Country: Global

Multi-national organizations

Special Issue: Evidence-based public integrity policies

The attempt of this special issue of Crime, Law and Social Change is to reflect on the need and present the evidence of what are the effective elements of a public integrity framework. The origins of this concept are to be found in the original paper by Langseth, Stapenhurst and Pope,1 where a ‘national integrity system’ was proposed as a comprehensive method of fighting corruption. They proposed eight independent pillars needed to fight corruption. Those were public awareness, public anti-corruption strategies, public participation, ‘watchdog’ agencies, the judiciary, the media, the private sector, and international cooperation. This amounted to a mixture of agency from three main areas: domestic civil society including the media and the private sector, domestic horizontal accountability agencies such as watchdogs and the judiciary, and international pressure. It was proposed that even the anti-corruption strategies should be ‘public’, in order to put some constraints on government as it was rightly understood that in a corrupt country the government is the main beneficiary of the status quo of the power establishment, so it can hardly be expected to be the sole or the even the principal actor in anticorruption reforms, at least not if such reforms are to be effective. Langseth, Stapenhurst and Pope’s mixture of agents had a sound logic of accountability, drawing as it did on three sources of agency, all different from government, so in principle able to exercise the constraints essential for control of corruption. Because the main question the anticorruption fighter addresses is not what does control of corruption consist in, but what brings it about.

Our theory presents control of corruption as the equilibrium between opportunities for spoiling and constraints limiting them because this is what statistical evidence speaks for. The essential elements of this equilibrium, transparency, administrative discretion, anticorruption regulation are in turn tested, and interacted with societal participation to arrive at a state-society model of corruption control. In the end, what we identify from all the cases in the world and data for more than two decades is indeed that control of corruption is a holistic equilibrium in every society, but also that one cannot fix a balance without being aware of its existence. This issue brings together a variety of articles, focussing on the different pillars of this theory.

When do anticorruption laws matter? The evidence on public integrity enabling contexts

This paper asks if there is evidence that the most common legislation recommended and used in the current anticorruption toolkit is effective in reducing corruption and if specific contexts can be identified which enable or disable effective legislation for control of corruption. The paper draws on documented public accountability and anticorruption tools from the PAM, the public accountability mechanisms database of the World Bank, and documents additional ones, including an index of anticorruption regulatory density, comprising anticorruption agencies, existence of an Ombudsman, restrictions to party finance legislation and others. While only fiscal transparency and financial disclosures are found to be significant, the interaction of some tools with context elements, such as freedom of the press of independence of the judiciary enhances their impact. The paper argues finally that the effectiveness of some anticorruption tools is strictly dependent on context, especially the existence of the rule of law, while others remain fully insignificant.

Civil society and online connectivity: controlling corruption on the net?

Over the past years, an increasing number of studies have looked at the use of internet and communications technology (ICT) in the fight against corruption. While there is broad agreement that ICT tools can be effective in controlling corruption, the mechanisms by which they are doing this are much less clear. This paper attempts to shine some light on this relationship. It focusses on the role of ICT in empowering citizens and supporting civil society. It argues that enlightened citizens can use internet access and social media to inform themselves on corruption, mobilise support for anti-corruption movements and gather information in order to shine a lisght on particularistic practices. Defining corruption as a collective action problem, the paper provides quantitative evidence to support its claim that ICT can support collective action of an informed citizenry and thus contribute to the control of corruption.

Measuring Control of Corruption by a New Index of Public Integrity

While the last 20 years saw the invention of corruption rankings, allowing comparison between countries and the shaming of corrupt governments, such measurements are largely based on the perceptions of experts, lacking both specificity and transparency. New research, based on a comprehensive theory of governance defined as the set of formal and informal institutions determining who gets what in a given context, allow for more specific and objective, albeit indirect, measurements of control of corruption. Such measurements focus on the institutional framework which empowers public integrity and eliminates many current anti-corruption tools, while validating others. Most importantly, it provides a broader specific context which can empower reforms based on evidence and a clear measure to determine status and progress of corruption control.

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

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 first indicator that captures a country’s financial disclosure in-law effort. By employing different panel data model specifications, we use this indicator to measure how the introduction of comprehensive financial disclosure systems impacted national corruption levels for 91 countries between 1996 and 2012. We present robust results that provide tentative evidence for a positive and significant relationship between a country’s capacity to control for corruption and the expansion of financial disclosure legislation for the years following the enactment.

Measuring Control of Corruption by a New Index of Public Integrity

While the last twenty years saw the invention of corruption rankings, allowing comparison over countries and the shaming of corrupt governments, such measurements are largely based on perceptions of experts, lacking both specificity and transparency. New research, based on a comprehensive theory of governance defined as the set of formal and informal institutions determining who gets what in a given context, allows more specific and objective, although indirect measurements of control of corruption. Such measurements focus on the institutional framework which empowers public integrity and eliminates many current anticorruption tools, while validating others. Most importantly, it provides a broader specific context which can empower reforms based on evidence and a clear measure to determine status and progress of corruption control.

This research was made possible by support of the EU FP7 ANTICORRP project (Grant agreement no: 290529) at the Hertie School of Governance.

The Quest for Good Governance: Learning from Virtuous Circles

Once of interest mainly to specialists, the problem of explaining how institutions change is now a primary concern not only of economists, but of the international donor community as well. Many have come to believe that political institutions are decisive in shaping economic institutions and, with them, the course of innovation and investment that leads to a developed society. This is the shift from patrimonialism to ethical universalism, a transformation that most of today’s advanced democracies accomplished through a long historical evolution. But there has been very little research on whether and how this kind of change can be engineered and speeded up by human design. The EU-funded ANTICORRP project that I have been leading aims to help fill this gap. The big challenge is to explain the shift of the governance paradigm from particularism to universalism in the few societies that have managed to accomplish it in the postwar era. Do these success stories offer any lessons about how other societies can make that journey?

The Quest for Good Governance. How Societies Develop Control of Corruption

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 what lessons we have learned from historical and contemporary experiences in developing corruption control, which can aid policy-makers and civil societies in steering and expediting this process. Few states now remain without either an anticorruption agency or an Ombudsman, yet no statistical evidence can be found that they actually induce progress. Using both historical and contemporary studies and easy to understand statistics, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi looks at how to diagnose, measure and change governance so that those entrusted with power and authority manage to defend public resources. The Quest for Good Governance presents a comprehensive empirical theory of governance unifying important disparate contributions in the areas of corruption, quality of government and rule of law and is the first attempt to directly answer the big question of what explains virtuous circles in good governance. It features research and policy tools to diagnose and build contextualized national strategies. The book was published on 27 August 2015 as a paperpack and hardcover.

Please find more information, as well as order the book on the website of Cambridge University Press.

Reviews for this publication

“This is one of the most important books ever written on the most universal governance challenge of our time – how to control corruption. In this brilliant integration of theory, history, case studies and quantitative evidence, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi shows how countries move from the natural state of corruption, clientelism and particularistic governance to the impersonal norms of fairness, integrity and transparency that make for good governance. This is an indispensable work for any scholar, student or policy-maker who wants to understand how societies mobilize and states reform to control corruption.”

Larry Diamond, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, California

 

“Along with Tilly and Acemoglu and Robinson, Mungiu-Pippidi in this volume smartly re-frames the nature of the modern state.

Elsewhere in her superbly thoughtful and conceptually enriching book, Mungiu-Pippidi focuses on how the Italian city-states in their rise to republicanism largely contained corrupt practices and, by focusing on equality, avoided the kinds of wholesale corruption that is (and has been for years) widespread in the modern Italian state.

Fortunately, Mungiu-Pippidi’s remarkable book provides a welcome trove of possible solutions to the historical problem of corruption”.

Robert Rotberg “Considering Corruption’s Curse: Venality across Time and Space”. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Summer 2016

 

“The Quest for Good Governance combines sophisticated conceptual discussion (for example, of the varying definitions of corruption and their consequences) with a historical perspective and a critical statistical analysis of various databases.  It is a good example of a multi-method approach to a huge and complex problem… I find this an accomplished and important book, and one which deserves very wide readership”.

Christopher Pollitt in International Review of Administrative Sciences, vol. 82:3, 2016

 

“Reformers who read this essential book will learn rather than seeking ‘toolkits’ to attack specific corrupt activities, successful societies have made integrity and accountability widely-accepted norms, backed up by the self-interest of a wide range of citizens. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi makes clear that societies which keep corruption under control have succeeded not just a due to their present laws and enforcement, but through a longer-term story of political development, widespread expectations and the building of effective performance of public institutions.”

Michael Johnston, Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Colgate University

 

“Mungiu-Pippidi writes that creating collective action and providing political support is the only proven effective strategy against corruption. Specialists will appreciate the comprehensive summary and review of the literature … Highly recommended.”

E. Hartwig, Choice

 

“Reading the book was really a roller-coaster… It touches upon all the key issues of corruption: It looks at measurement, theory, at policy; it uses quantitative methods, but also process tracing tools. It’s really a tour de force on various things and, while you might not agree with all of its conclusions, it really is a textbook even though it’s not a textbook on corruption”.

Finn Heinrich, Research Director at Transparency International

 

“What I was impressed by was the historical depth and the combination of various methods, from court case analysis to survey data and econometrics. You really had the impression to get a comprehensive picture. What I was also impressed by was the refusal to give easy and simple answers. This is not a cookbook; it’s a book to think about very specific cases and come up with very specific solutions.”

Hans-Dieter Klingemann, WZB

 

“A strong argument for framing the anti-corruption debate in terms of ethical universalism and impartiality with a focus on grassroots citizen involvement. Mungiu-Pippidi realistically acknowledges the difficulty of lasting reform, but at the same time she usefully seeks to move the policy debate beyond platitudes to concrete proposals that can attract domestic support and fit local contexts.”

Susan Rose-Ackerman, Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University

 

“Mungiu-Pippidi’s work is a significant contribution to our understanding of the subject, and one to which policymakers and international donors should pay attention. Her work systematically explores the failed and successful trajectories of different countries in arriving at norms of universalism in governance. It is an important work in its welcome focus on the importance of societal norms in creating and sustaining various types of political corruption, and in the finding that what matters most is not international efforts, but domestic ones… [ The book] would be a welcome addition to an advanced undergraduate or graduate course on the political economy of corruption, and on the political economy of development. It should also serve as required reading for domestic and international policymakers, donors, and NGO activists concerned about corruption.”

Carolyn M. Warner, Arizona State University, in Governance, June 2016

 

“A brief review can scarcely do justice to Mungiu-Pippidi’s complex and subtle achievement. Her book is a powerful synthesis of theory, empirical analysis, and policy prescription. She is not just a scholar but also a leading anticorruption campaigner in her home country of Romania. She has known both the sweet savor of success in promoting an anticorruption agenda, and the bitter aftertaste that comes when it falters and particularism returns. This experience underpins her analysis, and the resulting combination of hard-edged realism and scholarly care gives her writing considerable power. Readers who are familiar with a country where corruption is part of the fabric of social and political affairs—my own speciality is Indonesia—will discover many moments of recognition in these pages, as well as a framework to aid understanding and useful lessons about how to move forward. The Quest for Good Governance deserves to have a major impact on how scholars and practitioners understand corruption, and on their efforts to help societies overcome it.”

Edward Aspinall, Professor in the Department of Political and Social Change in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University, in the Journal of Democracy.

Bureaucratic Structure, Regulatory Quality, and Entrepreneurship in a Comparative Perspective: Cross-Sectional and Panel Data Evidence

The article examines the effect of meritocratic recruitment and tenure protection in public bureaucracies on regulatory quality and business entry rates in a global sample. Utilizing a cross-country measure on the extent of meritocratic entry to bureaucracy and a time-series indicator of tenure protection, it subjects theoretical claims that these features improve the epistemic qualities of bureaucracies and also serve as a credible commitment device to empirical test. We find that, conditional on a number of economic, political, and legal factors, countries where bureaucracies are more insulated from day-to-day oversight by individual politicians through the institutional features under consideration tend to have both better regulation, specifically business regulation, and higher rates of business entry. Our findings suggest that bureaucratic structure has an indirect effect on entrepreneurship rates through better regulatory quality, but also exert a direct independent effect.

Minding Weber more than ever? The impacts of State Capacity and Bureaucratic Autonomy on development goals

State capacity has attracted renewed interest over the last years, notably in the study of violent conflict. Yet, this concept is conceived differently depending on where the interest lies. In this article, we focus on bureaucratic autonomy as a distinct concept and discuss its connection to state capacity in detail. Using panel data over 1990–2010 and a novel indicator of autonomy, we estimate the separate effect of state capacity and bureaucratic autonomy on child mortality and tuberculosis prevalence. The evidence suggests that bureaucratic autonomy has a stronger impact than commonly used measures of state capacity or traditional macroeconomic variables.

International Anti-corruption Normative Framework: the State of the Art

This paper looks into the main debates in International Relations on norm compliance. It looks at the three causal factors that help us explain the origins of norms in relation to anti-corruption introduced by McCoy and Heckel (2001): (1) post-Cold War era; (2) social process, i.e. interaction among actors and diffusion of information; and (3) internal process where ‘cognitive and motivational processes of individuals’ may contribute to the generation of norms. Using the model developed by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) on the life cycle of a norm, it shows how international anti-corruption norms took root by tracing the development of various regional and international legal instruments. Finally, the UNCAC is analysed in more detail, as it has been recognised as a reference framework for the fight against corruption, due to which many countries formally adopted ethical universalism as a norm. The paper argues that international actors must put in place such a monitoring mechanism; otherwise implementation of UNCAC could become an end in itself. However, it is not possible to have significant progress without domestic demand for new rules of the game and public participation in a sustainable mechanism which would prevent the eternal reproduction of privilege.

Democratization and corruption: the state of the art

This paper critically discusses the main contributions of the literature on the relationship between democratization and corruption, focusing on the perspective of how the former is expected to affect the latter and highlighting the different hypotheses and empirical findings presented by the most relevant and recent scholarly work in this line of research. Additionally, the discussion introduced here refers to a number of conceptual issues that remain obscure in the existing literature, with regards to the concept of both corruption and democratization, but at the same time stressing the gaps related to the latter, as to complement other contributions of the report that more thoroughly explore different conceptual approaches to corruption.

Background report on international and European law against corruption

This report sets the background and the methodology design for the WP10 of the ANTICORRP project. WP10 seeks to explore whether and the extent to which, EU states comply with international anti-corruption norms, as well as their domestic implementation and enforcement. It has four main research objectives: a) to measure state compliance and implementation of international anti-corruption norms in Europe; b) to explore whether international law has an independent causal influence over the anti-corruption laws, policies and practices adopted by EU states; c) to identify patterns of variation of state compliance and implementation, whether cross-national, or across sectors and issue areas; and d) to explore the factors that account for significant variation across sectors or states.This report provides the empirical and analytical groundwork for pursuing the above research objectives and for defining the appropriate methodology to do so. It is divided into five main parts. In the first part, the authors briefly present the origins of how the fight against corruption became an issue of interest for the international community and for European and international organisations from the 1970s onwards, but especially since the 1990s. They then define corruption and its various aspects and forms, they discuss the difficulties in arriving at a commonly agreed definition and review some of the criticisms levelled against the legal approach to fighting corruption, as well as in regard to the domestic influence and effectiveness of international and EU law in this area more broadly. In the last part of this background section, the authors give an overview of the state of corruption in the EU28 on the basis of various indices and assessments compiled by international organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).The second part of this report provides an overview of European and international legal norms and instruments against corruption, which are directly relevant for EU member states. The authors review both soft and hard law, describing their origins and how they emerged, the peer-review and monitoring mechanisms that they put in place, and how they work. The third part of the report is conceptual: it defines and analyses the concepts of compliance with, as well as implementation and effectiveness of international law. Most importantly, it conceptualises their relevance and applicability in regard to anti-corruption norms and conventions, and defines a way of measuring state compliance and implementation in this area. The fourth part of this report delineates four sectors or issue areas, which have been targeted by international and European norms against corruption: international economic transactions, conflict of interest, free speech and whistle-blowers’ protection and political party funding. The final part of the report defines the appropriate research methodology of the group of studies to be conducted within WP10, and identifies the sources of primary and secondary information and documentation to draw from in pursuing the aforementioned objectives.

Natural Resource Revenues, Corruption and Expropriation

This paper develops a formal model that looks at the mutually endogenous determination of foreign direct investments in natural resource-rich countries, the decision of host governments to expropriate these investments, and the level of corruption. Higher resource production makes expropriation more attractive from the perspective of national governments. A low expropriation risk is in turn an important determinant of international investments and is therefore associated with high levels of production. Moreover, resource production leads to high levels of corruption. Theoretical results are confirmed by estimations of a simultaneous equation model for 50 resource-rich countries in which the authors endogenize expropriation risk, corruption, and resource production.

Quantitative report on causes of performance and stagnation in the global fight against corruption

Why do some societies manage to establish control of corruption and others not? Control of corruption is defined in this report as the capacity of a society to constrain individual corrupt behavior (defined as particular distribution of public goods leading to undue private profit) in order to enforce the norm of individual integrity in public service and politics as well as to uphold a state that is free from capture by particular interest.This report sought to answer this main research question from an interdisciplinary perspective and by a large-N comparison method. For the dependent variables, the report uses: the aggregated Control of Corruption Index (CoC) from World Bank, the Corruption Risk Index from the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG), the experience with bribe and perception of official’s corruption from Global Corruption Barometer 2013, the experience with bribe and perception of favoritism from ANTICORRP’s own QOG 2013 European survey, the expert perception of diversion of public funds from World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Survey and the tolerance towards corrupt practices from World Values Survey 2008.

A Comparative Assessment of Regional Trends and Aspects Related to Control of Corruption in the Middle East and North Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Former Soviet Union

This report analyses the status and dynamics of the control of corruption in five world regions: the Middle East and North Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Former Soviet Union. The diverse nature of corruption across the globe is shown by the huge variance within each single region; this variety of corruption is not only related to degrees of corruption but also to the peculiarities and effects of opportunities and constraints for corruption and the trajectories control of corruption or the lack thereof. In the MENA region material resources are abundant, while constraints are weak. Corruption prevails as a persistent social practice and a political strategy. Apart from few but notable exceptions, most countries in Asia and the Pacific as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa perform very poorly on control of corruption. Many of the small Caribbean island states have curbed corruption effectively, but the control of corruption in Latin American region shows little progress otherwise. The Former Soviet Union shows the lowest degree of the control of corruption worldwide. Existing evidence from regional achievers provide multiple insights into the dynamics for the control of corruption. Across these five regions two different pathways stand out: first, authoritarian regimes, with the strong willingness to reduce opportunities and strengthen (nondemocratic) restraints, and, second, democratic regimes with a strong and independent anti-corruption legislation, which is backed up by an independent judiciary have been able to successfully fight corruption. The report draws on the model of control of corruption as a balance between resources and constraints (Mungiu-Pippidi et al. 2011) to review in more detail the contributing factors. These continental comparisons complement the background reports of ‘achiever countries’.

Tax Simplification and Informal Economy in developing and transitioning countries

Informal economy is present in all countries; however it is in low and middle income countries that it has its deepest roots with some measurements estimating it to average at above 40% of national GDP. This represents a large part of the economy and poses serious problems for economic development and the relationship between state and society. It also means a significant loss in tax revenue, that poor countries need for the provision of public goods, resulting in the undermining of state capacity (Fukuyama, 2004). This leads to a vicious cycle, since without the efficient provision of public goods the incentive for tax compliance further decreases.

As tax structure and bureaucratic burden haven been identified as primary causes for informal economy, in the following we want to analyze whether lower costs of compliance actually lead to lower levels of informal economy.  Given that in recent years some countries have implemented flat tax as tool for tax simplification, the authors explore the question of whether flat taxes have actually lived up to their promise and increased tax revenue or lowered levels of informal economy.

Pedro Obando and  Johannes Wahner are both Master’s of Public Policy candidates at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Becoming Denmark: Historical Designs of Corruption Control

Why do some societies manage to control corruption so it manifests itself only occasionally, as an exception, while other societies do not and remain systemically corrupt? And is the superior performance of this first group of countries a result of what they do or of who they are? Most current anticorruption strategies presume the former, which is why institutions from developed and well-governed countries are currently being copied all around the world. At least on paper, there are few states left that are missing a constitutional court, some form of checks and balances, or an ombudsman (the number of countries with these elements grew from 47 in 1990, 100 in 2003 and 135 by 2008). Skeptics, on the other hand, endorse the latter view, believing in the cultural determinism of corruption and good governance. More recently, following the failure of the first generation of anticorruption reforms, a middle-ground position has begun to emerge: that the most relevant lessons lie not in what developed countries are currently doing to control corruption but rather in what they have done in thepast, when their societies more strongly resembled the conditions in today’s developing world (Andrews 2008). However, as this subject area is largely unknown to governance scholars and practitioners alike, it is difficult even to estimate the potential value of such historical lessons. I plan to address this gap by asking not how corruption is eradicated but rather how societies have built—over time—systems to protect their common resources from being spoiled by individuals or groups.

The State of State Capacity: a review of concepts, evidence and measures

What is state capacity and how does it affect development? The concept of state capacity acquired centrality during the late seventies and eighties, sponsored by a rather compact set of scholarly works. It later permeated through several disciplines and has now earned a place within the many governance dimensions affecting economic performance. The present article aims to provide a historical account of the evolution and usage of the state capacity concept, along with its various operationalizations. It examines in particular: a) the growing distance in the usage of the concept by different disciplinary and thematic fields; b) the process of `branching out’ of the concept from restricted to more multidimensional definitions; c) the problems with construct validity and concept stretching, and d) the generalized lack of clarity that exists regarding the institutional sources of state capacity.

Corruption in universities: a blueprint for reform

What is to be done when an entire education system is corrupted, when universities sell cheap diplomas and the best academics move abroad? Corruption in the academy can be challenged by a ‘clean universities’ ranking and the power of press coverage.

The Transparency Paradox: Why do Corrupt Countries Join EITI?

Rules that require actors to make their finances transparent have become a key part of the anti-corruption toolkit, under the assumption that sunlight is the best disinfectant.  This logic underpinned the creation, in 2002, of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an international club aimed at reducing corruption in oil, gas and mining.  The initiative has proved popular, with 16 countries now EITI compliant and 23 others having achieved candidate status.  However, as a soft law standard to which countries voluntarily commit, EITI presents a paradox: why would corrupt governments voluntarily expose themselves to sunlight?  Does its popularity imply that it is meaningless?  The authors argue that governments join because they are concerned about their reputation with international donors and expect to be rewarded by increased aid. David-Barrett and Okamura’s quantitative analysis demonstrates that countries do gain access to increased aid the further they progress through the EITI implementation process.  However, they also find that EITI achieves real results in terms of reducing corruption.  The authors suggest that this is because EITI requires countries to build multi-stakeholder institutions which improve accountability, and provide qualitative evidence about how this has worked in several countries.

Mode of International Investment and Endogenous Risk of Expropriation

This paper analyzes the relationship between the mode of international investment and institutional quality. Foreign investors from a capital-rich North can either purchase productive assets in a capital-poor South and transfer their capital within integrated multinational firms or they can form joint ventures with local asset owners. The South is ruled by an autocratic elite that may use its political power to expropriate productive assets. The expropriation risk lowers the incentive to provide specific capital in an integrated firm and distorts the decision between joint ventures and integrated production. We determine the equilibrium risk of expropriation in this framework and the resulting pattern of international production. We also analyze as to how globalization, which is reflected in a decline in investment costs, influences institutional quality.

Financial Liberalization and Institutional Development

This study empirically analyzes the effects of de jure financial openness on institutional quality as captured by indicators on investment risk, corruption level, impartiality of judiciary system, and the effectiveness of bureaucracy. We show that a higher degree of financial openness improves institutional quality mainly by reducing investment risks. We also study the effect of a single liberalization reform. Again, we find evidence for the beneficial impact of financial liberalization with the exception of corruption. We additionally show that the benign consequences of financial opening for the institutional development are even larger if financial liberalization is supported by simultaneous political liberalization, while financial deregulation in former socialist countries tends to worsen institutional quality.

Global comparative trend analysis report

Can governance be changed by human agency? The answer to this central policy question has been taken for granted in the last twenty years as good governance promotion began to feature as a top priority of every international donor organization. Despite this fact, the answer is not as simple. In this introductory study the answer is divided in two parts. The first question pertains to whether governance—as defined in the framework of this project as a set of institutions determining who gets what in a given society—evolves at all, other than incrementally, in the absence of radical intervening factors (e.g., war, military occupation or natural disaster). The second part questions, where such natural evolution can be observed with some certainty, is it intentional human agency which brings the change about. The objective of this trend analysis report is to answer the first part of the question and identify cases of evolution.

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