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Justice Sector Corruption in Ethiopia 233
22. It should be noted that one external reviewer stressed that corruption was less
likely in civil than in criminal cases (except for civil cases involving administrative
matters) because both parties would be equally motivated to pay
bribes. In theory this may be true, but experience in many countries suggests
a high level of corruption in civil, nonadministrative cases, if only because one
party can outbid the other, has better political contacts, or is savvier about the
rules of the game.
23. The color coding system previously mentioned would not prevent payments
to court staff. However, references to such practices fall far short of those in
other countries in the region. For example, a high-level administrator and a
lawyer in another African country told the author that courtroom staff would
have to be paid a “tip” to retrieve files. Whether or not this still happens in
Ethiopia, one can hardly imagine such a practice being treated as standard
procedure by high-level staff.
24. Such authorities need not be at the highest levels: it was mentioned that both
mayors and woreda officials sometimes leaned on police.
25. Were citizens able to do so with a few of the increasingly available international
databases (see, for example, CEPEJ 2006 and later biennial editions),
they might better appreciate the judiciary’s efforts to increase efficiency.
Comparative data on corruption are also available but unfortunately not reliable,
and as even their authors sometimes caution, they are most appropriate
for tracking change in a single country, not for cross-national comparisons.
References
Abiad, Pablo, and Mariano Thieberger. 2005. “Justicia Era Kirchner: La construcción
de un poder a medida.” Buenos Aires: Marea.
Amegatcher, Nene Abayaateye Ofoe. 2007. “The Challenges to Commercial
Dispute Resolution in the Ghanaian Courts: Is Order 58 of the High Court
(Civil Procedure) Rules, 2004 (C.L47) the Panacea?” LLM dissertation,
Nottingham Trent University, U.K.
APAP (Action Professionals’ Association for the People). 2001. “Baseline Survey
Report on APAP’s Intervention in Areas of Human Rights.” Research report,
APAP, Addis Ababa.
Bailey, John, and Roy Godson, eds. 1999. Organized Crime and Democratic
Accountability: Mexico and the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands. Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press.
Bourassa, Laura. 2009. “Briefing to USAID/Ethiopia on Justice Sector Reform.”
From notes transcribed by Jennifer Whelan, April 7, on file with author.
Campos, J. Edgardo, and Sanjay Pradhan, eds. 2007. The Many Faces of Corruption:
Tracking Vulnerabilities at the Sector Level. Washington, DC: World Bank.