Frontpage Articles
Shell Companies and Puppet Masters
In this Featured Research Article Jason Sharman takes a hard-hitting look at the role of shell companies in facilitating corrupt transactions.
2011 ACRN Research Paper Contest Winners Announced!
We are very happy to announce the results of the 2011 ACRN Research Paper contest. This contest aims to give young scholars an opportunity to take up the challenge of filling important knowledge gaps, present innovative approaches for measuring and understanding corruption and showcase new findings on what works and what does not in tackling corruption. This year’s competition was intended for young scholars who are graduate students, post-doctoral fellows or scholars who have completed their PhDs within the last three years. The contest was made possible by the generous contributions of Transparency International, the Quality of Government Institute and the Institute for Security Studies.
ACRN Blog: Economic Crisis and Anti-Corruption in the EU
In this blog post ACRN contributing editor Patrycja Szarek Mason examines the European Union's anti-corruption policy in light of the unfolding economic crisis. She gives us an understanding of the context in which the EU's anti-corruption policy has developed, the measures taken so far and the gaps that still remain in ensuring that anti-corruption can be a safe-guard against future economic crises.
The Role of Corruption in Peacebuilding
In this Featured Research Article commissioned by the Anti-Corruption Research Network, authors Dominik Zaum and Christine Cheng explore the challenges and complexities of combating corruption in the peacebuilding process.
ACRN Blog: Reflections from a Research Conference
ACRN contributing editor Nicholas Charron recently attended the APSA (American Political Science Association) annual conference which was held in Seattle on 1 - 4 September 2011. In this post he shares his thoughts on the interesting panels, findings and trends in corruption research from political scientists around the world.
ACRN Blog: Audits and Anti-Corruption
In this blog post, ACRN Contributing Editor Paul Lagunes takes an in-depth look at auditing as a monitoring mechanism. He surveys the evidence thus far on the effectiveness of auditing as an anti-corruption tool and finds that while there is some data to suggest that audits can lead to the reduction of corruption, much more work is needed to understand the particular conditions under which audits are most effective.
ACRN Blog: Human Trafficking and Corruption
The role and implications of corruption in the conduct of human trafficking is slowly getting to the attention of scholars, practitioners and policy makers. While conferences and papers are beginning to shed light on the inter-linkages between the two issues, an immense gap in knowledge (as well as between knowledge and practice) still needs to be filled .
Corruption and Climate Governance
This Featured Research article takes an in-depth look at interesting avenues of research in the emerging area of corruption and climate governance.
ACRN Blog: A View from Canada
This blog post deals with corruption in Canada, a country that is commonly viewed as being relatively free from corruption. It suggests that when it comes to private sector corruption, particularly in the case of foreign bribery, Canada still has a long way to go.
ACRN Blog: Corruption in the Police
It is our pleasure to introduce to you a brand new feature of ACRN - the ACRN Blog. This space will be used by our contributing editors, invited experts and young scholars to present information about their own research, musings about exciting new topics, reflections from conferences, and more. In this blog post ACRN contributing editor Paul Lagunes presents some findings from his very interesting field study on police corruption in Mexico City and some thoughts on how this problem can be tackled. Your comments and feedback are most welcome!
Randomised Control Trials
The best intended social policies can have no or even negative effects if large portions of the resources are syphoned off. While we seem to approach a consensus that reducing leakage, defined as both corruption and misuse of resources, is a priority in achieving social policy objectives, relatively little is known on the how. A new approach to answering questions in social policy is taking hold across the field of international development – randomised control trials (RCTs). Borrowed from medical trials for new drugs, RCTs are considered the most rigorous methodology available for estimating the real impact of an intervention. RCTs can help us to understand what kind of programs work best in tackling corruption.
Organised Crime and Corruption
Traditionally, research on organised crime has been conducted separately from that into corruption. Several factors explain this. One is the traditional boundaries between sub-disciplines in criminology, political science, sociology and economics. Another is that while techniques for measuring corruption, though still imperfect, have substantially improved since the mid-1990s, organised crime measurement has lagged behind. This disparity has discouraged many researchers from engaging in explicit comparison.
The ACRN Research Paper Competition 2010
In August 2010 the Anti-Corruption Research Network (ACRN) held its very first research paper competition for young scholars. We wanted to hear from young corruption researchers from various academic disciplines and regions about their thoughts, innovative approaches, and fresh insights on how the problem of corruption can be best understood and tackled. We received several high quality research papers spanning a wide variety of topics, from corruption issues in procurement or the health sector, to the role of corruption in post-conflict reconstruction, international anti-corruption conventions, and deforestation.
Corruption and the MDGs
In 2000 more than 180 countries committed to a set of highly visible development priorities to be achieved by 2015. Known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) these eight priorities cover a broad range of critical development issues ranging from poverty reduction, health and education to gender equality, access to clean water and environmental sustainability. By setting numerical targets for related indicators, the MDGs have evolved into a galvanising point for development research to identify the critical conditions and drivers that shape progress, or the lack thereof for specific development goals. This research agenda is more urgent and important than ever. With five years to go to the 2015 target date, progress reports indicate that achievements in many areas are not on-track and the world community is likely to fall short of its commitments.
Tackling Corruption in Humanitarian Aid
The catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010 and left more than 200,000 people dead reminded us once more that humanitarian aid is one of the most important planks of global solidarity and development. With more than US$ 4.2 billion pledged for a severely devastated country(1) the scale and complexity of this humanitarian operation also brought into sharp relief the management and governance challenges that accompany such interventions.
Gender and Corruption
Gender and corruption is a surprisingly recent issue in anti-corruption scholarship. The first wave of research into the gendered dimensions of corruption focused on whether women are more or less corruptible than men, and whether the promotion of women in public life can be an effective anti-corruption strategy. A second line of enquiry examined the impact of corruption on women as a group, building on the growing evidence that corruption has a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups in society. Both of these strands of research have already generated a wealth of policy-relevant insights that advance our understanding of the interplay between corruption and gender.
Corruption and the private sector
A flurry of high-profile corruption scandals ranging from BAe Systems to Siemens, Halliburton to Samsung highlights the private sector plays a role at the supply side of corruption and faces a broad range of different corruption challenges. Translating this continuous stream of instances into a solid empirical account of the scale and scope of the corruption in the private sector is as difficult as it is essential for guiding policy reforms.
