, there is a pressing need to address economic growth issues instigated by the policymakers' negligence to ensure appropriate governance and macroeconomic management. Regulators can improve economic growth through national and regional image building by developing a stable economic and political landscape and maintaining macroeconomic stability by improving the institutional quality indicators. There is evidence that institutional quality improvement leads to better economic growth.     

Empirical determinants of corruption: A sensitivity analysis

Many variables have been proposed by past studies as significant determinants of corruption. This paper asks if their estimated impact on corruption is robust to alteration of the information set. A “Global Sensitivity Analysis”, based on the Leamer's Extreme-Bounds Analysis gives a clear answer: five variables are robustly related to corruption. Corruption is lower in richer countries, where democratic institutions have been preserved for a long continuous period, and the population is mainly Protestant. Corruption is instead higher where political instability is a major problem. Finally, a country's colonial heritage appears to be a significant determinant of present corruption.     

Corruption and women in cabinets: Informal barriers to recruitment in the executive

Research on corruption and women in politics has mainly focused on legislatures, generally finding that corruption decreases the election of women. This article turns the spotlight to the executive branch—an arena where selection is less transparent than recruitment to legislative seats—and examines if corruption decrease the share of ministers who are women. Drawing on feminist institutionalist theories, we posit that in an environment of high political corruption, (male) elites involved in cabinet formation will tend to appoint ministers whom they can trust with secretive tasks. In systems with corrupt networks, relative newcomers, such as women, should face obstacles to career advancement. The article tests this reasoning empirically on a global sample of countries across time. Using a new indicator measuring corruption in executive bodies, we find support for our argument; corruption tends to hinder women's presence in cabinets, albeit only in democracies and not autocracies.     

The challenges and opportunities of implementing the integrity pact as a strategy for combating corruption in Nigeria's oil rich Niger Delta region

In recent years, significant local and transnational concerted initiatives have been instituted to curb the incidence of corruption that has undermined socio‐economic development in Nigeria. Drawing on the critiques of such initiatives, and the experience from the process of implementing the Integrity Pact in the Niger Delta Development Commission, this article suggests that the Integrity Pact in principle offers real opportunities that can both reinforce and complement existing anti‐corruption initiatives in Nigeria's public sector. However, political instability, lack of continuity in civil service leadership and limited capacity are core challenges that confront the successful implementation and institutionalisation of the Integrity Pact as a means of fighting corruption and meeting sustainable development objectives in the Niger Delta. The article concludes by considering the implications of the findings for the fight against corruption in Nigeria. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Getting to Sweden,Part II: Breaking with Corruption in the Nineteenth Century

Issues about corruption and other forms of ‘bad government’ have become central in large parts of the social sciences. An unresolved question, however, is how countries can solve the issue of systemic corruption. In this article, based on Elinor Ostrom's theory of common pool resource appropriation, a new theoretical model for explaining this type of institutional change is developed. Sweden during the nineteenth century is used as an illustration of the model by showing how the country made a transition from being largely patrimonial, nepotistic and corrupt to a modern, Weberian, efficient and impartial state structure. Building upon a companion article about the importance of losing a war as a precondition for breaking systematic corruption, this article stresses the importance of three additional factors in Sweden: previous changes in courts and the legal system; recognition of the problem by the main contemporary political actors as shown in debates in the Diet; and the new liberal ideology that made an important impact on the Swedish political scene during this period.     

Corruption in the Eye of the Beholder: Survey Evidence from Mainland China and Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This article explores how and to what extent people differ in their level of tolerance for corruption and why some people show a stronger propensity to counter corruption actively, while others seem more willing to accept it. We draw on the original data collected from a survey on perceptions of corruption among university students in Hong Kong and Mainland China to answer these questions. The respondents’ perceptions of corruption are measured by how they identify corruption, understand its causes, and interpret the consequences it may bring to society. Our empirical findings show substantial differences in perceptions of corruption across and within the two regions and also reveal a strong association between the way people perceive corruption and their level of tolerance for corruption and propensity to act against it. We see that, other things being equal, different perceptions of corruption lead to different tolerance levels for corruption and influence people's willingness to take part in the fight against corruption. Our findings also suggest that it is important to address the deficit in people's understanding of corruption in order to achieve desired anti-corruption effects.     

Black and (thin) blue (line): Corruption and other political determinants of police killings in America

Police violence is not uncommon in America, and the risk of civilians' being killed by police is considerably higher here than in similar countries, making it a major public health issue. For Black Americans the risk is significantly higher. In this study, we analyze the political determinants of police killings of Black Americans, with a specific focus on corruption in American states. Our evidence suggests that police can kill Black Americans with impunity because of a lack of accountability—exemplified by corruption—that is largely determined by political influences. Our findings point to ways in which the responsibility for police violence and killings is deeply rooted and influenced by the values of the wider society.     

Higher Education and the Referendum on Scottish Independence

During the course of the referendum campaign, the Scottish government argued that free tuition for Scottish and EU students symbolised Scotland's preference for universal services and was intrinsically fairer than the ‘marketised’ systems operating in the rest of the UK. Invoking principles of both social justice and pragmatism, three distinct critiques of the Scottish government's higher education policy were mounted and adopted by different policy actors for different political purposes. Following a discussion of these arguments, this article concludes that a more nuanced discussion of higher education policy in Scotland is required, focusing not just on the absence of tuition fees but also on the distribution of debt and allocation of funds across the entire education system. We also note that the focus on tuition fees policy suggests that higher education systems across the UK are set on a process of divergence, whereas there are strong pressures towards policy convergence in areas such as research policy and internationalisation.     

What are the strategic and economic implications for South Asia of China's Maritime Silk Road initiative?

This article focuses on South Asia's role in China's Maritime Silk Road (MSR) initiative. Given the saliency of this MSR enterprise as part of ChinesePresident Xi Jinping’s “One-Belt-One-Road” strategy, how this ambitious scheme impacts China’s relations with South Asian states along the MSR’s route, i.e. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh, merits investigation. The fate of the MSR will be determined by China’s relations with these states, since South Asia is in the middle of major sea-lanes between East/Southeast Asia and Middle East/Europe. The study examines the intentions and executions of China’s MSR projects in South Asia, evaluates the political and economic calculations of participating in the MSR for regional states, and identifies actions taken by them that can decide the initiative’s success. Politically, reactions of South Asian states to the MSR are explained as: fear of expanding Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean for India; and attempts by which Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh use China to counteract possible domination by India. Economically, two MSR pathways for South Asian states are analyzed: increases in Chinese infrastructure investments; and expansion in South Asia-China trade; both of which are reducible by loans owed to China, or “strings”/conditions attached.     

Political Donations in Australia: What the Australian Electoral Commission Disclosures Reveal and What They Don't

The transparent disclosure of political donations is an important anti‐corruption measure. However Australia's current disclosure system has been too poor to sustain rigorous empirical analysis by either journalists or researchers. The barriers to analysis lie in the data collected and in how it is disclosed to the public. This article seeks to give an overview of the transparency problems in the disclosures. It then outlines what limited insights can be gleaned about the political donations landscape. It finds that donations are dominated by the federal election cycle, transparently declared donations make up a small and declining proportion of parties’ incomes at 12–15%, and the amount of money going entirely undisclosed is more than 50% and growing. It also finds indications of paying for access and donor strikes being used to punish government that require further research.     

Corruption in a Model of Growth: Political Reputation,Competition and Shocks

The article tries to incorporate ``political corruption'' (toplevel corruption) into economic growth analysis. We propose amicroeconomic framework. An agent of the public sector, who wantsto optimize his cash flow resulting from budget misappropriations,will be highly sensitive to the instability related to his office.The natural equilibrium for the politician will be to fall into a`high political instability – low growth' trap, in whichcorruption appears endemic. However, the control of corruption bysociety will be possible. We consider a model in which alternativepoliticians compete with the incumbent politician but benefit from a common political reputation. It is shown that this situation leads to ``dynamic collective reputation'', which should restrain misappropriationpractices. This theoretical framework will be useful in defining a``sustainable'' degree of political competition and inunderstanding the asymmetric effects of extrinsic shocks on thegrowth process.     

转型期中国公共领导体制变革与廉政建设

腐败与反腐败是社会政治生活中的一个永恒主题。腐败的存在与公共权力密切相关,作为公共权力运作的核心性规范,公共领导体制直接规定着高层领导者运用权力的方式,影响着社会的腐败与反腐败活动。伴随着社会发展,中国公共领导体制开始现代化转型,从传统型权威和个人魅力型权威向法理型权威转换,其反腐败方略也相应地从注重思想教育和社会运动转向注重制度约束。与此相适应,必须深化公共领导体制改革,以制度创新根治腐败,包括:进行良好的宪政分权,发展直接民主;引入政治竞争,实行政务公开;转变政府职能,推动行政体制改革,规范政府行为;强化监督机制和惩罚机制;加强思想教育和道德约束,提高政府官员的廉洁自律度,等等。     

Good government and sustainable anti-corruption strategies: A role for independent anti-corruption agencies?

Aid donors are increasingly seeking to link assistance to sustainable reform, including the provision of a responsible and responsive political and legal framework, the improvement of recipient countries' social, health and educational prospects, and the promotion of economic development and liberalization. Much attention is given to the first of these because of the size and cost to the state and the perceived constraints it exercises on the longer-term changes to the economy and society; in general terms, good government is an essential precondition for good governance and economic development. Increasingly donors have focused on corruption, both as a core obstacle to the encouragement of good government, and on the steps taken to dealing with it as evidence of commitment and the will of recipient countries to their introduction. While the types of activity associated with corruption are readily identifiable, as are the means to attempt to deal with it, it is usually much more difficult to determine effective implementation, particularly with limited resources at a time when longer-term political and economic reforms are also being promoted. It is therefore especially important that, in relation to corruption and good government, a practicable, effective and sustainable means is available to deal with corruption from preventative, investigative and reform perspectives.     

The economy,corruption, and the vote: Evidence from experiments in Sweden and Moldova

How does corruption affect voting behavior when economic conditions are poor? Using a novel experimental design and two original survey experiments, we offer four important conclusions. First, in a low corruption country (Sweden), voters react negatively to corruption regardless of the state of the economy. Second, in a high corruption country (Moldova), voters react negatively to corruption only when the state of the economy is also poor; when economic conditions are good, corruption is less important. Third, respondents in Sweden react more strongly to corruption stimuli than respondents in Moldova. Finally, in the low corruption country, sociotropic corruption voting (or voting based on corruption among political leaders) is relatively more important, whereas in our high corruption country, pocketbook corruption voting (or voting based on one's own personal experience with corruption, i.e., being asked to pay bribes) is equally prevalent. Our findings are consistent with multiple stable corruption equilibria, as well as with a world where voters are more responsive to corruption signals more common in their environment.     

Corruption experiences and attitudes to political,interpersonal, and domestic violence

It is understood that corruption can change the incentives to engage in political violence. However, the scope for corruption to change attitudes toward the permissibility of violence has received less attention. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory, we argue that experiences of corruption in the social environment are likely to shape individual attitudes toward violent behavior. Using Afrobarometer data, we document a statistically significant and sizable relationship between an individual's experience of paying bribes and their attitudes to political, interpersonal, and domestic violence. These relationships are evident, and not significantly different, for men and women and are robust to the inclusion of variables capturing the local incidence of corruption, local norms regarding violence, and a proxy for the local incidence of violence with the community. Corruption is associated with permissive attitudes to violence even after controlling for the perceived legitimacy of the police and courts.     

Iraq’s Political Turmoil

Motivated by the government's patronage and corruption, massive political protests in Iraq have mobilised the majority Shia population and weakened Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. He is caught between an intensely disgruntled population and an equally stubborn ruling elite. In a heavily armed population with a recent history of civil war, there is a salient risk that popular demands will be pursued through violence.