• Politics

Politics & corruption

New approaches need to be taken by host country governments, their civil society and business communities, and international donor organisations to address corruption as a serious obstacle to development. The purpose of this handbook therefore, is to provide an integrated framework and practical tools to conduct tailored anticorruption assessments efficiently and at a level sufficiently detailed to produce targeted and prioritised recommendations for programming. Although primarily targeted at USAID officers and their partners this handbook can be used by a range of development practicioners in the field 

The handbook provides the following findings:

• Corruption is both a governance and economic problem, and it is manifested in all development and service delivery sectors. Its occurrence is facilitated by the absence or insufficiency of financial controls, performance monitoring for personnel and programs, transparency, and mechanisms of accountability
  
• Corruption can be found at all levels of government from the central to the regional to the local levels. However, Preventive and control programs at the central level may have only limited reach and effectiveness down to the sub national levels of government
  
• Corruption may manifest itself in similar ways across countries and over time bribery, extortion, embezzlement, influence peddling, nepotism, and so on – but the underlying causes can be different and the areas that corruption attacks can vary across geographic region and over time
  
• There is no clear line between administrative and grand corruption, and the two are often linked, but the distinction is nonetheless important for assessing problems and developing programmatic responses.

The book provides the following recommendations:

• There needs to be a basic framework of anticorruption laws, regulations and institutions in place that serve as the prerequisites or preconditions for all initiatives. As well, government officials and civil society, mass media, and business leaders must have the training, resources, and capacity to act effectively and with meaningful resolve over the long haul if anticorruption initiatives are to be adequately implemented
  
• Tailored and prioritised programming recommendations that specifically address a country’s principal corruption problems can be derived from in depth diagnosis of key governmental sectors and functions that target corruption vulnerabilities and opportunities for reform
  
• Valuable insight into the nature and underlying causes of the corruption problem in a country can be derived from a detailed understanding of the context within which corrupt practices and tolerances have developed in that country.
  

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend