Measuring ‘success’ in five African Anti-Corruption Commissions
This paper suggests that the widespread lack of ‘success’ of anti-corruption commissions (ACCs) is intimately connected to how they are funded by donors and governments and what donors and governments expect of them. The findings here are based on the insights gained from country visits to Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
Expectations of ACCs are not grounded in political or financial reality. They are not approached through a clear management development strategy, nor are they informed by a clear understanding of the scale and complexity of corruption in the particular country.
The authors argue that ACCs will never achieve ‘success’ until they are consistently funded at the right times, for the appropriately specified tasks, and at levels commensurate with a realistic level of performance.
In short, the anti-corruption architecture is generally ad hoc, poorly planned and inadequately executed. All ACCs have an uncomfortable relationship with their governments.
Donors’ relations with ACCs, are similarly difficult, with ACCs often being donor-led. ACCs will accept what donors are willing to make available and donors do so in terms of their own priorities and plans. One common consequence is that funding goes to front-line activities but the back-room organisational infrastructure is neglected.
The paper also focuses on how assessing the success of ACCs has been made more problematic by the choice and application of inappropriate and inaccurate performance measurement criteria. Overall, the authors argue that ‘failure’ is preordained by:
- the imposition of unrealistic objectives
- limiting necessary resources
- inadequate support for sustainable organizational development
- inability to discriminate between intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting performance
- lack of appreciation of the strength and impact of political pressure on the ACC.
