Led by the Hertie School of Governance, this work package conducts both quantitative and qualitative analyses of corruption in countries all over the world. In the first part, it engages in stock-taking and assessment of national level governance indicators allowing the tracing over time of the quality of governance and corruption in countries worldwide to create a large integrated time-series database allowing for comparative analysis. The goal is to map the continents in order to assess stagnation, evolution or involution in their regional context. The research also engages in trend analysis to understand global evolution in the context of globalisation and crisis and to establish recent and contemporary performers. It also develops explanatory models of good governance drawing on quantitative comparative analysis.
The second part of this work package uses the findings of the quantitative analysis to identify and explain countries which over or under-perform in terms of their progress towards better governance. These serve as cases to systematically study the transition from systemic corruption to more impartial government by process-tracing, drawing on country experts from GIGA, University College London and from within the countries themselves. Such case studies analyse the political economy of corruption and anti-corruption reforms.
This work package uses a variety of methods to understand who the ‘losers’ of corrupt institutional arrangements are, what prevents or enables their collective action for a more equitable situation, and what circumstances trigger the change process. The countries are selected on the basis of the quantitative analysis which identifies recent ‘over-performers’ and ‘under-performers’. The five different key variables that are followed are: (change in) power distribution, allocation of state resources, degree of access to public goods, normative constraints and distinction between public and private. The research then focuses on comparison across success cases to identify specific trajectories, compare tipping points and actors’ strategies, and comparison with under-performers.
On Wednesday, 22 February, 1-2pm, the FP7 ANTICORRP team at UCL is celebrating the launch of the special issue on “Innovations in Corruption Studies” in the Slavonic and East European Review. The special issue emerges from the research by University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies – a major partner in the FP7 […]
Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi will give a keynote talk at the civil society morning of the Open Government Partnership Global Summit in Paris. The OGP summit will involve 3000 representatives from 70 countries: Heads of State and governments, ministers, public servants, members of parliament, local authorities, civil society representatives, start-ups and digital innovators, civic techs, developers, […]
Presentation of the Findings of the ANTICORRP Research Project in Athens, Greece. Pleaes find the programme attached.
On 19 May 2016 the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) organises a panel discussion on How to Foster Good Governance and Anti-Corruption in European Development Aid. The event presents research result of ANTICORRP Work Package 8, which analyses the impact of EU conditionality and EU aid on good governance in new EU […]
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 […]
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 […]
Luxembourg has just punished a whistleblower for telling the truth about tax evasion (Luxleaks); it is, together with Singapore, a favourite destinations for individuals and companies to hide income. Yet Luxembourg ranks number 10 and Singapore 7 in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2016 published by Transparency International. They are followed by a wealth of […]
The political and economic turmoil that hit Greece since 2009 also shed a light on the issue of corruption in the country. The ANTICORRP project looks at corruption and anti-corruption strategies in the entire world, but naturally has a particular focus on what is happening in the European Union and also in Greece. The results […]
Across Europe, while some regions elect relatively high shares of women to local councils, men almost exclusively dominate the councils of others. New research by Aksel Sundström and Lena Wängnerud suggests that informal recruitment practices are important in understanding why. Their study shows that in regions where corruption is endemic in local government, authorities elect lower shares of women – a finding with implications for strategies on how to increase women’s presence in elected bodies.
Why have so few countries managed to leave systematic corruption behind, while in many others modernization is still a mere façade? How do we escape the trap of corruption, to reach a governance system based on ethical universalism? In this unique book, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Michael Johnston lead a team of eminent researchers on an […]
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, […]
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, […]
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 […]