European Aid and Governance: Does the Source Matter?

Authors Name(s): Ramin Dadasov
Using a panel data set on 103 developing countries, this paper empirically analyses the impact of the European aid flows on quality of governance in aid recipient countries. The analysis employs aggregated Official Development Assistance data as well as disaggregated project-level data. The results show that, while bilateral aid from the largest European donors does […] Read more

The media coverage of corruption: the case of Slovakia

Authors Name(s): Andrej Skolkay
This study takes advantage of Human Assisted Computer Analysis. In particular, this paper analyses selection, coverage and portrayal of various corruption-related issues and subjects by selected newspapers in Slovakia. HACA revealed that the best coverage of corruption as well as relatively widest variety of different types of corruption was provided by Sme, distantly followed by […] Read more

Media´s Controversial Roles/impact on/in Examples of (un)Covering Fraud with EU Funds

Authors Name(s): Andrey Skolkay
The key political roles of the media include providing information, checking the accountability of public figures and authorities, and creating a space for public debate. Among these roles, (un)covering corruption in its various forms is certainly a great task which may also be of great interest for the media. Reporting on occurrences of corruption or […] Read more

The EU’s rule of law promotion in post-Soviet Europe: what explains the divergence between Baltic States and EaP countries?

Authors Name(s): Martin Mendelski
The European Union (EU) and domestic “change agents” have promoted the rule of law in post-Soviet Europe with varying results. While the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) succeeded in establishing the rule of law, Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia) did not. Why did EU-driven legal, judicial and anti-corruption reforms not […] Read more

Representations of Corruption in the British, French, and Italian Press: Audience Segmentation and the Lack of Unanimously Shared Indignation

Authors Name(s): Paolo Mancini, Marco Mazzoni, Alessio Cornia, Rita Marchetti
As part of a larger European Union (EU)-funded project, this paper investigates the coverage of corruption and related topics in three European democracies: France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Based on Freedom House data, these countries are characterized by different levels of press freedom. A large corpus of newspaper articles (107,248 articles) from the period […] Read more

Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks: Investigating the Impact of Bureaucratic Meritocracy on Public Procurement Processes

Authors Name(s): Nicholas Charron, Carl Dahlström, Victor Lapuente, Mihaly Fazekas
Why do officials in some countries favor entrenched contractors, while others assign public contracts more impartially? This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy. It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers. We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of […] Read more

Need or Greed? Conditions for Collective Action against Corruption

Authors Name(s): Monika Bauhr
This article calls into question one of the implicit assumptions linking democratic accountability to reduced corruption, namely, that citizens will expose institutions rife with venality and mobilize for better government. Instead, mobilization may be contingent on the type of corruption. The study develops a distinction between need and greed corruption and suggest that citizens are […] Read more

Measuring Meritocracy in the Public Sector in Europe: a New National and Sub-National Indicator

Authors Name(s): Nicholas Charron, Carl Dahlström, Victor Lapuente
Since the late nineteenth century, the presence of an independent and meritocratic bureaucracy has been posited as an advantage for effective bureaucratic behaviour and a means of limiting patrimonial networks and corruption, among other benefits. There is little consensus on how the features of an independent and meritocratic bureaucracy should be measured across countries, however, […] Read more

Measuring Political Corruption from Audit Results: A New Panel of Brazilian Municipalities

Authors Name(s): Bianca Vaz Mondo
Comparative research on corruption has always faced challenges on how to reliably measure this phenomenon. Indicators based on perceptions of or experience with corruption are the most common approaches, but these methods have also faced criticism regarding limitations to their conceptual and measurement validity. A number of scholars have thus sought to develop alternative, more […] Read more

Opening Public Officials’ Coffers: A Quantitative Analysis of the Impact of Financial Disclosure Regulation on National Corruption Levels

Authors Name(s): Gustavo A. Vargas, David Schlutz
Disclosure of income, assets and conflicts of interest can serve as powerful public accountability tools to draw attention to the abuse of public office, help prosecute corrupt offenders and create a culture of scrutiny in the public sector that deters corruption. Based on data of the World Bank’s Public Accountability Mechanisms initiative, we present the […] Read more