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186 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
• “Recommendations,” which details the research-based approaches for
improving the situation.
In addition, some initial caveats are in order: First, the next section—an
introductory discussion of the justice system and forms of corruption
therein—is necessarily long because many readers may not be familiar
with the sector and thus need explanatory guidance.
Second, because field research was limited to courts on the federal
level and in only one of Ethiopia’s nine regions, conclusions about the
incidence (and thus impact) of corruption in the sector are necessarily
partial. As knowledgeable reviewers have suggested, the situation may be
quite different and far more negative in Ethiopia’s less-developed
regions. However, because documentation on notoriously corrupt countries
is also often limited to their more-developed regions, a comparative
evaluation is not unreasonable. Still, for a more thorough picture, future
studies might focus on Ethiopia’s other regions as well as on some specific
topics and institutions beyond the scope of the present study.
The Justice Sector and Corruption Defined
Although the justice sector can be defined broadly—as those formal and
informal institutions involved in the rule-based resolution of disputes
and the authoritative application of sanctions to rule violators—the
focus here is only on the courts, prosecutors, police, and private attorneys,
thus omitting some admittedly widely used mechanisms such as
traditional dispute resolution, sharia, and social courts.
What constitutes a justice sector remains a matter of debate. It clearly
is more than the courts and, broadly construed, it would include
• a host of core governmental agencies and actors (courts, police, prosecutors,
administrative agencies with quasi-judicial powers, and public
and private attorneys 1 );
• certain formal institutions that support their work (credit bureaus, registries,
notaries, bar associations, prisons, and those in the executive and
legislative branches responsible for enacting the laws and regulations
governing their operations); and
• informal or customary bodies that carry out similar rule-based dispute
resolution and sanctioning of rule violators (the term “rule” being used
as opposed to “law” to include norms other than state-sanctioned laws
used by alternative bodies 2 ).