The Quality of Government Institute, Sweden (QOG)
Website: www.qog.pol.gu.se/
The Quality of Government (QoG) Institute is an independent research institute within the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. It conducts and promotes research on the causes, consequences and nature of Good Governance and the Quality of Government – trustworthy, reliable, impartial, uncorrupted and competent government institutions. The main objective of the QoG research is to address the theoretical and empirical problem of how political institutions of high quality can be created and maintained.
Monika Bauhr is an Associate Professor at the Quality of Government (QoG) institute at the department of Political Science, Göteborg University. She has previously been a visiting research fellow at Stanford University, the University of Florida and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Her research is mainly concerned with the role of international organizations and aid in promoting quality of government, and in particular the link between transparency, accountability and corruption and how perceptions of different forms of corruption influence the effects of international development assistance and emission trade. She also works as an advisor and mentor for NGOs and bureaucrats in South East Asia (financed by the Swedish international development agency) and is a member of the steering board of the student Program in Environmental Social Sciences. Her most recent work is published in journals such as the International Studies Quarterly, Governance and Global Environmental Politics. She is the Scientific Coordinator of ANTICORRP and the Pillar leader of Pillar 2.
Aiysha Varraich is the research assistant for Professor Bo Rothstein at the Quality of Government Institute. Aiysha has a background in law (LLB Law degree from London Metropolitan University) and in pursuit of her interest in policy making pursued the MSc in International Administration and Global Governance in order to gain a footing within the field. After graduating Aiysha pursued the policy path at the International Legal Resource Centre, a collaboration between the United Nations Development Programme and the American Bar Association in Washington DC. Her main research interests are corruption- decentralisation and clientelism - within the region of the Subcontinent, which she pursued in her master's thesis. She is currently involved in Work Package 1 of the ANTICORRP project, wherein she is currently mapping the evolution of corruption through time, while simultaneously identifying gaps in the current research.
Andreas Bågenholm, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science and the Program Manager at the Quality of Government Institute and the Project Manager for the EU financed ANTICORRP project.He is doing research on European party politics concerning party system instability and success of new parties in Central and Eastern Europe, the politicization of the issue of corruption in election campaigns in Europe during the last 30 years as well as on how Sweden became a relatively uncorrupt society during the 19th century.
Ann Towns(QoG) is associate professor of political science and Senior Lecturer in the International Programme for Politics and Economics at University West, Sweden. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, has since been a research fellow at the Department of Political Science of Göteborg University and at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, and subsequently worked as assistant professor in political science at the University of Delaware for three years before returning to her native country of Sweden. Her research interests are focused on the intersection of international relations theory, feminist theory and state institutions, policies and practices. She is the author of Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society (Cambridge U Press 2010), and her journal publications include articles in International Organization, the European Journal of International Relations, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and Cooperation & Conflict. Her work has received multiple awards at APSA and ISA. Her latest research projects focus on gender and diplomacy and on gender and corruption, and she is writing a paper on gender, diplomacy and corruption for the ANTICORRP collaboration.
Nicholas Charron is Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and a Research Fellow at The Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg. Charron's research is concerned with comparative politics on political institutions, studies of corruption and quality of government and how these factors impact economic development with a focus on Europe and the US. He has also published one book on the quality of government within the European Union that focuses on both national and regional levels. Current research: Charron's most recent work is on the effects and causes of bureaucratic institutions, electoral and democratic institutions, decentralization and causes and consequences of regional inequalities within countries in a comparative perspective. Teaching and tutoring Charron is a lecturer and responsible for the ten week course “Theoretical and Historical Perspectives of Global Governance” on the graduate level in the Global Studies program and teaches in several other graduate and undergraduate courses. He is has supervised many students at both the MA and undergraduate levels and current has five students at the Masters level in political science and Global Studies
Carl Dahlström (born 1972) is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and The Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg. He has previously been a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, at the Stockholm Center for Organizational Research and had a fellowship at the Swedish Parliament. His research is mainly concerned with comparative and historical perspectives on public administration and welfare state policymaking. His papers have appeared or are due to appear in Electoral Studies, Governance, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Public Policy, Party Politics, Political Studies, Political Research Quarterly, and Scandinavian Political Studies. He is also co-editor of the book “Steering from the Centre: Strengthening Political Control in Western Democracies” (University of Toronto Press), and contributor to handbooks in the fields of public administration and political corruption.
Maria Gustavson received her Ph.D. in Public Administration from the University of Gothenburg in 2012, and is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Science and the QoG Institute. Her main research interests are public sector reforms in developing countries, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dynamics between international norms and local contexts, audit and democratic accountability and effects of audit on public sector performance. Gustavson’s current research primarily focuses on the role of audit within the democratic state and the impact of audit on public sector performance. In a current research projects, she aims at theoretically develop concepts of what may be considered ‘good auditing’ of the public sector, develop country comparative measurable indicators and then empirically test if and how the way audit is organized impact public sector performance.
Mette Frisk Jensen was educated at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, with an MA in history and political science. Since 2009 she has held a postdoctoral position at the Department of Culture and Society at the University of Aarhus, working with the history of private companies and the Danish history of bureaucratic corruption. In 2010 she received a two year fellowship from the Danish Research Council to do a project on corruption in Denmark in the years from 1850 to 1950. During her doctoral studies at the Department of History, International and Social studies at Aalborg University she specialized in corruption and the ethics of public office amongst Danish civil servants in the 19th century. Through studies at the archives, her investigations have described central and new aspects of the developments in the Danish history of corruption.
Victor Lapuente is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and a Research Fellow at The Quality of Government Institute (QoG Institute), University of Gothenburg. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Oxford and the Juan March Institute (Madrid) and joined the QoG Institute in 2007. Lapuente's research deals mostly with comparative public administration and corruption. Why do some countries build up autonomous “Weberian” administrations? Do some political regimes produce administrations with higher quality of government and lower levels of corruption than others? Why some countries adopt New Public Management reforms? Other research interests include the impact of separation of powers on economic policy making and financial markets: do systems with mechanisms of separation of powers produce different economic policies or affect financial markets in a systematic manner? Under which circumstances separation of powers leads to economic policy gridlock and when does it lead it to consensual decision-making? Lapuente is working on the effects of a politicized administration vis-à-vis a meritocratic one on a series of economic and political variables.
Marcia Grimes is Associate Professor at the Political Science Department and a research fellow at The Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg. Research Interests: Grimes research interests include the role of civil society in combatting corruption, both in terms of contributing to societal accountability, as well as advocacy efforts to bring about legal and institutional change. Her earlier work focuses on whether citizens’ perceptions of fairness in decision making affect their inclination to trust political institutions. She has also conducted research on the promise and perils of government transparency for societal accountability. On-Going Research: Grimes is currently exploring how the relationship between the political and administrative spheres of government affects clientelism and for the functioning of democracy more generally, expecially citizens' involvement in accountability efforts. Additionally, she is involved in a collaborative effort with Lena Wängnerud exploring the relationship between women’s representation and levels of corruption. Teaching: Since 2009, Marcia Grimes has been the Director of Studies for the Master of Science program International Administration and Global Governance.
Bo Rothstein holds the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at University of Gothenburg in Sweden where he is head of the Quality of Government (QoG) Institute. He has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, Harvard University, Australian National University and Stanford University His most recent books are The Quality of Government: Corruption, Inequality and Social Trust in International Perspective (University of Chicago Press 2011). Among his earlier books in English are Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, and Just Institutions Matters: The Moral and Political Logic of the Universal Welfare State (both Cambridge University Press) and The Social Democratic State (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press). Bo Rothstein is WP leader for WP 1
Dalila Sabanic is working as a Project coordinator for ANTICORRP. Her previous experience working with projects comes from working at an NGO, PEP international (Peoples empowerment) in Bosnia and Herzegovina cooperating with partner organizations; GAP, (Governance Accountability Project), USAID and Sida, (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency). She contains various experiences in initial data collection and research. She is experienced in establishing and maintaining the monitoring and evaluation system. Highly experienced in project cycle management, and managing project proposals as managing project budget. Her academic background lays in psychology and pedagogy. She contains a Master’s degree in Educational science and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology including Human Rights courses.
Lena Wängnerud is Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. Her main area of interest is representative democracy from a gender perspective. Within The Quality of Government Institute she is doing research on gender and corruption. She has particularly studied sub-national variation in Mexico. Lena Wängnerud is coordinating the Multidisciplinary Opinion and Democracy, MOD, Research Group at the University of Gothenburg. Her publications has appeared in journals like the Annual Review of Political Science, the European Political Science Review, Politics & Gender, and the American Review of Public Administration.
