About ACRN

The Anti-Corruption Research Network (ACRN) is an online platform and the global meeting point for a research community that spans a wide range of disciplines and institutions. ACRN is a podium to present innovative findings and approaches in corruption / anti-corruption research, a sounding board to bounce off ideas and questions, a marketplace to announce jobs, events, courses and funding. The periodic spotlight section also looks at specific corruption issues and highlights key research insights and contributions on the selected topic.

The online platform is designed to ensure a high degree of user input and interaction. Registered users of ACRN can comment on posted items and they are able to create their own user profiles and connect with other corruption experts across the globe. They can subscribe to targeted information streams from the web platform using RSS. The forums can be used by members to seek peer advice, brainstorm new ideas and the Calendar and the Marketplace can be used to share information on upcoming conferences, funding opportunities or jobs.

We hope that with these functionalities, ACRN will enable policy-makers, practitioners and journalists to gain easy, efficient access to relevant academic research and help the anti-corruption research community to forge stronger networks across disciplines and with policy makers.

About Transparency International

Transparency International (TI), the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption, brings people together in a powerful worldwide coalition to end the devastating impact of corruption on men, women and children around the world.

TI is a global network of more than 90 locally established national chapters and chapters-in-formation. TI is politically non-partisan. Through its skills, expertise, experience and broad network, TI aims to fight corruption nationally as well as through global and regional initiatives. For more information about TI, please visit: http://www.transparency.org

Our Partners

The QoG Institute conducts and promotes research on the causes, consequences and nature of Quality of Government – that is, trustworthy, reliable, impartial, and competent government institutions that reduce corruption and enhance bureaucratic quality.

The QoG Institute is an independent academic research body within the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. It is mainly financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

http://www.qog.pol.gu.se

The Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE) was founded in 2009 at the Palermo University Law School with the objective to provide rigorous research and studies to sectors of civil society, journalists, government institutions and the academic community that are dedicated to the promotion of those rights, primarily in Latin America.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in democratic societies which permits the open debate of ideas and the development of a country´s people. Together with the right of access to information, it allows the public administration to become more transparent and ensures the participation of citizens in political activities. Moreover, the protection of these rights supports the full exercise of other human rights. The principal objectives of CELE are to use scientific perspectives and research to draw attention to the importance of these rights in our societies, to produce studies of public policies related to their promotion, and, above all, to strengthen the ability of citizens to exercise those rights.

http://www.palermo.edu/cele/index.html

The ACRN team at Transparency International: Cristina Vélez-Vieira, Editor

I am a member of the Research and Knowledge Group at the Transparency International (TI) Secretariat and I currently edit the Anti-Corruption Research Network. With a background in Political Science and online journalism, my research interests focus on parties, elections, patronage and clientelism and how these areas relate to corruption issues. Prior to joining the TI Secretariat, I finished my Master of Public Policy at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and worked 5 years in Colombia as investigative journalist and researcher in the area of parliamentary accountability.

Our Contributing Editors: ACRN Contributing Editors are young scholars working on corruption research from a wide range of disciplines and regions. They contribute literature reviews of the latest and best in academic corruption research for the ACRN web platform.

Andreas Assiotis

Institution(s): University of Cyprus, Transparency International (TI) Cyprus

Dr. Andreas Assiotis is a faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of Cyprus. He obtained his PhD from Southern Illinois University in 2011, has a Msc in Economics and a BA in Management. Also, he is a board member of Transparency International Cyprus.

His main research interests fall in the fields of macroeconomics, economic development and growth, and financial economics. His current research interests centre on institutional quality (the extent of corruption and adherence to the rule of law) and political institutions (democratization versus authoritarian regimes) and their importance for economic growth and development. He specializes on corruption and its detrimental effects on different macroeconomic outcomes. He has recently published articles in these areas in refereed journals.

For more information about Andreas, please see:

www.assiotis-andreas.com

Ibrahim Allam

Institution(s): University of Warwick

Ibrahim received a Masters degree in International Relations from the University of Warwick in 2011. Prior to the Masters program, he completed a Bachelors degree in Political Science at the American University in Cairo. As a research analyst at the Democracy Review, he collaborated in a project to identify the root causes of the Arab spring and forecast the potential outcomes. This included research on the role of corruption in shaping the political economies of Egypt and Tunisia, and the anti-corruption measures necessary to encourage foreign investment for post-revolution economic recovery.

Ibrahim’s research interests include understanding the role of corruption as a political risk for the private sector and the role of anti-corruption reforms in the reconstruction phase of Arab spring revolutions.

Pierre Bachas

Institution(s): University of California, Berkeley

Pierre is a PhD student in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to starting his PhD, Pierre completed his Bachelor and Masters degrees at the London School of Economics.

Pierre’s research interests lie in the field of development economics and public finance, in particular on the microeconomics of corruption, fiscal evasion and the underground economy.

Michelle Darcy

Institution(s): The Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg

Michelle is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Quality of Government Institute. She received her PhD from University College Dublin in 2011, and has an Msc from the London School of Economics and a BA from the University of Cambridge. Her current research interests centre on understanding the effect of institutional sequencing on quality of government and human development outcomes, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa; how democracy changes the relationship between rulers and elites; how democratization effects state-building efforts, particularly in the area of taxation; and the effect of democracy on corruption

For more information about Michelle, please see: http://www.pol.gu.se/personal/larare-och-forskare/d-arcy-michelle/

Robert Hanlon

Institution(s): University of British Columbia, Institute of Asian Research

Robert Hanlon is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia and a Lecturer of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. His research explores the relationship between corruption, corporate social responsibility and human rights in Asia. Robert received his Ph.D. in Asian and International Studies from City University of Hong Kong. He has a Master’s in International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution from the University of Queensland, a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of Victoria, and a diploma in Chinese studies from Wenzao College (Taiwan). Robert has previously worked for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong; the Canadian High Commission to Australia; as well as the Asian Human Rights Commission, a Hong Kong-based regional NGO with United Nations consultative status.

Matthew Jenkins

Institution(s): University of Warwick

Matthew Jenkins is a finalist in the History department at the University of Warwick. His research has focused on historical attitudes to corruption, particularly in eighteenth century Britain and India. His most recent paper ('The Press Gang, Black Tars and Free-Born Englishmen: bonded labour and the language of Impressment in Georgian Britain'), written with the help of undergraduate research scholarship, examined reactions to corruption in public office.

Matthew is a member of the Interdisciplinary Corruption Network at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, and has sat in on corruption working groups in the Bundestag.

Paul Lagunes

Institution(s): Yale University

Paul Lagunes is a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science at Yale University. He studies corruption, democratic accountability, bureaucratic performance, Latin American politics, and urban affairs. As seen in the coauthored article "Corruption and Inequality at the Crossroad" (Latin American Research Review, Volume 45, Number 1, 2010), his work applies field experiments to study bribery’s influence. As part of his dissertation field research, he obtained privileged access to two major city government offices in Mexico and ran 137 interviews with local residents, neighborhood leaders, government officials, politicians, & members of the business sector. His work has been published by a number of outlets, including the Financial Times, the Periodico Reforma, and the Connecticut Courant.

 More information on Paul's' academic writing can be found on SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=1155867

Patrycja Szarek Mason

Institution(s): University of Reading, School of Law

Patrycja Szarek-Mason received her law degrees from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and the University of Ghent. She conducted research on the European Union anti-corruption policy at the University of Edinburgh, where she also obtained her Ph.D. in 2008. She currently teaches European Union law at the School of Law at the University of Reading.

Her recent research focuses on the international instruments against corruption, in particular soft-law responses to corruption and various monitoring mechanisms in this area.

Shahanaz Müller

Institution(s): Deloitte Forensic, Vienna, Austria

Shahanaz Müller works at Deloitte Forensic, Vienna, Austria (Deloitte Financial Advisory GmbH). She received a degree in Law and prior to that a Bachelor of Arts in Political Sciences from the University of Vienna.

She participated in various summer schools, such as the American University, Washington College of Law, on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, and “The Economics of Corruption” with Prof. Johann Graf Lambsdorff at the University of Passau, titled.

She is one of the co-authors of the article “Fraud and Internal Investigations” in the “Handbuch Compliance”, published in its second edition in 2013. Furthermore, she has written several articles and papers for Transparency International – the most recent one “Providing an Alternative to Silence – Country Report for Austria”, depicting the situation of whistleblowing in Austria.

Her current research interests center on fraud, anti-trust laws and corruption (FCPA, UK BA).

Shireen Mukadam

Institution(s): Institute for Security Studies

Shireen Mukadam works as a Researcher in the Governance and Corruption division of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) based in Cape Town. She is currently involved in a project which analyses the effectiveness of financial disclosure as a tool for managing conflicts of interest at the local government level in South Africa.

Shireen obtained her Masters in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (HEID) in Geneva in 2010. Her other research interests include the corruption-peacebuilding nexus.

Farzana Nawaz

Institution(s): Coming Soon

Coming Soon

Thomas Roca

Institution(s): Researcher/Statistician, AFD Research Department, Paris

Thomas Roca is a researcher at the French Development Agency (AFD), studying the relationship between Institutions and the development process. Statistician, he is in charge of the quantitative side of AFD’s research program: “Institution, Governance and long term growth”.

Thomas probed the governance and corruption measurement field during his PhD, at Université Montesquieu Bordeaux. (PhD Abstract)

Before joining AFD in 2011, Thomas was a cooperation officer within the French ministry of foreign affairs, in the French Embassy in Hungary. He taught Economics in Hungary, Vietnam, and Kurdistan as lecturer for Université de Picardie. During his PhD, Thomas interned twice UNDP: in Morocco within the governance program (2006) and in New York, Human Development Report Office (2010). You can download Thomas’ resume.

Thomas’ areas of specialization are perception based measures, governance and corruption, human development, well-being assessment, econometrics/statistics and datavisualization. See Thomas’s SSRN author page.

Maryse Tremblay

Institution(s): University of Leipzig; National School of Public Administration, Canada

Maryse Tremblay is a research fellow for the National School of Public Administration in Montreal, Canada. She has conducted multiple studies on corruption and is now working closely with the OECD in order to develop new models to assess integrity in the public service. She is pursuing her PhD in Political Science at the University of Leipzig, where she also teaches. Her research focuses on civil servant’s probity in a context of corruption and the specific modes of regulation that influence and determine behaviours in such situations. Maryse is also coordinating the Working Group against Corruption in Human Trafficking, which was created during the last 14^th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Bangkok. She has previously assisted the United Nations Global Compact in promoting their 10^th principle on anti-corruption.

Daria Ukhova

Institution(s): University of Oxford

Daria Ukhova received her Master of Science in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford in 2010. Daria's research focuses on corruption in healthcare and social services in Eastern European and CIS countries and on the gendered impact of corruption in those areas. In the course of her work Daria has collaborated with the WHO/Europe and a range of NGO's in Eastern Europe.

Maxime Agator

Institution(s): TI ASK Programme

Maxime received his Masters’ degree in Political Science and International Relations from Sciences Po Lille (France) in 2012. He currently works with the Advocacy and Research Group of Transparency International’s (TI) Secretariat. Prior to this, he also interned with UNDP Iraq’s anti-corruption programme and briefly with TI’s Moldova chapter. Maxime’s interests lie in the design process of policies that address corruption, white-collar crime, as well as money laundering and financing of terrorism. He notably worked on the international treatment by the FATF and other bodies of the “Hawala” informal money remittance systems in link with money-laundering policies. He also focuses on the circulation of ideas in policy design and the role of anti-corruption grassroots movements.