The Road to Good Governance: Via the Path Less Accountable? The Effectiveness of Fiscal Accountability in Liberia

Accountability mechanisms are touted as a path to “good governance.” But are accountability mechanisms a sure route to achieving the objectives of “good governance”? Limited case studies have offered inconsistent evidence (Blair, 2000 Blair, H. 2000. Participation and accountability at the periphery: Democratic local governance in sex countries. World Development, 28(1): 21–29. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Charlick, 2001 Charlick, R.B. 2001. Popular participation and local government reform.. Public Administration and Development, 21: 149–157. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Devas &; Grant, 2003 Devas, N. and Grant, U. 2003. Local government decision-making-citizen participation and local accountability: Some evidence from Kenya and Uganda. Public Administration and Development, 23: 307–316. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). But empirical evidence of the relationships among principles of good governance—high citizen participation, low levels of corruption, high-quality service delivery—and accountability mechanisms is lacking. We examine the effectiveness of accountability mechanisms in Liberia and find relationships between measures of county level fiscal accountability and measures of good governance do not always produce expected results, making fiscal accountability mechanisms no guarantee for achieving goals of good governance.     

Curbing Corruption in Public Administration: A Case Study from Italy

The aim of this article is to verify whether the historic sentence, no. 500/1999 of the Italian Legitimacy Court (Corte di Cassazione) in Plenary Session, may have contributed to diminishing bribery in Italy, by increasing the area of liability for both civil servants and the public administration. The empirical analysis is based on a case study conducted in Sicily, in the province of Catania, using a unique data set. The main results of the article are: paying bureaucrats by means of an incentive wage regimes may not be effective in reducing corruption; an extension of the liability rule for the public administration and civil servants may discourage the phenomenon of bribery; and, the perfect specification of property rights helps to reduce corruption.     

How Much Is Really Known About the Meaning of the Term “Conflict of Interest”?

Often codes of ethics require dealing with conflict of interest (CoI) without defining the boundaries of the phenomenon. In this case, CoI recognition is left to the discretion of the individual. The aim of this work is to answer to the following research questions: How much is really known about the meaning of the term CoI? Do individuals share the same CoI definition? In order to address these questions, we use the results of a questionnaire administered to 86 Italian public sector employees during some training courses on conflict of interest and corruption. The choice of this sample is particularly significant in that the Italian regulation provides for all public employees a code of conduct that requests avoiding, or at least disclosing, the CoI without prior definition of the meaning of the term. The results of our analysis show that public employees are uncertain about or come to different considerations of what CoI is and is not; consequently they deal with it in different ways. Thus, codes of conduct and ethics trainers should direct more attention on CoI definition, providing examples to facilitate its identification and resolution.     

Effectiveness of Ethics Codes in the Public Sphere: Are They Useful in Controlling Corruption?

This study aims at determining the real effect of the implementation of a code of ethics on the solution of ethical problems in the public sphere, considering corruption as the most important non-ethical behavior. With that aim, 154 national administrations whose information on ethical codes is available on the UN's website are analyzed.

Our findings stress the absence of any influence of codes on corruption problems in the public context, both in developed and developing countries. The level of education is the most important determining factor in the control of corruption, especially in developing countries.     

E-Governance to Cut Corruption in Public Service Delivery: A Case Study of Fiji

Experience in a number of developed and developing countries has shown that E-Governance initiatives can promote greater transparency with the goal of cutting corruption. This article examines perceptions of public service delivery in Fiji to explore the potential of E-Governance to cut corruption and improve governance. Based on a survey of community perceptions and a review of selected literature it suggests that service-delivery oriented IT initiatives can contribute to an effective, multi-pronged strategy to cut corruption in the Fiji public sector.     

新刑诉法语境下检察技术侦查权配置的探讨

新刑诉法修改后,第一次在刑诉法的语境下,系统、明确地提出了侦查机关利用技术侦查手段进行侦查的法律规范,是我国技术侦查在立法上的一大进步。新刑诉法第148条第2款规定了检察机关对于已经立案的重大贪污贿赂案件以及利用职权实施的严重侵犯公民人身权利的重大犯罪案件,经过严格的审批手续,可以采取技术侦查手段。各级检察机关要在保障人权、平衡程序和实体正义的前提下,科学、规范、合理地使用技术侦查手段,更为有效地开展和推进检察自侦工作。     

行政伦理视角下我国反腐败问题分析

进入新世纪以来,我国行政腐败现象频繁发生,而且发生的领域越来越广,层级越来越高,给国家和社会造成了巨大损失,在当前形势下,积极探索反腐败的对策十分必要。文章分析了行政伦理在反腐败中发挥的作用,研究了行政伦理视角下我国反腐败的现状和存在的问题,并提出了反腐败的新途径。     

DANGER ZONES OF CORRUPTION: HOW MANAGEMENT OF THE MINISTERIAL BUREAUCRACY AFFECTS CORRUPTION RISKS IN POLAND

This article examines the relationship between management of the ministerial bureaucracy and the risk of high‐level corruption in Poland. Four danger zones of corruption in the ministerial bureaucracy are distinguished, comprising the personalisation of appointments, the emergence of multiple dependencies, the screening capacity of the personnel system and the incentive of bureaucrats to develop a reputation of honesty and competence. Empirically, the article investigates the case of Poland from 1997 until 2007 and sets the findings in a comparative East Central European perspective. The article shows that corruption risks in the ministerial bureaucracy increased in most but not all danger zones after 2001 and, in particular, during the period of the centre‐right governments that were in office between 2005 and 2007. The increase in corruption risks is reflected in Poland's deteriorating corruption record during the same period. The conclusion discusses the findings with regard to alternative causes of corruption and the relationship between civil service professionalisation and corruption in other East Central European countries. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Health care and democratization in Indonesia

Analyses of Indonesian democracy often emphasize elite capture of democratic institutions, continuity in oligarchic power relations, and exclusion of popular interests. Defying such analyses, over the last decade, Indonesia has experienced a proliferation of social welfare programmes, some with a redistributive element. This article analyses the expansion of social welfare protection by focusing on health care. At the national level, Indonesia has introduced programmes providing free health care to the poor and approved a plan for universal social insurance. At the subnational level, in the context of far-reaching decentralization reforms, politicians have competed with each other to introduce generous local health care schemes. Taking its cue from analyses of social welfare expansion in other East Asian states, the article finds the origins of policy shift in the incentives that democracy creates for elites to design policies that appeal to broad social constituencies, and in the widening scope for engagement in policymaking that democracy allows. The article ends with a cautionary note, pointing to ways in which oligarchic power relations and the corruption they spawn still undermine health care quality, despite expansion of coverage.     

农村基层组织人员贪污贿赂犯罪立法解释适用问题研究

村民委员会、村党组织、村经济组织的成员和村小组长、村民委员会下设各委员会委员等在农村基层组织中担任一定的职务、履行一定的职责的人都是"村民委员会等农村基层组织人员",其构成贪污贿赂犯罪必然发生在协助人民政府从事行政管理工作的过程中,具有时间性。而对如何认定协助行政管理行为的完成,论文提供了一种路径,即假设不存在村基层组织的协助管理行为,由人民政府直接完成现实中由村基层组织协助完成的行政管理工作,那么在假设条件下,认定人民政府某些具体行政管理工作完成所采用的标准,应适用于村基层组织人员协助管理工作完成的认定。