Mungiu-Pippidi A. and Fazekas M. (2020). How to define and measure Corruption. In Alina Mungiu-Pippidi & Paul M. Heywood (eds.) A Research Agenda for Studies of Corruption. Ch. 2. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
The measurement of corruption is an essential part of this policy-driven intellectual endeavour. As a United Nations Development Programme review report stated: ‘To put it plainly, there is little value in a measurement if it does not tell us what needs to be fixed’ (UNDP 2008, p. 8). …
Wachs J. and Fazekas M. (2020). Corruption and the Network Structure of Public Contracting Markets across Government Change. Politics and Governance, 8(2), pp. 153-166.
Corruption is thought to affect developed economies to a greater degree than developing countries. However, given our limited capacity to detect corruption, it may simply be harder to detect it in countries with stronger institutions. This article sets out to address this measurement challenge and to offer a tailored approach to one particular type of corruption: …
Brenner, D. and Fazekas, M. (2020). Legislative Effects of Regulatory Impact Assessment: A Comparative Event History Analysis of Modifications of Law in France, Italy, Hungary, and the UK. GTI-WP/2020:03, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.
Regulatory instability, which is a frequent modification of adopted laws, is costly for society. Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIAs) are designed to improve the quality of legislation, however, we know little about RIAs’ impact on legal stability. Therefore, this paper analyses whether RIAs influence the incidence and frequency …
Cingolani L. & Fazekas, M. (2020). The role of agencification in achieving value-for-money in public spending. Governance. Available online: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gove.12452
David-Barrett E. and Fazekas, M. (2020). Anti-corruption in aid-funded procurement: Is corruption reduced or merely displaced? World Development. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105000
Given a widespread sense among donors that mainstream anti-corruption reforms over the past 25 years have failed to yield results, there is a move towards more targeted interventions. Such interventions should, in principle, overcome implementation gaps and make it easier to evaluate impact, supporting learning. However, when interventions are narrowly targeted, there is a risk that corrupt actors simply …
Corruption risk in contracting markets: A network science perspective. International Journal of Data Science and Analytics. Available online.
We use methods from network science to analyze corruption risk in a large administrative dataset of over 4 million public procurement contracts from European Union member states covering the years 2008–2016. By mapping procurement markets as bipartite networks of issuers and winners of contracts, we can visualize and describe the distribution of corruption risk. We study …
The DFID-funded project “Curbing Corruption in Government Contracting” is releasing an update on the datasets collected on development projects, public tenders, and contracts for three major donor agencies: the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and EuropeAid. The datasets not only republish structured data gathered from official source websites, but also contain corruption risk red flags developed by the research team.
About the project
The project entitled “Curbing Corruption in Government Contracting” analyses how procurement can be manipulated for …
Dávid-Barrett, E., Fazekas, M. (2018): Anti-corruption interventions in development aid: Is corruption reduced or merely displaced? GTI-WP/2018:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute
Most anti-corruption interventions are small-scale and targeted. Hence, there is a risk that they simply displace corruption rather than reducing it as corrupt actors adapt to the new conditions. Direct attempts at improving corruption controls in one area might elicit two evasive tactics: corrupt actors could shift focus to areas with weaker controls or could more aggressively exploit the …
Fazekas, M., Ferrali, R., Wachs, J. (2018): Institutional quality, campaign contributions, and favouritism in US federal government contracting. GTI-WP/2018:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.
The corrupting power of money in US politics has long been debated with emerging evidence pointing out that campaign contributions help funnel money to politically connected companies. However, it is yet unclear how exactly such mechanisms might work and what are the curbs on politically driven contracting. To address these gaps we compile the full dataset of …
The project, “Curbing corruption in development aid-funded procurement” is releasing the full datasets collected on development projects, public tenders, and contracts for 3 major donor agencies: the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and EuropeAid. The project was supported by the British Academy/ UK Department for International Development Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme. The final datasets result from a concerted effort by GTI, the University of Sussex and Datlab. In addition to republishing structured data gathered from official source …