Fighting corruption in developing countries: Some aspects of policy from lessons from the field

Corruption persists in developing countries despite the proliferation of legal, institutional, and other measures that have been put in place to fight said corruption. The cancer of corruption has therefore spread exponentially in most developing countries with devastating socioeconomic and governance consequences. This practitioner perspective draws on the author's field experience and backed up by the research literature. It identifies, outlines, and discusses some aspects of policy in 3 areas—institution strengthening, the development and implementation of national anticorruption plans/strategies, and political will and leadership—and the conclusions that can be drawn from them for policy development and implementation in the ongoing quest to fight corruption in developing countries.     

The Punjab Revenue Authority: Meeting the challenges of a new institution

New institutions generally face many challenges that can inhibit their ability to succeed. The institutionalist literature can serve as a guide, informing important actors of the challenges they are likely to face when founding a new institution. We examine the Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) in Pakistan to assess the extent to which the challenges posited by the various streams of institutionalism surfaced as real problems that leaders in Punjab Province had to deal with when establishing the PRA. We found that rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and sociological institutionalism all identified problems that the PRA had to address. We conclude that the PRA's early successes are a function of its ability to navigate these challenges effectively.     

Measuring the capability to raise revenue: process and output dimensions and their application to the Zambia Revenue Authority

The worldwide diffusion of the good governance agenda and new public management (NPM) principles has triggered a renewed focus on state capability and, more specifically, on the capability to raise revenue in developing countries. However, the analytical tools for a comprehensive understanding of the capability to raise revenue remain underdeveloped. This article aims at filling this gap and presents a model consisting of the three process dimensions ‘information collection and processing’, ‘merit orientation’ and ‘administrative accountability’. ‘Revenue performance’ constitutes the fourth capability dimension which assesses tax administrations' output. This model is applied to the case of the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA). The dimensions prove to be valuable not only for assessing the how much but also the how of collecting taxes. They can be a useful tool for future comparative analyses of tax administrations' capabilities in developing countries. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decentralisation and corruption: evidence from drinking water sector

This article presents empirical findings regarding the relationship between decentralisation of provision of water supply and corruption in provision of services. The current policy advice from the international agencies of aiming for decentralisation as an end in itself is questioned. The conventional wisdom that decentralisation brings management closer to the service recipients and is therefore likely to reduce corruption is also disputed. Drawing on a large database from two large Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the interaction between various actors is analysed. We find that the level of corruption in water supply agencies run by local governments is higher than that in the agencies run by the regional government. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

More politicians,more corruption: evidence from Swedish municipalities

In the literature on political economy and public choice, it is typically assumed that government size correlates positively with public corruption. The empirical literature, however, is inconclusive, owing to both measurement problems and endogeneity. This paper creates a corruption index based on original data from a survey covering top politicians and civil servants in all Swedish municipalities. The effect of more politicians on corruption problems is analyzed using discontinuities in the required minimum size of local councils. Despite the fact that Sweden consistently has been ranked among the least corrupt countries in the world, the survey suggest that non-trivial corruption problems are present in Sweden. Municipalities with more local council seats have more reported corruption problems, and the regression discontinuity design suggests that the effect is causal.     

Equilibrium in fiscal choices: Evidence from a budget game

This is an applied study about the stability of collective decision-making in fiscal matters and the features of individual preferences which are sufficient to reach a social ordering. It is based on data about citizens' preferences collected through a budget game played by a sample of voters in Turin, a large Italian city. By simulating a series of individual choices, a social ordering of the municipal budget items is arrived at. The role played by restricted (i.e., single-peaked, single-caved etc.) preferences to avoid cycles in choice simulations is then assessed.     

Managing local development: lessons from Spain

This paper analyzes an operational method that regional government agencies can use to enable locally-based firms to compete effectively in their industries. This method, which emerged in southern Spain after the transition to democracy, embodies many precepts found in the contemporary public management literature. The paper begins the task of cumulating the clinical knowledge needed to translate action plan precepts into specific managerial decisions.     

Abandoned housing: Exploring lessons from baltimore

Abstract

Population loss and economic decline have resulted in thousands of abandoned homes in major U.S. cities. Although abandoned homes are symptomatic of other problems, they also contribute to neighborhood decline and frustrate revitalization. This article provides an overview of the national scope of abandoned housing and profiles Baltimore's strategy for addressing this problem.

Challenges in Baltimore's revitalization planning include the necessity of and financial requirements for a comprehensive approach and the difficulty of reaching consensus. Widespread property “flipping” hampers prevention. Efforts to acquire and demolish units are constrained by difficulties in tracking ownership, felons’ ownership of derelict units, and a shortage of staffing to process takings. Challenges in rehabilitating and marketing row houses include the need for subsidies to make units affordable to the most likely buyers, the omnipresence of lead paint, and the lack of foreign immigration. The article proposes a more strategic approach to the city's revitalization planning.     

National health insurance: Some lessons from the Canadian experience

In the current American debate over national health insurance an examination of the Canadian governmental experience is very instructive. Canada is enough like the United States to make the effects of Canadian health insurance policies rather like a large natural experiment. The Canadian experience—universal government health insurance administered by the ten provinces with some fiscal and policy variations—can be used to predict the impact in the United States of proposed national health insurance plans on the medical care system, and the reaction of mass publics and national policymakers to these effects.The central purpose of the Canadian national health insurance was to reduce and hopefully eliminate financial barriers to medical care. In this it succeeded. But it also produced results which Canadian policymakers never anticipated: essentially unexpected side-effects on cost, quality, organization, and manpower distribution of the particular national health insurance program adopted. It should be cause for concern, the article concludes, that most of the prominent American national health insurance proposals resemble the Canadian program in failing to provide a single level of government with both the means and incentives to curb the inflationary effects of national health insurance. The lesson from Canada is that unless the system has very strong anti-inflationary mechanisms and incentives built into it, national health insurance will feed the fires of medical inflation despite great formal governmental authority to control it.     

Designing policy resilience: lessons from the Affordable Care Act

Policy Sciences - Public policies are the products of political conflict, constituted by mixes of diverse tools and instruments intended to achieve multiple goals that may change over time and not...     

党的三代领导集体反腐倡廉思想的历史比较

一、三代领导集体反腐倡廉的不同历史特点（一）毛泽东:在高度集中的计划经济体制下,以群众运动的急风骤雨方式反腐败。毛泽东基于对历史唯物论的深刻理解和中国革命经验的重要启示,一贯十分重视人民群众的作用和力量。毛泽东深信人民群众是历史的创造者,无论是在革命战争年代,还是在和平建设时期,他都意图用群众运动的方式来解决一切矛盾和问题,反腐倡廉也不例外。五十年代的“三反”及六十年代的“四清”运动,都是用群众运动的方式来反腐败的典型;甚至象“文革”这样完全错误的政治运动,也不能说同毛泽东反腐败的思想没有关系,也不能说没…     

Transnationality and diaspora advocacy: lessons from disaster

A number of catastrophic disasters in the last decade have raised questions about their transnational impacts and about the role of the diaspora. The 2010 Haiti earthquake, the focus of our study, provided a lens to further our understanding of evolving conceptualizations about transnationalism, transmigrants, and social capital. We hypothesize that sustained ‘intensive transnationalism’ by diaspora and linking forms of social capital between diaspora, other civil society organizations and advocacy groups, and government institutions are critical during post-disaster recovery in affected nation states and in countries to which survivors turn for refuge. We conducted 103 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a wide range of civil society actors in South Florida, Boston, New York, Atlanta, and Washington DC between June 2010 and June 2015. We found that linking forms of social capital were more important after the earthquake than in previous disasters. Overall, the longevity and variety of Haitian diaspora advocacy work, particularly in immigration, have resulted in broader social networks and alliances, work groups, task forces, interfaith coalitions, and support groups to address complex social and policy issues.     

Fiscal consequences of public corruption: Empirical evidence from state bond ratings

Empirical analyses of public corruption focus predominantly on international differences; regional differences in public corruption within a single country receive little attention. We empirically investigate the effect of public corruption in the United States on state bond ratings, which previous research shows are inversely related to net interest costs on public debt. After controlling for various economic influences on bond ratings, we find that more corrupt states have lower bond ratings, which implies that taxpayers in more corrupt states face a negative pecuniary externality by paying a premium for debt.     

State fiscal constraint and local overrides: a regression discontinuity design estimation of the fiscal effects

Public Choice - Despite abundant evidence regarding the influence of US state-imposed tax and expenditure limitations on local governments, the causes and consequences of local overrides remain...     

Managing the fight against corruption: A case study

Corruption is one of the foremost problems facing policy-makers and managers in developing countries, but it is a remarkably difficult one to study. This case study—an actual episode that has been disguised to preserve confidentiality—provides a vehicle for illustrating both the application of analytical tools to corruption and the importance of practical issues of implementation and politics. The case suggests that anti-corruption policies should carefully assess (1) the relative severity of various kinds of illicit activities, including who gains and loses; (2) the relative susceptibility of the various activities to feasible changes in policies and procedures; and (3) the strategic importance of politics, in the narrow sense of bureaucratic politics as well as the wider political realities.     

Global corruption and the shadow economy: spatial aspects

Using a large sample of nations, this paper examines the relation between corruption and the shadow economy, focusing especially on geographic spillovers. The results point to complementarity between corruption and the shadow economy. We find evidence of own contagion across nations in both corruption and shadow economy activity, while cross-contagion mostly points to substitution between own shadow economy (corruption) and neighboring corruption (shadow economy). These findings are fairly robust across different estimation techniques and measures of the shadow economy.     

Opening late-industrializing economies: lessons from Argentina and Australia

Economic liberalization has met substantial resistance in polities as different as Argentina and Australia. For these late industrializing nations the verb protect came to mean much more than just granting favors to industrialists. It also involved reducing the risks previously taken by societies engaged in economic modernization. After histories of vulnerability to external forces, they deliberately fostered collusion between the public and private sectors in an attempt to achieve benefits at the lowest cost for participants from all social classes. Consequently, economic liberalization now demands more than revisions in economic logic and the attitudes of industrialists, as recent attempts to reform economic strategy in both nations indicate. For three generations who were nurtured on these rent seeking notions of political economy, it requires a fundamental transformation of popular attitudes about the creation and distribution of private and public goods.This article is a substantially revised version of a paper I presented at the 46th International Congress of Americanists, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 4–8, 1988. I am especially grateful to Carlos Waisman who invited me to write the paper, to an anonymous reader for this journal who suggested many useful revisions, and to the journal's editor, William Ascher, for his leadership.