That civil society activism can strengthen accountability and limit government corruption is theoretically compelling and popular in policy circles. Whether civic engagement can limit grand ...corruption, and if so in what types of settings, remains an open question. This paper presents the first large-N study of societal accountability with respect to grand corruption. Using objective indicators of procurement corruption from 173 EU regions, the study finds that civil society strength is associated with lower levels of corruption but that the association is not monotonic. Civil society strength seems to constrain procurement corruption where accountability conditions are the least favorable. Where accountability conditions are well-functioning, we find no evidence that societal accountability constrains corruption. The findings help to adjudicate between competing expectations from research on horizontal and societal accountability. Moreover, they confirm that societal accountability can complement horizontal accountability where institutional conditions function sub-optimally, even limiting grand corruption.
Disappointed by the numerous failures of anticorruption reforms, international organisations, scholars and policy makers increasingly place their hopes on measures aimed at enhancing gender equality ...and in particular increasing the inclusion of female representatives in elected assemblies. Yet most studies to date focus on aggregate measures of corruption and fail to explain why the correlation between women's representation and levels of corruption occurs. Using newly collected regional‐level, non‐perception‐based measures of corruption, this study distinguishes between different forms of corruption and shows that the inclusion of women in local councils is strongly negatively associated with the prevalence of both petty and grand forms of corruption. However, the reduction in corruption is primarily experienced among women. This suggests that female representatives seek to further two separate political agendas once they attain public office: the improvement of public service delivery in sectors that tend to primarily benefit women; and the breakup of male‐dominated collusive networks.
What is the global social context for the insertion of kleptocratic elites into the putatively liberal international order? Drawing on cases from our work on Eurasia and Africa, we sketch a concept ...of ‘transnational uncivil society’, which we contrast to ‘transnational activist networks’. While the latter denotes the liberalizing practices of global civil society, the former suggests a specific series of clientelistic relations across borders, which open space for uncivil elites. This distinction animates a growing line of conflict in global politics. These kleptocrats eject liberal activists from their own territories and create new spaces to whitewash their own reputations and build their own transnational networks. To do so, they hire political consultants and reputation managers, engage in public philanthropy and forge new relationships with major global institutions. We show how these strategies of reputation-laundering are neither illicit nor marginal, but very much a product of the actors, institutions and markets generated by the liberal international order. We compare and contrast the scope and purpose of civil and uncivil society networks, we explore the increasing globalization of Eurasian and African elites as a concerted strategy to distance themselves from associations with their political oppression and kleptocracy in their home countries, and recast themselves as productive and respected cosmopolitans.
Incoming governments sometimes abuse their power to manipulate the allocation of government contracts so as to buy loyalty from cronies. While scandals suggest such practices are relatively ...widespread, the extent of such partisan favoritism is difficult to measure and the conditions under which it flourishes under-theorized. Drawing on theory regarding the role of institutions as constraints on corruption, we identify three spheres of political influence over government contracting and show how elites can manipulate two of those spheres to increase their opportunities to influence the procurement process and minimize external accountability, facilitating the corrupt allocation of contracts to partisan allies. Using an innovative big data methodology, we then identify the effects of a change in government on procurement markets in two countries, Hungary and the United Kingdom, which differ in terms of political influence over these institutions. We find that politically-favored companies secure 50–60% of the central government contracting market in Hungary but only 10% in the UK.
In order to address the lack of reliable indicators of corruption, this article develops a composite indicator of high-level institutionalised corruption through a novel ‘Big Data’ approach. Using ...publicly available electronic public procurement records in Hungary, we identify “red flags” in the public procurement process and link them to restricted competition and recurrent contract award to the same company. We use this method to create a corruption indicator at contract level that can be aggregated to the level of individual organisations, sectors, regions and countries. Because electronic public procurement data is available in virtually all developed countries from about the mid-2000s, this method can generate a corruption index based on objective data that is consistent over time and across countries. We demonstrate the validity of the corruption risk index by showing that firms with higher corruption risk score had relatively higher profitability, higher ratio of contract value to initial estimated price, greater likelihood of politicians managing or owning them and greater likelihood of registration in tax havens, than firms with lower scores on the index. In the conclusion we discuss the uses of this data for academic research, investigative journalists, civil society groups and small and medium business.
Although corruption in Malaysia is nothing new, it has exacerbated in recent years as reflected in the deteriorating corruption perceptions index and a series of large-scale corruption scandals that ...have made headlines around the world. Lately, corruption has become so endemic and widespread that Malaysia has earned the dubious distinction of a kleptocracy, notwithstanding ongoing anti-corruption campaigns. This paper examines and analyses Malaysia's anti-corruption experience and the factors that explain it. Drawing on data from both primary and secondary sources it argues that anti-corruption drives have remained narrowly-focused, ignoring some critical aspects of Malaysia's political economy including the politics-business nexus, patronage networks and money politics which are at the heart of grand corruption. It further argues that much of the high-level corruption has its roots in politics and that the powerful political figures have remained largely untouched by anti-corruption drives. Finally, it reveals that despite institutional revamp, key institutions continue to suffer from a lack of independence and effective power. Such constraints, reinforced further by political manipulation and selective application of laws, have undermined the effectiveness of anti-corruption initiatives. The Malaysian experience offers lessons and insights that have wider relevance.
Grand corruption in Mexico Hagene, Turid
European review of Latin American and Caribbean studies,
11/2019
108
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This article offers an exemplary case of grand corruption in Mexico, narrating the story of how a series of actors and institutions at all levels collaborated to obtain favours, while dispossessing ...an agrarian community of its property rights, and replacing its elected Commissariat with a person of their choice, paying him the equivalent of US$3 million. This manoeuvre gave right of way to President Peña Nieto's interurban train, at the risk of ruining the community's water supply. The study argues that we should distinguish the concept of grand from that of petty corruption. It sees neopatrimonialism as a subtype of grand corruption, describing complex networks of actors across several institutions and levels, which operate the corrupt practices, with agency at all levels. President López Obrador won the 2018 election on a promise to fight corruption. This study illustrates the difficulties he will encounter trying to realize this promise, while suggesting that combatting impunity would constitute a promising start.
Este artículo ofrece un caso ejemplar de gran corrupción en México. Narra la historia de cómo una serie de actores e instituciones de todos los niveles colaboraron para obtener favores, mientras despojaban de sus derechos de propiedad a una comunidad agraria y reemplazaban a su comisariado electo por una persona de su preferencia, pagándole el equivalente a 3 millones de dólares estadounidenses. Esta maniobra dió paso al tren interurbano del Presidente Peña Nieto, a riesgo de arruinar el suministro de agua de la comunidad. El estudio argumenta que debemos distinguir el concepto de gran corrupción del de corrupción menor. Considera el neopatrimonialismo como un subtipo de gran corrupción, que describe redes complejas de actores en varias instituciones y niveles, que operan bajo prácticas corruptas, con agencia en todos los niveles. El presidente López Obrador ganó las elecciones de 2018 con la promesa de luchar contra la corrupción. Este estudio ilustra las dificultades que encontrará al tratar de cumplir esta promesa, mientras sugiere que combatir la impunidad constituiría un comienzo prometedor.
Recent protests against police brutality in Nigeria and the Arab Spring, which was sparked by an incident of police brutality in Tunisia, led to public demands that brought political reforms. This ...paper explores the question, how do citizens evaluate their government in regards to corruption? Using the Afrobarometer Wave 6 dataset, I investigate the relationship between the public's perception of police and upper-level government officials’ corruption in African countries. Due to lack of transparency, the public has no direct information from upper-level bureaucracy but can evaluate corruption of upper-level government officials through direct experience with police. My finding demonstrates that regardless of regime type, the corruption perception of police influences the corruption perception of upper-level government officials. The public cues to evaluate their government quality are likely derived from interactions with police. Therefore corruption perception of police can affect government legitimacy.
This article studies the innovation behavior of the Tunisian firms using the database collected by the World Bank Enterprise Surveys in 2020. The modeling strategy used allowed us to assess the ...adequacy of the main regression models and the robustness of the results. Besides the firms’ characteristics, we highlight the role of institutions by considering the infrastructure and corruption that affect the firms’ incentives to innovate. We show that the firm innovation is negatively related to the gifts or informal payments to public officials to gain advantages in the drafting of laws, decrees, regulations or other binding government decisions. Petty corruption, by officials at lower levels, can grease the wheels of innovation activities, speed up the procedures for obtaining the required administrative permits and “get things done”, since the Tunisian economy is characterized by a relatively mediocre quality of governance.
•Analysis of the effects of petty and grand corruption on the Tunisian firms’ innovativeness.•Distinction between grand corruption and petty corruption and how they affect innovation.•Petty corruption can serve as a mechanism to overcome bureaucratic hurdles.•Grand corruption in the government system has a negative effect on firms’ innovativeness.
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