Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia - Ethiomedia

4 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
Comprehensive Stakeholder Inclusion
One commonality in the methodology was the effort to tap into the
perceptions and knowledge of all stakeholders, be they politicians, senior
government officials, private sector businessmen, civil society advocates,
or consumers of services. In each case, a validation workshop was held at
the end of the process to test and expose any lack of consensus around
the findings.
Broad Mapping Approach
The sector experts were also asked to consider a broad approach to the
sectors selected rather than a focused one. This approach enabled the
development of a comprehensive sector map for each sector. It also
facilitated a constructive approach that mapped not only the areas where
corrupt practices seemed to exist but also those where corruption was not
found at all. This distinction is critical to considering how Ethiopia compares
with other countries, both regionally and globally. For example, the
education sector across many countries frequently uses narrow tools to
focus on particular areas of concern (such as teacher absenteeism or
Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys).
Although these sorts of studies can be useful if the overall framework
of sector corruption is already known and understood, and can also help
track the progress of reform, the studies’ singular focus can also create a
biased picture of the extent of the corruption. The approach taken in this
set of diagnostics aimed to reveal, or uncover, the overall picture of corruption
in the sector, expose the high and lows, examine the interrelations
of different corrupt practices, and finally identify the detailed diagnostic
instruments that would increase understanding of the sector as a whole.
Sector-Specific Information Collection
To meet the overall diagnostic objective, each sector expert also adopted
specific information collection techniques over four to six months:
document analysis, on-site investigations, surveys, perception surveys,
semistructured interviews with a range of stakeholders, focus group
discussions, ranking exercises, and multistakeholder validation workshops.
As in any other approach to studying corruption, the sector overview
approach clearly has both strengths and weaknesses regarding information
collection. One particular caveat is the use of perception surveys: by
their very nature, perception surveys capture what people perceive but
do not provide an absolute, empirical measure. Nevertheless, the
approach used here supplemented expert interviews with significant
document analysis by the independent sector experts, who were selected