Corruption and the Network Structure of Public Contracting Markets across Government Change

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: …

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Legislative Effects of Regulatory Impact Assessment: A Comparative Event History Analysis of Modifications of Law in France, Italy, Hungary, and the UK

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 …

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The role of agencification in achieving value-for-money in public spending

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

Agencification has been pursued globally under the promise of increasing public administration performance. In spite of ample theoretical arguments, the empirical evidence on the causal link between agencification and performance remains scarce and methodologically contested. We contribute to this debate by empirically testing the impacts of agencification across Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom on value-for-money, competitiveness, and timeliness
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Anti-corruption in aid-funded procurement: Is corruption reduced or merely displaced?

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 …

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Are emerging technologies helping win the fight against corruption? A review of the state of evidence

Adam, I. & Fazekas, M. (2020). Are emerging technologies helping win the fight against corruption? A review of the state of evidence. GTI-WP 2020:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is often thought of as a uniformly positive tool making governments more transparent, accountable, and less corrupt. However, the evidence on it is mixed and often misunderstood. Hence, this article carries out a systematic stocktaking of ICT tools’ impact on corruption, offering a nuanced and context-dependent assessment. …

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India’s Federal Procurement Data Infrastructure: Observations and Recommendations

Adam, I., Tóth, B., Dávid-Barret, E., Fazekas, M. (2020). India’s Federal Procurement Data Infrastructure: Observations and Recommendations. GTI-R/2020:1, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Improving transparency in public procurement, that is publishing more and better-quality data, supports accountability by enabling greater scrutiny over processes and outcomes as well as helping to achieve greater competition and better value for money. In India, according to the Ministry of Finance General Financial Rules (2017), all procuring authorities are responsible and accountable for ensuring transparency, fairness, …

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Corruption risk in contracting markets: A network science perspective

Wachs,J., Fazekas, M., Kertész, J. (2020). 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 …

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Measuring the benefits of open contracting: Case studies on Mexico, Paraguay, and Slovakia

Adam, I., Fazekas, M. & Tóth, B. (2020). Measuring the benefits of open contracting: Case studies on Mexico, Paraguay, and Slovakia. GTI-WP/2020:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

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Enhancing the transparency of government in general and of public procurement processes in particular has been increasingly on the agenda of governments, civil societies and businesses as evidenced by initiatives such as the Open Government Partnership which has seen 70 OGP members making 189 open contracting …

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Lights on the shadows of public procurement: Transparency as an antidote to corruption

Bauhr, M., Czibik, Á., Fazekas, M., and de Fine Licht, J. (2019). Lights on the Shadows of Public Procurement. Transparency as an antidote to corruption. Governance, 33(3).

The increased focus on marketizing mechanisms and contracting‐out operations following the New Public Management reform agenda has sparked a debate on whether the close interactions between public and private actors might drive corruption in the public sector. The main response to those worries has been increased transparency, but so far empirical evidence of …

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Data update of World Bank, IADB, and EuropeAid datasets on development aid funded contracts and projects

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 …

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