Following the increasing attention the topic received over the last years, this paper is looking at the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in public administration and, in particular at its most prominent example: Blockchain technology. While offering a gentle introduction to the topic, the paper establishes an overview of the attributes and potential use cases of DLT in the context of public administration and bureaucracies. As a technology establishing a decentralised, high-trust data management system, DLT has potential to be used for the storage of administrative data and for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of administrative data management. While potential uses are wide-ranging, this paper offers a simple typology of these. Furthermore, it offers a critical view of the challenges and drawbacks that the technology currently poses to public officials looking at using DLT in their processes. Ultimately, this paper takes the view that DLT can be a potentially valuable tool for public administrations to make use of, but the drawbacks and difficulties associated with this technology are often not discussed or acknowledged as often or as thoroughly as needed, giving a false picture of how easy it would be for governments to use this technology successfully.
Publication Theme: Bureaucratic corruption
Culture, organizational change and bounded morality in the Hungarian public administration
This paper deals with the analysis of ethnographic data on public administration cases in Hungary. The main focus is on the perception that public administrators have of integrity challenges, how far these influence their daily tasks, the most relevant changes introduced at the government and policy level, as well as the socio-cultural explanations that are most commonly given in relation with the issue of corruption in the country. I have chosen to deal with the public administration in general because of three reasons. First, understanding the everyday work of public administration in a country is a complex task which, departing from the study of the organisational structure and its dynamics and expanding to the changes introduced at the policy level, it needs a nuanced and interdisciplinary approach. Nonetheless, I believe that through the innovative lens of the anthropological approach, it is possible to investigate some of these features through a bottom- up perspective that looks at ways how administrators perceive the main challenges, strengths and their changes in the field of integrity. Second, since corruption is a phenomenon that affects longitudinally all levels of the public service in a country (although to different extents), I consider that information gathered from different sectors in the public administration and analysed comparatively may provide a multifaceted and dynamic picture of the phenomenon. Finally, and due to the overarching nature of corruption that covers any field in which the public sphere meets the private, it can be useful to understand what are the common risks and the diverse challenges that any of the sectors under investigation are determined by, in the exercise of the public office.
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.
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.
Corruption: A Modern Day Hydra. Understanding the monster through the eyes of the people.
The present paper considers corruption to be a deeply complex phenomenon that should be broken down to its essential components in order to develop a deeper understanding of it. Therefore, in this study, corruption shall be broken down into three categories which are namely judicial, bureaucratic and political corruption. These three forms of corruption are “same but different” as even though they all entail the deviation of norms, the scale and effects they have on the society are in fact very different. This paper shall seek to fill the gap by examining and identifying the drivers of corruption through the lens of the general public by using data obtained from TI’s Global Corruption Barometer (GCB). In addition, this study shall also seek to prove that people’s perception of corruption offer valuable insights and should thus be used to triangulate with expert’s opinions to derive a more robust and holistic measure of corruption.