{"id":28339,"date":"2017-02-28T14:23:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T11:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eliamep.lncdoo.com\/comparative-report-monitoring-anti-corruption-legislation-and-enforcement-in-europe\/"},"modified":"2024-08-28T11:05:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T08:05:10","slug":"comparative-report-monitoring-anti-corruption-legislation-and-enforcement-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/comparative-report-monitoring-anti-corruption-legislation-and-enforcement-in-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparative Report: Monitoring anti-corruption legislation and enforcement in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contributors<\/strong><\/em>: Dia Anagnostou, Evangelia Psychogiopoulou, Martin Mendelski<\/p>\n

The ANTICORRP Project Work Package (WP) 10 on \u201cMonitoring anti-corruption\u00a0legislation and enforcement in Europe\u201d has the overall aim to study state compliance\u00a0and implementation of international and European anti-corruption norms in the EU\u00a0member states. It is specifically interested in exploring whether international and
\nEuropean norms have an independent influence in prompting EU member states to\u00a0adopt and implement effective anti-corruption laws, policies and practices\u00a0domestically. While their research design and methodology are different, the three\u00a0studies that are contained in this deliverable explore this broader issue by engaging in\u00a0comparative analysis.
\nThe first study on \u201cWhy do some countries comply with the Group of States\u00a0against Corruption and others do not? A study of political finance international norms\u00a0and domestic reform\u201d by Dia Anagnostou and Evangelia Psychogiopoulou explores\u00a0variation in state compliance with the Council of Europe (CoE) standards in the area\u00a0of political financing and the factors that account for it. The analysis focuses on seven\u00a0countries that exhibit different degrees of compliance with the CoE rules on the\u00a0financing of political parties and election campaigns, namely Denmark, Germany,\u00a0Greece, Lithuania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The selected states\u00a0exhibit compliance with GRECO regulatory standards on political financing, ranging\u00a0from no compliance to strong compliance.
\nThis qualitative comparative study builds upon our quantitative research in the\u00a0second phase of WP10, as well as on pre-existing case studies. It employs the method\u00a0of structured, focused comparison to explore systematically the factors that promote\u00a0or conversely hinder the willingness and ability of national governments to comply\u00a0and implement the recommendations that GRECO issues as part of its monitoring. It\u00a0examines the legal framework governing the flow of money in politics in these\u00a0countries and their response to the recommendations issued by the Group of States\u00a0against Corruption (GRECO) as part of the monitoring carried out in the field since\u00a02007. Why do some states comply with GRECO recommendations and proceed to\u00a0significantly reform their national regulatory frame in response to these, while other\u00a0states resist compliance and are unwilling to undertake changes in how they regulate\u00a0political finance?
\nBased on the comparison of the seven country cases, three sets of factors\u00a0emerge as salient in explaining why some states strongly comply with GRECO\u00a0recommendations and others do so only limitedly, or not at all. In the first place, an\u00a0important factor is how congruent or conversely conflictual (with the approach\u00a0underlying the GRECO recommendation) is the national tradition or the extant constitutional\/legal frame in a country. A congruent tradition or an already present\u00a0regulatory propensity can facilitate compliance, while on the other hand, a conflicting
\ntradition or existing approach can obstruct compliance and political finance reform.
\nSecondly, a key factor in explaining compliance is the existence or lack of\u00a0political will among the government and political parties domestically. Domestic\u00a0political will has been shown to be a crucial factor in state compliance with
\ninternational law more broadly. Yet, besides being plainly unsurprising, the existence\u00a0(or lack therefore) of political begs more questions than it answers: what factors\u00a0\u00a0configure political agreement with or opposition to GRECO standards and\u00a0recommended reforms? Why and how does a substantial cross-section of government\u00a0and parliamentary elites agree to take action or resist doing so in order to reform\u00a0domestic laws and rules in line with what a Council of Europe body (the GRECO)\u00a0recommends?
\nThe area of political finance is not a typical policy area; the prevailing mode\u00a0of decision-making, inter-party relations and divisions, as well as the influence that\u00a0public opinion and civil society are able to exert more broadly, are not necessarily\u00a0evidenced in the area of political finance. In order to explain compliance, we must\u00a0understand why international pressure, as exercised through a peer review monitoring\u00a0mechanism such as the GRECO, can at a particular point in time break through\u00a0established patterns of decision-making between the main political parties in the area\u00a0of political finance. We see this having happened in the case of Sweden, but not in\u00a0Denmark or in the UK. To be sure, unlike Denmark and the UK, Sweden did have a\u00a0culture of party finance regulation, even if on a voluntary basis, which made the\u00a0distance from the regulatory approach of the GRECO shorter to begin with, making\u00a0significant, albeit far from radical reform, possible.
\nThe third factor that explains compliance with GRECO recommendations is a\u00a0country\u2019s position in the regional structure of power and in the international milieu\u00a0more broadly. Its power in the regional and international terrain is defined both by\u00a0objective factors that create dependence and external oversight, and by self-perception\u00a0(how its elites perceive their state\u2019s position). \u0391 country like Germany, which is in a\u00a0strong strategic, political and economic position in the regional and international\u00a0realm, is not be able to ignore or change the rules for itself. On the other hand,\u00a0countries that are a weak and dependent economic and political position, like Greece\u00a0and Spain in the post-2010 period, have little space to negotiate and express their\u00a0disagreements. They have even less space to resist complying with the GRECO\u00a0recommendations, when such compliance is among the conditions for continuing\u00a0external financial aid. Finally, this study shows that there is an inverse relationship\u00a0between regulation and control of corruption: the higher the score of political finance\u00a0regulation the lower the ability to control corruption.
\nThe second study by Martin Mendelksi, entitled \u201cThe revival of\u00a0Balkanization: How externally-driven reforms reinforce the fragmentation of\u00a0governance in South Eastern Europe\u201d, examines the impact of the EU and other\u00a0international donors on the development of good governance in South Eastern Europe\u00a0(SEE). The comparative analysis shows that the externally-driven good governance\u00a0reforms improve substantive legality (the alignment of domestic legislation with\u00a0international best standards), state capacity and efficiency but weaken formal legality\u00a0(the inner morality of law), many aspects of impartiality and the coherence of state\u00a0structures and policies. As a result, good governance is undermined. To explain the\u00a0persistence and reproduction of bad (i.e. fragmented) governance, the author offers a\u00a0\u201cvicious reform cycle\u201d explanation, in which a fragmented governance structure is\u00a0reproduced by competing and factionalized actors and by fragmented and politicized\u00a0reform and policy processes. The implication is that externally-induced reforms,\u00a0instead of allowing to transition towards good governance, are reproducing
\nBalkanization and \u201cbad governance\u201d, i.e. fragmented, unaccountable, personalized and instable state structures, policies and formal rules. The main argument is\u00a0supported by a mixed method study. A quantitative indicator-based analysis measures\u00a0the development of good governance across six dimensions between 2003 and 2015.
\nQualitative interviews (with judicial and political representatives from SEE, the EU\u00a0and international organizations), relevant data and secondary sources offer revealing\u00a0insights on processes of hybridization and fragmentization.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contributors: Dia Anagnostou, Evangelia Psychogiopoulou, Martin Mendelski The ANTICORRP Project Work Package (WP) 10 on \u201cMonitoring anti-corruption\u00a0legislation and enforcement in Europe\u201d has the overall aim to study state compliance\u00a0and implementation of international and European anti-corruption norms in the EU\u00a0member states. It is specifically interested in exploring whether international and European norms have an independent influence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[492],"tags":[],"program":[17],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44742,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28339\/revisions\/44742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28339"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=28339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}