Review of anti-corruption strategies Rob McCusker - Australian ...

Michael B 2004. Explaining organizational change in international development: the role of complexity in
anti-corruption work. Journal of international development 16(8): 1067–1088
This paper explains the rapid expansion of programmes undertaken by donor agencies in the 1990s and
considers four schools of anti-corruption project practice: universalistic, state-centric, society-centric, and
critical schools of practice. The paper argues that a complexity perspective offers a new framework for
looking at such growth.
Mocan N 2004. What determines corruption? International evidence from micro data. NBER working
paper no. 10460
This paper utilises a micro-level data set from 49 countries to address three issues: What determines
corruption at the individual level? What determines the perception of the extent of corruption in the
country? Does corruption have a direct impact on growth when the quality of the institutions are
controlled for? In addition, the paper creates a direct measure of corruption which portrays the extent
of corruption as revealed by individuals who live in those countries. The second part of the paper shows
that controlling for endogeneity of corruption and institutional quality, actual corruption in the country and
the proportion of the bribes asked by various government agencies have no direct impact on corruption
perception. On the other hand, an improvement in the quality of institutions lowers the perception
of corruption. The final section of the paper shows that controlling for the quality of the institutions,
corruption does not have a direct impact on growth.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2004. Review on assessing effectiveness of
integrity and anti-corruption measures in the public service: the Korean experience. Public Governance
and Territorial Development Directorate. Public Governance Committee
This paper comprises a case study which compares key components and phases of assessment
methodologies implemented by the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Seoul
Metropolitan Government.
Rock MT & Bonnett H 2004. The comparative politics of corruption: accounting for the East Asian
paradox in empirical studies of corruption, growth and investment. World development 32(6): 999–1017.
This paper reports on the notion that corruption reduces investment and/or slows growth. The paper
considers the conducting of a series of cross-country regression tests using four different corruption
datasets. It notes that corruption slows growth and/or reduces investment in most developing countries,
particularly small developing countries, but increases growth in the large East Asian newly industrialising
economies. The latter finding provides solid empirical support to a country case literature that explains
the East Asian paradox––the combination of high corruption and high growth––in terms of stable and
mutually beneficial exchanges of government promotional privileges for bribes and kickbacks.
Rose-Ackerman S 2004. The challenge of poor governance and corruption. Copenhagen Consensus
Challenge papers. http://osp.stanford.edu/files/challenge_poor_gov.pdf
This book notes that the World Bank estimates that $1 trillion is spent on bribes annually, some 3 percent
of global GDP but that the impact on economic growth and world income could well be much higher than
this. It suggests that corruption is one symptom of a failure to achieve an appropriate balance between
private wealth and public power and that global solutions to this challenge are difficult to find because
corruption and poor governance have a variety of causes. Solutions are not easy to implement because
they disadvantage powerful vested interests that can block reforms. Despite these caveats, carefully
tailored policies – carried out with the personal commitment of those on the ground – can have large
benefits and very low costs.