Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Colophon
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Understanding control of corruption
- 2 Diagnosis and measurement
- 3 The road to Denmark: historical paths to corruption control
- 4 Structure and agency: determining control of corruption
- 5 Understanding contemporary achievers
- 6 Domestic collective action capacity
- 7 International agency and its anticorruption impact
- 8 From critical mess to critical mass: some tentative policy conclusions
- Appendix 1 Explaining bribery
- Appendix 2 List of variables and sources
- Appendix 3 Brief description of databases and surveys used
- Appendix 4 Impact of anticorruption interventions on control of corruption: bivariate regressions
- Appendix 5 HDI differentials from Figure 4.1
- Appendix 6 Classification of countries by governance orders
- References
- Index
8 - From critical mess to critical mass: some tentative policy conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2015
- Frontmatter
- Colophon
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Understanding control of corruption
- 2 Diagnosis and measurement
- 3 The road to Denmark: historical paths to corruption control
- 4 Structure and agency: determining control of corruption
- 5 Understanding contemporary achievers
- 6 Domestic collective action capacity
- 7 International agency and its anticorruption impact
- 8 From critical mess to critical mass: some tentative policy conclusions
- Appendix 1 Explaining bribery
- Appendix 2 List of variables and sources
- Appendix 3 Brief description of databases and surveys used
- Appendix 4 Impact of anticorruption interventions on control of corruption: bivariate regressions
- Appendix 5 HDI differentials from Figure 4.1
- Appendix 6 Classification of countries by governance orders
- References
- Index
Summary
“The most practical thing in the world is a good theory.”
Hermann von HelmholtzCurrent state of play
The Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, U4, concluded its 2011 evidence review by stating that “most anticorruption initiatives in developing countries fail” (Heeks and Mathisen 2012). In the same year, the World Bank evaluation team made a similarly laconic acknowledgment in its evaluation of good governance programs: “The evaluation's desk reviews and case studies showed that the Bank's record in helping to achieve countrywide governance improvements was limited” (World Bank 2011). European donors (the Swedish International Development Corporation; NORAD; the UK's Department for International Development; the Danish Development Corporation) also sponsored a joint evaluation of their anticorruption projects, which checked on selected countries such as Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Vietnam, and Zambia, to conclude that: “Although donors have helped to strengthen country institutions and systems in support of [anticorruption] in all five countries, these intermediate results have not translated into reduced levels of corruption at national levels” (ITAD 2011). Thinly veiled in this assessment is the recognition of the huge ambition of international donors to have an impact on national governance. Another evaluation indicated that there is no country to point to as a successful example of the deployment of the international anticorruption toolkit – in addition to having no statistical evidence to substantiate the impact of anticorruption tools (Mungiu-Pippidi et al. 2011). By and large, the evaluations piling up after the first fifteen years of anticorruption work showed great expectations and humble results.
Yet, how could donor-sponsored good governance deliver satisfactory results to such ambitious goals? If the theory and evidence presented in this book seem convincing, most of the anticorruption industry could only have walked into what the U4 authors call a design-reality gap (Heeks and Mathisen 2012). Most anticorruption approaches by Western donors (the so-called zero-tolerance approach, for instance) presume that ethical universalism is a default state of governance, so corruption must be a deviation from it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Quest for Good GovernanceHow Societies Develop Control of Corruption, pp. 207 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015