ANTICORRP: Anticorruption Policies Revisited. Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenge of Corruption

ANTICORRP is a new large-scale research project to be funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Program. The central objective of ANTICORRP is to investigate factors that promote or hinder the development of effective anticorruption policies. The project started in March 2012 and will last for five years. Twenty-one research groups from sixteen EU countries make up the consortium that implements the project.

ANTICORRP investigates the causes of corruption, how corruption can be conceptualized and measured as well as the impact of corruption on various aspects of human wellbeing. A central issue will be how policy responses can be tailored as to deal effectively with various forms of corruption. The knowledge about the negative impact that corruption has on various aspects of human well-being (such as economic prosperity, health, life satisfaction, gender equality, social trust, poverty and political legitimacy) has been well established. At the same time, knowledge about how corruption can be successfully fought by political means is much less developed.

The project will identify general global trends concerning corruption and select ‘overperforming’ and ‘underperforming’ countries (in Europe and in other regions) in terms of their progress towards less corrupt governance regimes and conduct more detailed qualitative analyses of these cases. In addition, a large-scale survey of various aspects of “the quality of government” in all EU member states will be conducted. This interdisciplinary project includes researchers from anthropology, criminology, economics, gender studies, history, law, political science, public policy and public

administration. The project will strive to ensure that the research results are discussed with policy makers and the general public by using high profile multimedia tools as well as a number of research-to-policy workshops.

Consortium participants

The QoG Institute, University of Gothenburg (Coordinator, Sweden)

Hertie School of Governance (Germany)

European University Institute (Italy)

University College London (UK)

Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (Greece)

Transparency International (Germany)

Universiteit van Amsterdam (Netherlands)

The Gallup Organisation Europe (Belgium)

Universita degli Studi di Bergamo (Italy)

Universita degli Studi di Perugia (Italy)

German Institute of Global and Area Studies (Germany)

Center for the Study of Democracy (Bulgaria)

Basel Institute on Governance (Switzerland)

Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem (Hungary)

Societatea Academica din Romania (Romania)

Sabiedriskas Politikas Centrs PROVIDUS (Latvia)

Hacettepe Universitesi (Turkey)

Skola komunikacie a medii, n.o. (Slovakia)

Partnership for Social Development (Croatia)

Iniciativa Kosovare per Stabilitet (Kosovo)

The University of Nottingham (UK)

WORKPACKAGES

ELIAMEP’s involvement

In the frame of ANTICORRP, ELIAMEP is the leader of WP10 entitled “Monitoring anticorruption legislation and enforcement in Europe”. The objectives of this WP are

a) To reach a better knowledge of the legal rules and norms enacted at the national level to curb corruption, as well as to assess their pertinence and effectiveness.

b) To enhance our understanding on the mechanisms under which the proceedings of corruption have been concealed and to which extent legislation allows for the recovery of these proceedings.

c) To increase our understanding of the impact that rules and norms adopted by European regional organisations, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe (CoE), have had on the configuration of national anti-corruption legal frameworks.

d) To advance knowledge on the implementation, monitoring and enforcement of national anti-corruption legislation by judicial and non-judicial state institutions.

e) To develop policy options and mechanisms for targeted legal interventions against corruption and improved implementation, monitoring and enforcement of relevant rules and norms at the national level.

f) To develop policy options and mechanisms to increase the exchange among countries of financial information leading to recover the proceeds of corruption.

ELIAMEP is also one of the main participants in WP11 entitled “Building accountability: transparency, civil society and administrative responses”. The objectives of this WP are:

a) To conduct a worldwide survey of mechanisms of horizontal accountability (e.g. government audit institutions) and transparency laws and praxis, building on country expert assessments.

b) To integrate these data with 1) existing data on conditions linked to societal accountability (strength and role of independent media, civil society, women in leadership positions, and international actors), and 2) data on corruption and performance in selected policy sectors.

c) To analyse quantitatively the varying effectiveness of horizontal accountability mechanisms on corruption and policy performance, and explore whether this variation can be explained in terms of the strength and involvement of non-state actors.

d) To identify and design case studies based on accountability mechanisms and levels of corruption for qualitative analysis of organisations and to policy sectors with varying levels of transparency. These analyses will explore whether transparency acts as a gate opener for societal accountability and how societal accountability operates, if at all, in conditions of very low levels of transparency. In addition to examining these dynamics at the country level, the case studies will analyse sectors known to have divergent levels of transparency, such as the institution of diplomacy (low transparency) and environmental policy institutions (generally high transparency).

e) To analyse qualitatively the dynamic interplay between government audit institutions and the efforts of non-state actors.

f) To gather contemporary and historical data for the bureaucratic structure at the sub-national level in EU27 (the level of politicisation of central, regional and local bureaucracies, the recruitment and promotion systems, and the financial conditions for those working in the public service). This is done in collaboration with WP5.

g) To analyse the impact of contemporary and the historical bureaucratic characteristics on the sub-national quality of government data.

For further information, please contact:

Dr. Dia Anagnostou (danagnos@eliamep.gr)

Dr. Evangelia Psychogiopoulou (epsychogiopoulou@eliamep.gr)

Dr. Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos (dsotirop@hol.gr and dsotirop@pspa.uoa.gr)