Although corruption continues to be a severe problem in Indonesia, indicators show that Indonesia has greatly improved at curbing corruption over the past decade – more so, in fact, than any other country in all of Asia. Clearly, something remarkable is going on in the country. This paper will focus on the evolution of corruption […]
Publications
Transitions to Good Governance: the Case of Tanzania
This report gives a snapshot of the state of corruption in Tanzania between the years 1998 and 2008. Strong presidents, who have endorsed the fight against corruption, as one of their main presidential goals have been the main drivers of change in Tanzania’s fight against corruption. However, there are many shortcomings that are eminent in […]
Transitions to Good Governance: the Case of South Korea
This paper traces the development of corruption and pluralism in South Korea all the way back to independence in 1945. It distinguishes and describes three kinds of transition, namely from the simple agrarian society governed by landlords to a complex industrial one, from the authoritarian rule of Park and Chu to democracy, and the overarching […]
Beyond Perception: Has Romania’s Governance Improved since 2004?
Romania and Bulgaria encounter today problems in joining the visa-free Schengen area. The main one in the public eye is corruption. Both countries pledged to improve their rule of law when signing their accession treaties in 2005, yet little progress is perceived by observers or captured with governance measurements relying on perception, such as CPI […]
The European Neighbourhood Policy – a Reality Check
This paper analyses the impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) on good governance in the partner states. The findings of this paper suggest that the influence of the European Neighbourhood Policy in triggering governance reforms has been limited. Since the formal launch of the policy in 2004, both quantitative and qualitative assessments show that […]
The Experience of Civil Society as an Anti-Corruption Actor in East Central Europe
Why, despite their most remarkable progress on democracy, have most East Central European states retained modest levels of governance? Is civil society still able to play any significant role in improving governance, even after its institutionalization at low levels of participation, after its initial high mobilization in the early years of democratization? Does the impact, […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Ukraine
Ukraine is a country with wide scale and systemic corruption, which makes a crucial influence on the economic, political, social and other spheres of public life. The traditionally low scoring of Ukraine by the Corruption Perception Index of the “Transparency International” is the evidence of this. The plague of corruption has penetrated all levels of […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Slovakia
This paper looks at corruption in Slovakia, the government’s strategy to reduce the levels of corruption and the citizens’ perception of the problem. In addition, it describes what civil society organizations have undertaken to tackle the issue of corruption.
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Serbia
How corrupt is Serbia? What type of corruption? How did it evolve during the years? Was it a period when it was more corrupt and what happened to change that? How strong is the civil society in this country? What is its reputation? Are notable anticorruption projects known without research? Are there any anticorruption heroes? […]
(Anti-)Corruption in Poland since early 2000 to 2010
This report suggests that although corruption is relatively spread-out in Poland, its level is slowly declining. Improved laws and regulations, which are an effect of government, civil society organizations and international community’s activities, as well as continuous monitoring of public life and officials carried out by state organs as well as civic watchdogs have heavily […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Lithuania
Although Lithuania has done ostensibly much to fight corruption in the last 20 years and especially since the start of the accession talks with the EU, the actual impact of these anti-corruption measures has been questionable. This is due to the fact that even though a strong and comprehensive anti-corruption law base was established, the […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Latvia
Latvia stood still in the past two years. As an overall conclusion, the corruption diagnosis identified by a KNAB 2008 report seems still accurate today. Thus, on one side, petty corruption is diminishing and at the same time grand corruption is developing.
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Kosovo
How corrupt is Kosovo? What type of corruption? How did it evolve during the years? Was it a period when it was more corrupt and what happened to change that? How strong is the civil society in this country? What is its reputation? Are notable anticorruption projects known without research? Are there any anticorruption heroes? […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Hungary
How corrupt is Hungary? What type of corruption? How did it evolve during the years? Was there a period when it was more corrupted and what happened to change that? What were the civil society responses? Did the political context allow for more anticorruption measures to be enforced? This report answers all these questions and […]
Georgia: Corruption Developments and Anti-Corruption Activities since 1990s
The improvements made in post-Rose Revolution years with regard to the fight against corruption are evident and they brought about concrete results in the country. Nevertheless, everyone agrees that this should not be considered as a reason for reducing the intensity of anti-corruption reforms. On the contrary, further steps should be planned and taken by […]
Anti-Corruption Programmes, Studies and Projects in Estonia 1997-2009: an Overview
This Working Paper on Estonia is made for the international research project “Civil society as anticorruption actor. What makes it work?” initiated by Romanian Academic Society. The general sample is including all Estonian anti-corruption programmes, audits and projects from 1998 to 2009. Both international donors’ reports and local projects were analysed. The analysis of the local […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in the Czech Republic
As the different surveys and opinion polls suggest, corruption and lack of transparency is, despite minor improvements, the longstanding problem in the Czech Republic´s public space. Perceived as the burning issue, the discourse on introduction of new anticorruption measures is high on the political parties´ list of priority agenda within the current political campaign before […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Bulgaria
Corruption is a complex phenomenon which refers to different practices from the political, social and economic spectrums. Therefore, is hard to be described in just couple of sentences and it is even harder to be measured. Yet, international institutions and non-governmental organizations have developed different indexes and tools to actually measure corruption. The current report […]
A Diagnosis of Corruption in Albania
How corrupt is Albania? What type of corruption? How did it evolve during the years? Was it a period when it was more corrupt and what happened to change that? How strong is the civil society in this country? What is its reputation? Are notable anticorruption projects known without research? Are there any anticorruption heroes? […]
Romanian Coalition for a Clean Parliament: a Quest for Political Integrity
This book is about an anticorruption campaign that took place in Romania in 2004 and which prevented nearly one hundred controversial MPs from being reelected. While this campaign was considered original by many observers, the problems it addressed are widespread in the postcommunist world: political elites which at times look more like predatory elites, high […]
Ottomans into Europeans: State and Institution-building in South Eastern Europe
While many histories of the Balkans have been published, some very good and others poor, there is as yet no history of institutions in the Balkans. This is what the contributors to Ottomans into European offer the reader: a history of the most salient political institutions of the region: bureaucracies, judiciaries, democratic elections, free media, […]
Twenty Years of Postcommunism: The Other Transition
The recent history of Eastern Europe can best be understood as a transition to a new social contract between the postcommunist state that emerged from its communist predecessor and the postcommunist citizen who evolved from the communist subject. It is the relationship between state and society under communism that best explains the divergent paths taken […]
A Tale of Two Villages. Coerced Modernization in the East European Countryside
A non-fiction book about the social engineering operated in rural Eastern Europe by the Communist regime, based on the history of two villages in Romania. One of the two villages is the birthplace of Nicolae Ceausescu, the former Communist dictator, Scornicesti, which received massive investment during communist years and was turned into a mixture of […]
Moldova’s “Twitter Revolution”
Few Europeans had heard of Moldova, a tiny state on the EU’s eastern flank, before seeing images of the strife that broke out there in early April 2009 after the Communist Party (PCRM) won reelection in a landslide. Except for their international context, the events in Moldova did not differ substantially from those that sparked […]
Is East-Central Europe Backsliding? EU Accession Is No “End of History”
In the textbooks on democratic transition, Central and Eastern Europe provides the model of success. Yet in Brussels concern over the politics of the new EU members has been mounting. The day after accession, when conditionality has faded, the influence of the EU vanished like a short-term anesthetic. Political parties needed to behave during accession […]