http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org daily 1 2009-11-09T13:55:58Z http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/the-puppet-masters-how-the-corrupt-use-legal-structures-to-hide-stolen-assets-and-what-to-do-about-it Virtually all grand corruption cases involve a company, trust, or foundation (“corporate vehicles”) that has been created to conceal the beneficial owner’s identity. This report from the Stolen Asset Recovery initiative (StAR) of the World Bank and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime explores how government officials hide ownership and control of corrupt assets behind constructions of paper. It makes recommendations on measures governments can take to prevent the abuse of legal structures for the purpose of hiding corrupt funds. No publisher fnawaz 2012-01-31T12:27:43Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/understanding-success-and-failure-of-anti-corruption-initiatives Understanding why initiatives designed to inhibit corruption fail or succeed has direct implications for further development of anti-corruption methodology and practices. In this paper, Heeks and Mathisen evaluate anti-corruption initiatives in developing countries to gauge the extent to which such initiatives have worked. They find that despite improvements in design methodology and implementation over the last two decades, the “design-reality” gap is still vast, frequently leading to full or partial failure of anti-corruption initiatives. No publisher avoznaya 2012-01-31T11:16:12Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/political-polarization-as-a-constraint-on-corruption-a-cross-national-comparison-1 In this paper the authors take a novel approach to understanding political corruption. They use panel data from a broad range of countries to support the theory that ideological polarisation can be used as a predictor of the perceived level of corruption within a country. Moreover, they claim that political polarisation itself can act as a constraint on corruption. No publisher aguth 2012-01-25T18:28:18Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/anti-corruption-policy-can-international-actors-play-a-constructive-role In this paper Susan Rose-Ackerman discusses what the ultimate goals of the international anti-corruption strategy ought to be and the most appropriate routes for maximising international influence in this area. First, the paper introduces the basic types of international actors involved in the area of anti-corruption. Second, the author moves on to discuss the crucial role of effective anti-corruption policies in achieving ultimate policy goals, which include aims such as efficient international markets, economic growth, poverty alleviation, government legitimacy and rebuilding political and economic order in post-conflict countries. Third, the discussion focuses on the role of international organisations in achieving these policy goals. Here, the author suggests that international actors should act in three main capacities: as information provider, international facilitator, and domestic project sponsor. No publisher pmason 2012-01-23T12:30:04Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/unwilling-or-unable-to-cheat-evidence-from-a-tax-audit-experiment-in-denmark In a recent paper Kleven, Knudsen, Kreiner, Pedersen, and Saez study the extent of fiscal evasion and the impact of randomised audits on tax evasion in Denmark. They find that hardly any income subject to third party reporting is evaded, while income not reported by third parties is largely evaded. They conclude that it is not unwillingness but inability to evade that prevents more fraud. No publisher pbachas 2012-01-19T11:12:27Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/corporate-governance-and-corruption-ethical-dilemmas-of-asian-business-groups In this recent paper from the Journal of Business Ethics, the author explores the relationship between corporate governance and corruption in family-owned business groups in the Philippines. The study is based on 40 semi-structured interviews of elite business managers, academics, and government officials carried out in 2007. No publisher rjhanlon 2012-01-16T12:34:45Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/political-awareness-corruption-perceptions-and-democratic-accountability-in-latin-america This article contributes to the accountability literature on corruption by providing further nuance to the argument that voters are able to monitor the actions of their politicians effectively when they have accurate perceptions of corruption levels in their country. The author posits that research that has concentrated on dissemination of information to the public, usually through the provision of a free press, has failed to account for the underlying heterogeneity of political knowledge among citizens. Such a simplification of the citizen accountability model can then lead to the erroneous assumption that the process of opening up the information environment will result in reduction of corruption levels, as politically aware citizens begin to use their knowledge of political actions to reward or punish politicians. No publisher avoznaya 2011-12-21T10:23:17Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/a-new-strategy-for-better-corruption-assessment This article suggests a new strategy for a “better and more useful corruption assessment” by using indicators and benchmarks. The author first presents an encompassing and very interesting critique of current corruption assessment indices, and explains why, although they have become increasingly sophisticated, many problems remain. Johnston refers in particular to the problems of definition and operationalisation, and underlines the limits of using perceptions as a basis for analysis. No publisher mtremblay 2011-12-02T10:08:19Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/how-do-patient-characteristics-influence-informal-payments-for-inpatient-and-outpatient-health-care-in-albania This study represents one of the first attempts to make an empirical assessment of the three major theories that have been advanced to date explaining the phenomenon of informal payments for healthcare - the cultural model (informal payments as one of the expressions of the ‘culture of gifts’), economic model (informal payments as the result of a gap between demand and supply), and, what the authors call, governance model (informal payments as the result of a lack of control and accountability of healthcare systems). Using Albania as a case study, the authors demonstrate that that the cultural explanatory model appears to be substantially weaker than the economic and the governance ones. No publisher dariaukhova 2011-11-28T09:45:46Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/kenya-city-integrity-report The Kenya City Integrity Report is a bottom-up scorecard of transparency, anti-corruption and accountability efforts in Kenya’s three largest cities – Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi. The project is one of the first attempts to comprehensively assess good governance and anti-corruption mechanisms at the city level in Kenya. The report provides empirical assessment of areas such as - information transparency, elections, government conflicts of interest safeguards & checks and balances, fiscal and budgetary management, and public administration and business regulation. No publisher fnawaz 2011-11-23T11:49:48Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/procurement-issues-in-malaysia In the paper, "Procurement issues in Malaysia", which has recently been published in the International Journal of Public Sector Management, the authors offer new insight into stakeholder perceptions of the public procurement system of Malaysia. The study is based on 250 focus-group interviews with contractors and 18 semi-structured interviews with procurement officers. With interviews conducted over a nine-month period in 2007, research findings suggest cronyism and irregular procurement processes continue to pose a challenge for Malaysian industry. No publisher rjhanlon 2011-11-16T14:52:52Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/vote-buying-and-reciprocity A topic of much interest in the political economy of corruption is the effectiveness of vote-buying. Since in most settings ballots are secret, politicians cannot enforce receiving votes in exchange of gifts; giving patronage money might have no effect on votes since it is not observable. Using Paraguay as a case study Finan and Schechter test a behavioural theory: are more “reciprocal” individuals targeted by politicians for vote buying? No publisher pbachas 2011-11-07T16:31:32Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/performing-bribery-in-china-guanxi-practice-corruption-with-a-human-face This article analyses the entangled relationship between corruption and the so-called guanxi-practice, which is a form of reciprocal conduct that is ubiquitous in China. Unlike most current academic studies on corruption in China which focus on the theme of how the political, economic and social environments have caused corruption at the macro-level, this paper takes a micro-view. It concentrates on how corruption, notably bribery, takes place between a briber and the bribed and challenges the conventional view on the causal relationship between bribery and guanxi-practice. No publisher lingli 2011-11-04T12:03:07Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/pathologies-of-europeanization.-fighting-corruption-in-the-southern-caucasus In this paper, the authors analyse the efficacy of the European Union (EU) policy to promote good governance outside its borders, looking in particular at the EU’s efforts to support the fight against corruption in the post-Soviet countries in the Southern Caucasus region. The paper’s main argument is that although the EU managed to induce some formal institutional changes, its policy mainly helped to stabilise rather than change the existing regimes across these countries. Moreover, the authors argue that the Europeanisation of domestic structures within the post-Soviet countries can have opposite effects to what the EU intended to achieve with its policy. To illustrate such pathologies of Europeanisation, the paper discusses the experiences of three countries in the region: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The paper shows that despite the high costs and limited incentives for change, all three countries responded to the EU’s demands by introducing similar institutional changes. However, rather than combating corruption systematically, the governments of these countries only implemented required anti-corruption policies selectively, often using them to undermine political opponents and consolidate the existing power structures. No publisher pmason 2011-11-03T11:54:54Z Research Article http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/resources/articles/corruption-in-procurement-and-shadow-campaign-financing-evidence-from-russia Using "wiki-leaked" data, the authors Mirnov and Zhuravskaya investigate the relationship between public procurement and political corruption in Russia. By examining bank transfers during the pre-election period the authors find evidence of abnormally high rates of transfer out of firms that benefit from public procurement contracts, compared to firms that do not. This study is one of the first to engage in-depth econometric analysis and causality investigation using WikiLeaks data. It also contributes to the recent strand of empirical literature that attempts to provide systematic evidence of corruption using objective, rather than perception-based, measures. No publisher thomasroca 2011-10-28T15:09:32Z Research Article