Photo: The Moscow Times
Sometimes, the dangers of corruption seem abstract. So what if some company executive paid a bribe to get a procurement contract? So what if a politician gets a kickback? So what if a person paid a traffic cop to get on the way? There are daily reminders, however, that the costs of corruption are not always abstract.
Consider the spread of fake diplomas in Russia, covered in detail in The Moscow Times op-ed. Seventy engineers working at a factory building famous SU fighter jets and a new executive jet bought their university engineering degrees. The best teacher in Russia in 2007 bought her diploma.
The estimate is that in Russia between 30 – 50% of post-graduate degrees are purchased!
So next time someone gets on a plane in Russia, they should wonder...
Badri El-Meouchi is executive director of the Lebanese Transparency Association, the local chapter of Transparency International in Lebanon.
Realizing the unacceptable levels corruption reached in Lebanon, the Lebanese Transparency Association (LTA) is doing something about it – and has been since 1999. LTA does not investigate or expose individual cases of corruption; instead LTA advocates for reform by focusing on systemic improvement and by building coalitions with other good governance and anti-corruption stakeholders, including the government, parliamentarians, the private sector, media institutions, the international community and civil society organizations. This video blog highlights some of LTA’s successes using corporate governance to combat corruption.
LTA’s...
Corruption is the greatest obstacle to growth and development in Yemen; and Yemeni youth have the vision and passion to overcome it. CIPE created a documentary on anti-corruption that exposes the economic and social costs of corruption in the country, and captured powerful scenes of Yemeni youth asking hard questions and raising their society’s expectations of leadership. In June 2010, CIPE launched the film with a screening and discussion in Sana’a in partnership with Democracy School, a local NGO that works to educate youth about human rights, corruption, and civic participation. Here’s the trailer for the version subtitled in English, set for release this fall:
In the next phase of the program, CIPE will work with local partners to use the film as an awareness-raising and...
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez taken more than a few a steps toward the establishment of a totalitarian state in Venezuela. We have all heard of the systematic repression of the freedom of the press, the confiscation of broadcasting companies that oppose the government plan and of the mandatory broadcasts of all his speeches. Now President Chavez’s grip on freedom of expression has taken the form of a decree, that establishes the “Centro de Estudio Situacional de la Nacion” (CESNA) or the “Center for Situational Study of the Nation”. This new institution has the power to declare “confidential, classified or restricted the disclosure of any information, fact or circumstance considered to be of national interest.”
In other words, newspapers, radio stations,...
A new World Bank working paper finds that the answer, counterintuitively, is 'yes'. De Rosa et al. look at a large sample of firm-level surveys completed in 2009 and find that:
...while the payment of bribes is negatively associated with the productivity of the bribing firm, time spent dealing with bureaucratic requirements per se appears to be irrelevant.
This result is quite surprising, considering that managers of firms in many countries spend large chunks of time on pointless bureaucratic procedures. Should we give up on trying to slash regulatory burdens, contra this blog post by World Bank economist Mary Hallward-Driemeier? Not quite so fast!
There is one aspect of the De Rosa paper that leaves me unconvinced. It looks only at firm-level data...
Photo (c) RIA Novosti. Sergei Venyavsky.
A bit of interesting news – The Russian Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) is getting medieval on corrupt officials. The party just submitted a draft law in the Russian parliament that would brand public officials with a K (the first letter in a Russian word for corruption) on their hand for giving or receiving bribes. In addition to this, the proposal calls for banning public officials convicted of corruption from holding positions susceptible to bribery. The idea is that branding people for corruption would create a social disincentive to engage in bribery.
Do you think this would work?
The proposal got me thinking, however – what other unconventional anti-corruption efforts have been proposed or implemented? For instance…
India: A...
cover of the IWA survey on corruption in Afghanistan
The findings (summarized in this NYT story) of a recent Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) survey on corruption attitudes are interesting if not unsurprising: corruption is widespread, bribe amounts have increased over the years, and corruption is perceived as a normal part of dealings with the state.
Perhaps, the most startling statistic is that average bribes among those who paid them (28% of Afghan households have paid bribes at least once last year) amount to about 30% of per capita income (!!!). If that’s not enough to convince you of the magnitude of the problem, consider this – the amount of bribes more than doubled in the period between 2007 and 2009, reaching $1 billion. And, coinciding with trends in other...
Over on the All About Finance blog, Mary Hallward-Driemeier has an excellent post on the "deals" that firms have to make in countries with excessive regulations. Money quote: For countries with lengthy requirements...almost no firm actually faces the formal burdens on the books.This does not mean that lengthy formal practices are costless. Rather, firms ‘pay’ through other channels. This variation in implementation is associated with greater activities on the part of firms to influence the actions of officials (e.g. paying bribes or spending time with officials). Rather than coping with the application of (more or less favorable) rules, firms face deals. And the larger the gap between the de jure and de facto outcomes, the greater the potential space for deals, and...
For farmers all across Africa, accessing capital to improve yields is a constant frustration. As business solutions to poverty and food security have come to the fore in international development, the plight of Africa’s farmers seeking capital is nothing new. At the same time, while not capturing nearly as much attention, investors on the other side of the table face the very same obstacles.
Stung by recent financial turmoil related to opaque and complex investments with weak if any ties to real value creation, a growing body of investors are looking for simpler opportunities that create real value on the ground—social as well as financial value. Institutional Investor magazine recently featured SilverStreet Fund, a London-based private equity fund looking to create value on...
As the conflict in Afghanistan has dragged on, concern has grown over the slow development of democratic governance in the country. Although some improvements have been made, public services remain inadequate. Government policies are lacking or, when put in place, often confusing or contradictory. And above all, corruption is pervasive and pernicious. Transparency International ranks Afghanistan 179th of 180 countries.
The Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit recently released a report on corruption in Afghanistan which raises some crucial issues in the efforts to build good governance in the country. The report is a qualitative report based on 400 individual interviews and 25 focus group discussions conducted throughout Afghanistan. It provides valuable insight in support of...
Timor Leste, shaded in red. (Source: Wikipedia)
As the United States tries to consolidate a nearly seven-year nation building effort in Iraq and deepens its focus in Afghanistan, a key question remains: How do we measure nation building? A reflection on the political progress of Timor-Leste may offer some insights. Creating and sustaining national institutions in a post-conflict environment there has been inevitably challenging. But even through serious political crises and partisan bickering, Timor’s political leadership has made decisions that ultimately led to the strengthening of its national institutions. This process must continue, and needs the support of the international community.
A decade ago, I traveled to Timor-Leste for the first time. In February 2000, the...
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