Led by the University of Amsterdam, the task of this work package is to show diversity, continuity and change in anti-corruption practices across space and time, thereby illuminating and perhaps also complicating our understanding of modern Western governments’ Weberian profile. It is the main hypothesis of ANTICORP that, far from being only a modern and Western ideal, the concept of good government existed at all times and in all cultures, and mechanisms to fight what was seen to be corruption went hand in hand with it. Through a broad range of case-studies – ancient Rome, the Abbasid and Mamluk Empires, medieval and Renaissance Italian city-state, the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, early modern and modern Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands – it traces a salient aspect of the historical relations between public morals and political legitimacy. The choice of these case-studies allows accounting for differences in culture, type of government, and economic and social profile. Looking at four distinct periods – ancient, medieval, early modern and modern – allows for in-depth research and discovery of wider patterns that reveal the historical patterns in defining corruption and efforts to deal with it.
Some of the main research questions to be addressed through this work package are: When and how did today’s corruption-free societies shed patrimonialism? Can we associate specific circumstances to the onset of historical anti-corruption crackdowns? Can we distinguish specific sequences or ‘paths’ leading away from corrupt equilibria? What transitional practices and strategies were used to solidify the neutrality and integrity of government during the decades of struggle for accountability and integrity in government? Who were the actors of these developments, and what were the strategies they employed? Can we draw lessons for present times out of this more distant or more recent historical experience? The research looks especially at the origins of the mechanisms of checks and balances, the impartiality and autonomy of magistracies and tests the key hypotheses in the development of rule of law and impartial government.
Recording from Athens, 9 May 2016, 14:10 – 15:30. Corruption has by now been recognised as a major policy problem across the world. Governments across the European continent, from Greece to Iceland, are trying to address the issue with different approaches. The recent publication of the Panama Papers again highlighted the varying success of these […]
The ECPR General Conference 2016 will take place 7-10 September 2016. The ECPR’s General Conference is the largest political science event in Europe, bringing some 2,000 political scientists together every autumn. The 2016 Conference will be held at Charles University, Prague, in the Czech Republic; the oldest institution of higher learning in Central Europe. The academic programme […]
The 66th Annual International Conference of the Political Studies Association (PSA) will be held 21-23 March 2016 in Brighton, United Kingdom.
Join us in Philadelphia for the 112th APSA Annual Meeting to address the latest scholarship in political science while exploring the 2016 theme, “Great Transformations: Political Science and the Big Questions of Our Time.” APSA and the 2016 Program Chairs Kimberly Morgan, The George Washington University, and Deborah Schildkraut, Tufts University, look forward to your […]
The 74th annual MPSA conference will be held April 7-10, 2016 at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago. Conference presentations are organized by topic in more than 80 sections based on different subfields or areas of study. Many of these are interdisciplinary and draw scholars from different fields, providing a variety of perspectives
ANTICORRP was a large-scale research project funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme. The project started in March 2012 and ended February 2017. The full name is Anticorruption Policies Revisited: Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenge of Corruption.
Its central objective was to investigate factors that promote or hinder the development of effective anti-corruption policies.
The project consisted of 20 research groups in 15 EU countries. It was interdisciplinary in nature, and brought together researchers from anthropology, criminology, economics, gender studies, history, law, political science, public policy and public administration.
The project was organised into four thematic pillars, which include 11 substantive work packages.
What factors promote or hinder the development of effective anticorruption policies and impartial government institutions? The ANTICORRP project and the Quality of Government (QoG) invited policy-makers, civil society representatives and academics to a conference in Brussels trying to surmise the final results of the ANTICORRP project. The conference counted among its speakers some of the […]
“Things are moving, things are changing – but they aren’t changing in big steps, they are changing in millimetres” This was one of the conclusions put forward by Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery and member of the ANTICORRP Advisory Board. He took part in a roundtable of anti-corruption experts that […]
Recording from Athens, 9 May 2016, 14:10 – 15:30 (EET). Corruption has by now been recognised as a major policy problem across the world. Governments across the European continent, from Greece to Iceland, are trying to address the issue with different approaches. The recent publication of the Panama Papers again highlighted the varying success of these […]
It’s Throwback Thursday with our researcher at the University of Amsterdam showing us how they use history to explain corruption and anticorruption. Ronald Kroeze and André Vitória analyse how anticorruption practices changed across space and time, bringing out their diversity and continuity and to enhance our understanding of how modern Western governments developed in the way that they did.
Anticorruption in History is a timely and urgent book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem we face as a global society, undermining trust in government and financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the “path […]
This deliverable presents all ANTICORRP policy reports that were published throughout the five year project period. While the individual reports can also be found on this website, this deliverable exemplifies the diversity and breadth of the ANTICORRP project and its efforts to compile policy relevant research. Contributing authors are: Acar, M., A. Bozzini, R. Bratu, […]
This volume reunites the fieldwork of 2014-2015 in the ANTICORRP project. It is entirely based on objective indicators and offers both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the linkage between political corruption and organised crime using statistics on spending, procurement contract data and judicial data. The methodology used in the analysis of particularism of public resource distribution is applicable to […]
Why do some societies manage to control corruption so that it manifests itself only occasionally, while other societies remain systemically corrupt? This book is about how societies reach that point when integrity becomes the norm and corruption the exception in regard to how public affairs are run and public resources are allocated. It primarily asks […]