Country: Russia

Preserving the integrity of corruption measurement

You may say it’s a joke, but it’s not. Why, in recent years, do we have such a congestion of corruption measurements, especially among international organizations? For many years, only the World Bank and Transparency International did that and led the field by similar, limited but transparent methods: aggregating all expert scores or organizing public opinion surveys of citizens or firms. Then victimization surveys proliferated—some, like the Mexican one, becoming established—asking people if they were coerced to bribe. In all this interval, we missed objective evidence, but all these perception indicators, which received tons of criticism—some justified, some not—had managed to map the world.

The academia was not idle in this interval. In the last fifteen years, organizations like ERCAS and the Government Transparency Institute, supported by EU and US research funding, produced another generation of objective indicators. These measurements are based on directly observable indicators such as spending, public procurement, digital transparency, and regulation—in the case of the Index for Public Integrity, a full model of enablers and disablers of corruption. These new indicators allow for analytical insights as well as actionability. In the T-index, improvements in government transparency can be observed in real-time, with crowd-sourcing ensuring that no fixing or gaming can take place. Unfortunately, the excellent Doing Business World Bank set of indicators met its untimely end due to undue influence from countries seeking to improve their reputation, such as Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and China, to name the most notorious.

You would say that this is a positive trend, but of course when reputation by governance is concerned, it never really is. China, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Saudi Arabia have been the top funders of the internationally endorsed Anticorruption Academy in Vienna (IACA) which has struggled in the last years to create a new measurement of corruption. The ball and the Saudi funding have now passed to the UNDP, an organization with no experience in the field.

Yesterday I had to answer at IACC in Vilnius (in a panel with the World Bank, UNODC, and Transparency International) a question from the Saudi Arabia representative. Why am I an opponent of corruption measurements sponsored by their government? Why did I decline the repeated invitations from this country, and others, to join in any capacity and advise instead of criticizing and boycotting their effort?

 

18 June, 2024, The International Anti-Corruption Conference, Vilnius

The answer is very simple. Only an organization with no interest can do corruption rankings, and one that is academically fit and economically autonomous, not depending on the funds of patrimonial countries seeking to improve their non-improvable reputations, especially when it happens that their internal critics may be discretionarily arrested, kidnapped, or eventually killed. The world has enough academics, able to win transparently enough research funds—both ERCAS and GTI just won, with their partners, 6-million-euro research grants which do not depend on the favor of any government, just on anonymous academic reviewers.

Why don’t you leave academics do their rankings without funding them? Surely it would be more rewarding than the elusive quest of a measurement to make you look better? No need for gifts to get objective treatment from us!  Looking better is really up to you. You do the reforms, and we shall provide the mirror. If they are the right reforms, and they have an impact, you will discover that your reputation will improve eventually.

How will corruption evolve in 2024?

REVIEWING THE PAST TO FORECAST THE FUTURE

Every year on December 9 the world celebrates International Anticorruption Day. This is the annual moment to review the state of global corruption, as well as the best opportunity to reflect on the poverty of our review tools. It has always been a challenge to measure corruption, but to measure corruption across time is the ultimate challenge. Another year of struggle against corruption is coming to a pass. Are we nearer to the target? Has any country graduated to good governance, in the ‘green’ area of the upper third of the global ranking? Has any country already in that area experienced some backsliding? Are some countries closer to reaping the benefits of many years of reforms or, on the contrary, does the world risk losing more countries to state capture?

As perception indicators are not optimal for assessing change from one year to another, ERCAS devised a methodology to both capture change – and lack of it- and explain it. A snapshot for 2023 can be found as the Index of Public Integrity (IPI), based on scientifically validated indicators, which proxy the causes (enablers and disablers) of corruption. Then, as indicators always have a certain time lag, the trend analysis is completed with an analysis of recent facts. All the data can be found on www.corruptionrisk.org. Except for the countries presented in the front table, all the others are forecast to be stationary. The six indicators used for the IPI 2023 are:

 

Administrative transparency De facto transparency of public contracts, business register, land cadaster and auditor general reports, as reported step by step and link by link in the T-index.
Online services The extent to which governments offer online services, as featured in the UN Survey. (Replaced Administrative burden based on the World Bank Doing Business)
Budget transparency The extent to which budget proposals and previous-year expenditures are and have been made public, using a fraction of the Open Budget Index survey.
Judicial independence The extent to which the judiciary is autonomous from private interest (including by government officials) as in the Global Competitiveness Report survey by the World Economic Forum
(Digital citizenship)
E-citizenship		 Household broadband subscriptions and Facebook users per country measure the capacity of civil society
Freedom of the press Yearly indicator including economic and physical pressure on media

 

As Facebook users’ data, which is a component of the e-citizens, changes coverage across years, we use only Internet household connections to measure e-citizens for the forecast. As administrative transparency is a new indicator, with direct observations of every country’s online transparency, it is also not included in the forecast trends monitoring (just the IPI), but as an additional weight step. The step-by-step methodology can be read here.

Our IPI and forecast methodology thus provide three pictures:

1.   A snapshot- How the world is in the 2022-2023 IPI and why. Users can read the IPI by country and compare it against its region and income group on every component.

2.   A motion picture based on a time series- how countries changed over the past ten years and where they would likely be next year.

3.   A diagnosis – Open the forecast country page to see the individual trends, diagnosis and explicit legend to understand where the country is on corruption risk, what it could do to improve, and where it will be next year.

 

 

THE ANALYSIS

  • Every year, state capture is subverted by the silent but unstoppable rise of global digital citizenship, which signifies aggregate demand for good governance, understood as fair and equal treatment by a government for its subjects, with no privileged groups or citizens, enjoying a different status due to connections to the government — or bribes. Almost in every country of the world, the number of e-citizens is on the rise.
  • Corruption fights back, even against the most successful judicial crackdowns, with former successful countries losing battles against impunity in Latin America, Africa and the Balkans. Anti-privilege reforms promoting ethical universalism, and not high-profile trials, thus offer the most sustainable path to good governance, as success stories prove.
  • An unprecedented number of insurgencies, coups and wars are taking state capture to the next violent stage and threaten what have been incipient promising trends in  have also been under threat but give signs of resilience and recovery.
  • As Estonia moved up and the United States down, Estonia is now ahead of the United States as number 5 in the IPI ranking (1-10, with 10 best integrity in the IPI), after Denmark, Norway, Finland and New Zealand, which lead the top.
  • Digital trends (Internet and social media connected citizens, online services) are all steadily rising, while political indicators (judicial independence, freedom of the press) are doing badly in most of the world and worsening. The political trends cancel out the positive tech trends, and growing demand in the form of civil society combined with increased repression of the press and civil society is likely to lead to much instability wherever civil society reaches some critical mass – for instance, in the capital cities. The fall of captors in Sri Lanka may be followed by many others, but the success of the revolutionary path to good governance depends on the degree of institutionalization of political alternatives to follow. Not many political coalitions for good governance, unified by a single program on eliminating privilege and increasing transparency, exist around the world. If the good political society does not associate with a clear purposive movement, populists will remain what they have been for a while now – the chief political winners due to discontent with corruption.
  • Unless the United States solves its leadership integrity problems and is back convincingly as the needed global anticorruption coalition leader, global standards will sink even lower in 2024, and global anticorruption will become just another tool of a new cold war, with accusations of political instrumentalization and double standards flourishing. A phase of global moral anarchy with few successful transformations might follow as countries increasingly realign on grounds other than public integrity reputation.

 

More on www.corruptionrisk.org

Direct queries to professors Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Michael Johnston at mungiu-pippidi@againstcorruption.eu

 

Berlin-Roma-Bucharest, December 2023

 

Transparency in the Time of War – a Survey for 143 countries

In 2021, we measured for the first time by direct observation the state of transparency for accountability in the new T-index (computer-mediated government transparency) for 129 countries. The methodology and the first results appeared in Regulation and Governance in 2022 and a new webpage created a fully transparent index, where every item could be traced back to the original webpage in one click, and readers had a feedback button to signal errors. We hoped thus to bring a contribution to a new generation of transparent government indices, sheltered from both gaming and undue influence and crowdsourced by governments, media and civil society.

This new 2023 report covers 143 countries and a very different world from the pilot project we ran in 2021, as global trends of democracy backsliding and violence have become all too visible. And still, the public good of transparency is still there and citizens still need to hold their governments accountable even during wartime. Removing countries engaged in war from the T-index would be an artificial way to show the world better than it is: we do not aim for that and although we considered this option, we eliminated it in the end. As war, in one form or another, has become a part of the lives of more countries than the ones directly engaged in it in 2023, we will also show the performance of countries under war in this report, with the clear understanding that causes might be beyond their control. Beyond the loss of life and infrastructure, war destroys transparency built by many governments, sometimes even generations, and its consequences need to be seen as well.

 

Read our T-index 2023 report: TRANSPARENCY IN THE TIME OF WAR

 

From immemorial times, war has created an environment favouring propaganda, not transparency – and corruption, not public integrity. On the first day of the battle of the Somme, which began on July 1, 1916, 19,240 British men lost their lives in what remained the heaviest loss of human life in one day in the First World War. But the British media made headlines claiming that the Allies’ casualties were not heavy, as it operated under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), passed a week after Britain declared war on Germany. It was not even the direct censorship under DORA that did the most harm, but the direct participation of the chief media owners in a propaganda national machine, agreeing that during war transparency needs to be put on hold.

In 2023, not only Russia and Ukraine are at war, but significant parts of the world have become embattled. Authoritarian countries have long promoted acts to limit foreign influence in their public lives: these days democratic governments are following suit. Government propaganda, which is the opposite of government transparency, as it chiefly means misinformation and misrepresentation from official sources does never seem more justified and acceptable than during a conflict with the propaganda of an enemy. Digitalization has also proved a double-edged knife, as the same miraculous smartphone that we praised for making every citizen a watchdog of the government made every person a target. Public information can become a liability when used by a country’s enemies against it, and promoters of malware have increased in numbers and activity, turning the Internet into a battlefield.

This report surveys the current state of government transparency worldwide, offering a real transparency measure for 143 countries, based on a survey of both de facto (publication of information on the web) and de jure (legal commitments) transparency. It is the second full edition of the T-index, after the first 129-country survey (2022). The T-index fulfilment score (% of maximum transparency possible) measures – by facts and not by perceptions – the distance from where a country is and where it should be on real transparency for accountability, using the Sustainable Development Goal 16 and the United Nations Convention against Corruption criteria. The webpage www.corruptionrisk.org/transparency thus offers an assessment of the extent to which each country fulfils the transparency benchmarks and allows its comparison against its continent and the world.

The global average in total fulfilment is at 61%, with the world performing far better on commitments to transparency (77% on de jure) and worse on real transparency (54% on de facto).  With 80% total fulfilment and 73% de facto, the EU and North America lead in transparency, although the internal variation across this developed region is significant. With a de facto index of 36%, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) does not even meet half of its de jure commitments, although it has progressed in the last year. The Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has a smaller implementation gap (32 % de facto versus 52 % de jure), but the total fulfilment score is lower compared to SSA (38% versus 47%). MENA is the poorest performer in the world. ECA (Eastern Europe and Central Asia) is above the global average at 66%, followed by Asia-Pacific and Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) at 62%.  The situation of every tool monitored can be observed in the figure. A full report can be downloaded from below.

 

T-Index 2023 – De facto by components

Legend: % represents the number of countries which fulfil the criteria fully or in part. N=143.

 

The cases of Ukraine and Russia show what a terrible challenge war brings to transparency. Ukraine, a global transparency leader prior to the war, has had to suspend many of its transparent practices. The report discusses at length the situation of Prozorro, Ukraine’s public procurement innovative monitoring platform. In the case of Russia, an earlier legacy of transparency has been gradually shrinking due to the expansion of areas controlled by the military establishment and the need to hide the financial and asset declarations of some officials targeted by sanctions. The report uses transparent sources to track the impact of war and sanctions on the oligarchies of Russia and Ukraine. The conclusion so far is that Ukrainian oligarchs have been far more hurt by the conflict than Russian ones: some of the latter have in fact profited due to the energy price rise and despite sanctions. But other documented profiteers of the war exist in industries such as energy and defense also in Western countries.

Finally, taking into consideration the freedom to access, coverage and functionalities of the webpages, the report flags some best examples of online tools which could serve as models for other countries.

For a clean and sustainable reconstruction of Ukraine

European Research Centre for Anticorruption and State Building (ERCAS)
corruptionrisk.org | acrec.org.ua | ercas@hertie-school.org


We need to collect needs based on multiple sources, involve civil society from planning to audit, set targets for both the public procurement process and outcomes and tie them to the performance evaluation of a newly trained generation of public managers in charge of allocating and managing reconstruction funds.

 

Nothing creates more opportunities for corruption than war. But a war where foreign money pours in is bound to multiply exponentially such opportunities, especially in an already enabling environment. An estimation based on Forbes billionaires database by The Economist magazine found that in 2021, Russia topped the world when comparing crony versus non-crony sectors’ contribution to GDP: but Ukraine also came in fifth place, nearing 40% of Russia’s bad performance (see Figure 2). However, Ukraine had embarked in a variety of serious reforms prior to the Russian invasion (see Figure 1): but none triggered the self-sustainable virtuous circle able to clean the country, in a manner similar to the earlier success stories of Estonia and Georgia. Hence the lack of popularity of both Presidents Poroshenko and Zelensky with Ukrainian civil society before the war.

This short text presents five clear issues that the reconstruction has to grapple with and indicates the type of solutions. This is not a detailed report, but simply a statement of principles needed for a sound reconstruction.

 

Figure 1. Enablers and disablers of corruption in Ukraine 2021.
Source: www.againstcorruption.eu

 

Issue number one is how to organize an evidence-based needs assessment. Public procurement is often corrupted before it has even taken place, by discretionary purchases or distorted terms of reference. A central system based on a validation mechanism (at least two sources) and a decentralized and plural data collection, relying on transparently published needs statement at the local level may alleviate a part of the risk. Due consideration needs to be given to avoid the reconstruction turning into either a Samaritan dilemma, where the purchases are driven by the needs of the suppliers rather than the ones of the buyers, or a locally captured process, where higher kickbacks from more concentrated rents get priority over the rest. At such a scale of destruction, this is no easy task. This is why the collection of information should rely on civil society (in the broadest sense- including the private sector and communities, not only NGOs), on local government and central government, with findings triangulated in a central mechanism (as an online map with various categories). This can be completed with special reports on specialized areas commissioned to international NGOs which have experience working in disaster areas of developing countries.  Development agencies such as the World Bank or UNDP could contribute to the centralization of the needs assessment.

  

Figure 2. The Economist crony capitalism assessment 2021.

 

Issue number two is how centralized should the reconstruction process be. It is natural that the government of Ukraine wants to have ownership of the process, but we know from international experience that the ownership that guards against corruption is one exercised by the whole society, not just the recipient country’s government. The proposals of civil society to create a central purchasing body run by NGOs, both national and international are too radical to have a realistic choice of being accepted. However, a middle ground exists. The model, albeit just as a starting point, are the integrity pacts that the European Commission funds to enable civil society: Transparency International and national anticorruption NGOs- to audit the procurement process at the national level. As it stands, the model (funded by DG Regio) is a good idea poorly put into practice. The governments select what contracts civil society can audit (therefore setting aside those that matter to them), and the process is technologically primitive, based on a few observations instead of the observation of all data and follow-up of red flags. For Ukraine, which already has pro-Zorro, a far better process can be constructed, where civil society is involved from the writing of terms of reference to the allocation, negotiation, signing and execution. Such a process would also create a sustainable model of good governance where representatives of the entire community would be involved on a permanent basis in procurement decisions. Central purchasing bodies tend to reduce corruption risk, but the involvement of civil society, especially the one with relevant knowledge and representation (geographical or sectorial) would be in this case the key to building sustainable good governance in Ukraine, both at the central and local level.

Issue number three is how to shift from post-factum anticorruption – after the corruption act has already taken place- to preventive anticorruption, which deters corruption from the onset. No successful control of corruption has ever worked post-factum except where corruption was already exceptional and isolated and public integrity the norm. Convictions in Courts take years even in countries where they happen, and they can get reversed: recovering assets is highly expensive and takes years. Turning judiciaries which are themselves problems into solutions to corruption is highly unrealistic, although building a non-corrupt and effective judiciary is a worthy goal- in itself. Ukraine has already invested too much in the top architecture, with very high political risks as we have seen (US presidential candidates fighting over who gets appointed general prosecutor in Ukraine!). Ukrainians proved great solidarity and resilience after the invasion, showing that the main institutions work, and the public cooperates with the state as in a high-trust society. The existential threat helped the nation get together. So, an anticorruption focused on the past, on repression rather than prevention would not achieve control of corruption but might bring political risks that Ukraine can do without. After the war ends, the anticorruption of Ukraine should focus on reforms: to eliminate the sources of economic privileges, the monopolies and oligopolies of every sector rather than spend years putting in jail those who profited in earlier times from such political opportunities. Ukraine needs sustainability and national consensus, and profiteers of earlier times who survive the war can always be overtaxed to bring their contribution. But the fight against them should not absorb the core resources and energy.

Issue number four is how to achieve this functioning, self-driven prevention system. Ukraine has previously done many reforms: but, prior to the invasion, the Ukrainian civil society complained that while transparency is perfect, it only allows seeing how corrupt the country is because accountability is missing. Figure 1. shows that Ukraine has indeed arrived on top of the world when administrative transparency was concerned. But that is not enough. Anticorruption is like a bicycle, which manages to stand as long as it runs: but its separate pieces are worthless if they do not amount to a full-running bike. Transparency is only one wheel: accountability is another, and different parts of the government are supposed to deliver these different wheels. Pro-Zorro was a model monitoring system of procurement when e-procurement was concerned. But the responsibility and accountability of procurement are not with the public procurement agency (PPA). Nowhere do PPAs manage the last part of the cycle, accountability, which belongs to the government. The role of the monitoring agency is to show exactly what buyers (contracting authorities) from the government fail to reach the targets of competitiveness, value for money and integrity: an administrative sanctions mechanism needs to be in place to discipline the buyers, who are appointed by the government. The sanctioning is generally done by auditors when finding procedural problems and Ukraine did not have a high rate of sanctions prior to the war. In 2021, 265 officials were subject to disciplinary sanctions, of which 45 were dismissed from their positions and 274 were subject to financial liability from the 1,500 enterprises, institutions and organizations that were inspected by Ukrainian State Audit Agency. However, we know that favouritism in public procurement is not always openly illegal: single bidding, the main indicator of corruption, that the European Commission has now used to motivate the sanctioning of Hungary, is legal in most countries (meaning that the bidding process is not suspended and reorganized if only one bid is presented). What is needed is that the government itself sets targets (as the EU Public Procurement webpage indicates) and sanctions its PP buyers if they do not meet them, even in the absence of evidence of fraud in order to ensure the integrity and value for money of the process. A simple rule for integrity could be that no bidding is allowed outside pro-Zorro, that the admissible single bidding is allowed only on the EU-27 average (currently very high at around 20%, see Figure 3) and that all single bids instances are automatically audited with priority.

How many public officials were sanctioned or dismissed due to their incapacity to meet the standards of an effective and clean public procurement? An effective prevention system is not based on a case-by-case investigation, followed by prosecution, but by the existence of clear targets and their enforcement by monitoring followed by administrative sanctions. Aside from transparency (pro-Zorro), and accountability (PP targets enforced by administrative sanctions), the system needs some Government Buying Standards to define product specifications, including price, which should be mandatory for the central purchasing agency and other buyers.[1] Seeing that due to the war the Ukrainian government had to even fix some prices the development of a permanent cost standard unit would answer more needs than one.

 

Figure 3. Red flag single bidding across the European Union Member States
Source: https://single-market-scoreboard.ec.europa.eu/policy_areas/public-procurement_en
Legend : average marked in red

 

The final issue is about the human resources needed for a clean and effective management of reconstruction at all levels (from national, down to towns and villages). In environments such as Ukraine (countries with similar corruption indicators in times of normal, non-war situations) the administration is very politicized: who appoints those directly in charge of procurement purchases, for instance, decides de facto who wins and who loses a bidding process. Those who should disburse administrative sanctions are in fact those who decide who wins and who loses. Where should the human resource come from for the reconstruction money to avoid a return to the vicious circle where the principal and the agent collude, with the result of government favouritism? Aside from the macro-organization solutions suggested here, a small share of reconstruction funds should go into creating new project management procurement experts and auditors, by training a new force of civil servants and civil society as integrity compliance officers who would then become the backbone of an integrity system. This reconstruction is not business as usual: and neither should be those who work for it.

 

[1] Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. (2017). Sustainable procurement: the Government Buying Standards (GBS). Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/sustainable-procurement-the-government-buying-standards-gbs#history.

Russian Federation

The Russian Federation has been redressing over the last decade from a situation where its governance was largely inferior to its human development index. The redress comes in particular from administrative and transparency reforms, as well as e-government. The most dismal performance remains on freedom of the press, e-citizenship and judicial independence, where it is at the bottom of its income group. In particular the lagging of e-citizenship, where resources would exist for a far better performance shows that Russia chooses to develop state capacity without investing in societal human resources. Popular demand is still insufficient to speed up its transformation. However, quality of governance varies greatly across different geographical regions.

Multi-Nationals and Corruption Systems: The Case of Siemens

Scholars tend to agree and evidence has shown that domestic businesses adapt to the local type of corruption, but little is known whether large multinational corporations also adapt to the local forms of corruption. Institutionalist theories of corruption and of international political economy would suggest that this would be the case, but the hypothesis has not, to our knowledge, been systematically tested. This paper, drawing on investigative materials about the activities of one such multinational, the German corporation Siemens AG, examines how it used corruption and bribery to advance its business around the world. We extrapolate from the logic of four “syndromes of corruption”, as Michael Johnston terms them, to develop specific hypotheses about the kind of behavior multinational corporations would be expected to exhibit when doing business in each of the four kinds of syndromes. We examine and compare Siemens’ activities in the United States, Italy, Russia and China. We find that Siemens did adapt to the local corruption form (or “syndrome”) and used, among others, different types of intermediaries to approach the local elites. The evidence from these case studies supports the institutionalist argument that multinationals distinguish between corrupt environments and further supports the argument that there exist different types, or syndromes, of corruption.

Multi-Nationals and Corruption Systems: The Case of Siemens

Scholars tend to agree and evidence has shown that domestic businesses adapt to the local type of corruption, but little is known whether large multinational corporations also adapt to the local forms of corruption. Institutionalist theories of corruption and of international political economy would suggest that this would be the case, but the hypothesis has not, to our knowledge, been systematically tested. This paper, drawing on investigative materials about the activities of one such multinational, the German corporation Siemens AG, examines how it used corruption and bribery to advance its business around the world. We extrapolate from the logic of four “syndromes of corruption”, as Michael Johnston terms them, to develop specific hypotheses about the kind of behavior multinational corporations would be expected to exhibit when doing business in each of the four kinds of syndromes. We examine and compare Siemens’ activities in the United States, Italy, Russia and China. We find that Siemens did adapt to the local corruption form (or “syndrome”) and used, among others, different types of intermediaries to approach the local elites. The evidence from these case studies supports the institutionalist argument that multinationals distinguish between corrupt environments and further supports the argument that there exist different types, or syndromes, of corruption.

Academic Dishonesty or Corrupt Values: the Case of Russia

Academic corruption in Russia is extensively spread; it is not an isolated phenomenon. Rather, academic corruption is tightly embedded into the general corruption in society: in politics, business, and in everyday life. This paper illustrates some common types of cheating and corruption as well as the motives of the involved actors for applying, accepting, ignoring and/or pretending to ignore these activities.

Why is corruption in higher education so prevalent? The improper dependences of all the involved actors might it possible. Compared to people without a university education, graduates have better chances on the job market. Some university lecturers might expect bribes in order to return the investments they have made into their own studies. Other university lecturers might water down their requirements and try to be more tolerant, especially to students who are looking for a formal certificate rather than for an education, or who might need to have more time for other activities. If university administrators would receive the same budget from the state, the reduction of staff and lecturers would be not necessary.

Why are studies on corruption in education so important? Younger generations are expected to make changes rather than continuing the old systems. During their studies, young people complete their socialization by acquiring, among other things, more techniques of corrupt behavior and a tolerance for corruption. In Russia more than 80% of all young people go on to university and almost all of them finish it. Over the next decades, the spread of corruption in the country might be forecast. This might be very destructive, both on the short-term and the long-term perspectives. The consequences for academia, business and society might be dire.

The Splintering of Postcommunist Europe

There are two radically different versions of the postcommunist narrative. One tells the triumphal tale of the only world region in which the reforms recommended by the “Washington consensus” worked. The other and more realistic account speaks of a historic window of opportunity that lasted for only a quarter-century, during which efforts by the West and patriotic elites of Central and Eastern Europe managed to drag the region into Europe proper, leaving Europe and Russia pitted against each other along the old “civilizational” border between them. This essay argues that while Institutional choices matter in the postcommunist world, geopolitical and civilizational boundaries still set the horizons of political possibility.

Institutional performance and social values in Russia

This report focuses on corruption practices in Russia and presents the results of a survey that was conducted between July and November 2013.

The questionnaire was translated into Russian and was adapted slightly after the first five interviews. The interview was time consuming (from 1 to 3 hours) and many respondents became tired very quickly; hence, some coffee/tea breaks were integrated whenever it was possible. The interviews were conducted in such places as homes, workplaces, at a café, and sometimes in a car during a long drive. Some of the questions were not interesting from the viewpoint of respondents, such as the questions about social norms and values (more comments in the text). Some respondents had difficulties in attributing scores to the work of public institutions and the government, especially less educated and/or retired respondents.

The results of the survey conducted in the second half of 2013 provided some information on trust and experiences with local institutions, as well as serious problems in the community, the quality of services provided by institutions and access to these services, and social norms and values.

Comparative country reports on institutional performance Countries: Bosnia, Kosovo, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Tanzania, Turkey.

The report draws on ethnographic research undertaken in 8 countries object of investigation by the WP partners, namely: Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Russia, Turkey, Kosovo, Tanzania and Mexico. In addition, an additional chapter (Annex 2) will render the case of Japan which will serve as a contrast case on which to assess ideas and practices of governance and institutional performance through an anthropological perspective. The report includes data gathered through a questionnaire survey undertaken, with minor differences, in all the eight countries included in WP4. The data analyzed comparatively refer to three main fields: perceived and experienced performance of local institutions, local problem and resolution ideas, socio- cultural norms and values. We have identified, following the anthropological literature, a number of cultural issues that are in relation with corruption, or with local citizens’ experiences of the functioning of public institutions in their countries. This first deliverable constitutes an attempt to draw some preliminary conclusions on the interaction between socio- cultural features and governance (both as experienced and perceived) which will be further and ethnographically explored in the final deliverable of this Working Package.

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