No. 5

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https://ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/handle/123456789/17099

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Browsing No. 5 by Subject "corruption"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Civil Society Against Corruption in Ukraine: Pathways to Impact
    (2019) Bader, Max; Huss, Oksana; Nesterenko, Oksana; Meleshevych, Andriy
    The 2013–2014 Revolution in Ukraine has spurred a boom in civic anti-corruption initiatives across Ukraine. There is as yet little consolidated understanding of how effective these initiatives are and what explains variation in effectiveness. Insights from academic and practitioner literature suggest that factors associated with success in anti-corruption activism fall under three broad categories: environmental factors, advocacy strategies of civil society organizations, and their organizational characteristics. Drawing on a comprehensive study of anti-corruption activism in the regions of Ukraine, this article asks how these insights relate to anti-corruption activism in the regions of Ukraine. We find that anti-corruption initiatives generally face two key dilemmas: insufficient capacity in terms and financial and human resources, and the absence of a credible base of support. Anti-Corruption organizations that are most effective tend to be those that convincingly solve either one of these two dilemmas. In addition, we find that political will among local authorities is an important conducive factor to the effectiveness of anti-corruption activism. The article also discusses the implications of our findings for practitioners of international assistance.
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    Exploring Shades of Corruption Tolerance: Tentative Lessons from Iceland and Sweden
    (2019) Erlingsson, Gissur Ólafur; Kristinsson, Gunnar Helgi
    The aim of this paper is to explore the effects of corruption tolerance on corruption levels. Strong claims are made in the literature to the effect that tolerance of corruption is universally low. We show, however, that there are non-trivial variations in tolerance of corruption, and that these are significantly related to commonly used indices of corruption. This suggests that understanding which factors shape corruption tolerance is important. Here, our concern is with the effects of elite structures on corruption. We first ask if closeness to power affects corruption tolerance and if the general population is less tolerant than elite groups. We then ask if different elite groups— e. g., politicians and civil servants respectively—are likely to form different standards regarding corruption. To hold certain external variables constant, the paper focuses on two relatively homogeneous, low-corruption countries: Sweden and Iceland. Our findings suggest that whereas little supports the closeness to power hypothesis— the general population is not less tolerant of corruption than elites—there may be important differences in how different elite groups within these countries view corrupt activities. This has implications for how corruption can be contained.
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    Humanizing (Anti)Corruption: The Socio-Legal Values of a Human Rights-Based Approach to Corruption
    (2019) Castro e Silva, Bruna
    This article intends to contribute to the current academic and policy debate on the values of determining whether a particular human rights violation was caused by a corrupt behavior; and to defend a human rights-based approach to corruption, based on its added socio-legal values. With this purpose, it analyzes and compares the legal reasoning and socio-legal dynamics of three human rights court cases involving and not involving corruption. By applying a directed content analysis combined with a socio-legal interpretative technique, the study explores and compares the rationality and the values addressed in both corrupt and non-corrupt cases. The results reveal that there are interconnected and mutually reinforcing socio-legal values in applying a human rights lens to combating corruption: (i) it is an improvement towards the justiciability of economic and social rights; (ii) it is a change of paradigm from the insufficient criminal approach to a focus on the social harm; and (iii) it is a more satisfactory approach to the overlapping harmful effects of corruption and inequality. The combination of these values can be used as a legal empowerment strategy, with a particular social accountability dimension, in order to strengthen the disadvantaged, and fight the encroachment caused by corruption on the enjoyment of human rights, especially economic and social rights.
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    The Impact of State-society relations on Anticorruption Agencies in Southern Africa
    (2019) Toeba, Thato
    Corruption remains a fundamental and intricate issue in public administration to date. It is featured constantly as one of the foremost discontents that societies around the globe have with the administration of public service and the resulting socio-economic problems.1 While anti-corruption law is extensively adopted in Southern Africa, the implementation of law has encountered deficiencies and challenges in tackling, especially grand corruption. This paper focuses on Anti-Corruption Agencies (ACAs) and their efficacy in controlling corruption in Southern Africa. It argues that the inability of ACAs to arrest corruption in Southern Africa is embedded inter-alia in the precarious state-society relations in the region which perpetuate the ambiguity for corruption and impede the formation of a moral consensus on anti-corruption law. The state, which is regarded generally as a trustworthy custodian of social progress is viewed by most domestic constituents as apathetic to social welfare with its political ambitions as anti-ethical to those of citizens. The paper proposes the analytical framework of Context, Resonance & Relevance (CRR) to assess the compatibility of Anti-Corruption Agencies (ACAs) in Southern Africa with domestic institutional contexts. In this model, context assesses ACA framework in relation to the domestic political environment and the extent to which it allows ACAs the capacity to function efficiently amidst competing political priorities. Resonance is concerned with the political relationship between the domestic society and the ACA and whether the operating framework sufficiently engages cultural codes specific in said society which De Sardan argues "banalise" or "justify" corruption. Relevance engages typologies of corruption in the region and whether reforms sufficiently are targeted at specific problems.