Immunity and corruption–Part 2

I REPOST THE ARTICLE BY Vasiliki Skreta (New York University) ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

This is a follow-up on a previous post, which examines the link between politicians’ immunity and corruption. Both posts are based on a new academic study by Karthik Reddy, Moritz Schularick, and Vasiliki Skreta, which provides original and systematic evidence that democracies whose politicians enjoy stronger immunity protection do suffer from more corruption and poorer overall governance. This post summarizes the findings of this study. The summary here.

STABLE LINK OF ORIGINAL: http://greekeconomistsforreform.com/justice/immunity-and-corruption-part-2/

Regarding immunity and corruption – Part 1

I REPOST THE ARTICLE BY Vasiliki Skreta (New York University) ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

In the wake of the financial crisis and the numerous instances of public malfeasance it revealed, a growing number of commentators have argued for the abolition of the privilege of immunity from prosecution enjoyed by Greek politicians. A new academic study by Karthik Reddy, Moritz Schularick, and Vasiliki Skreta provides original and systematic evidence that democracies whose politicians enjoy stronger immunity protection do, indeed, suffer from more corruption and poorer overall governance. The study’s findings are particularly important at a time when many countries in the world teeter on the brink of economic collapse because their public finances were badly mismanaged. Likewise, movements such as the Arab Spring, the Indignados, and Occupy Wall Street reveal the strong desire of younger generations, who suffer the most from unemployment and lack of opportunity, for greater transparency and accountability in government. The evidence in the study suggests that the legal institution of immunity should be re-examined in established democracies.

Notinmycountry.org

A new Ugandan transparency initiative was launched last Thursday, enabling students to report corrupt practices by academic institutions and their members.

The site https://www.notinmycountry.org/ securely receives the corruption reports and then ranks professors and institutions based on the frequency negative (corruption oriented) performance.

Uganda was ranked 143/183 in the 2012 Transparency international perception index of corruption with a transparency score of 2.4/10, indicating large-scale corruption being present.

 

For more information on the transparency initiative:

Corruption Currents

Not in My country

TI on Uganda

A link between Corruption and Investment?

A really nice post regarding the potential correlation of Corruption and Investment. 

What makes New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and others “cleaner” than most countries?

I reproduce the article by Marie Chêne from the Transparency International Blog

What makes New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and others “cleaner” than most countries?

by Marie Chêne on 7 December 2011 in Measurement and Research

Marie Chêne, Senior Research Coordinator at Transparency International, looks at the countries that are ranked highest in the 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.

New Zealand, Denmark, Finland and Sweden have been consistently ranked at the top of the Corruption Perceptions Index and are perceived to be the least corrupt of all the countries surveyed.

They are not perfect – still falling short of the target 10 out of 10 on the index – but many still want to know about how these countries have managed to contain corruption.

What is public sector corruption (short definitions)

I reproduce the text from ACRN by Rosie Slater

What is public sector corruption?

by Rosie Slater on 2 December 2011 in Measurement and Research

The Corruption Perceptions Index 2011 highlights corruption in the public sector. But what exactly does this mean? Transparency International’s press intern, Rosie Slater, explains.

Drawing on Transparency International’s Plain Language Guide, this post defines and de-mystifies some of the words and phrases most often associated with this kind of corruption. So if you’re confused by anything that you’ve seen on our website or in our faqs, read on.

First of all, let’s look at corruption itself. We use this word all the time, but what do we actually mean by it? Transparency International defines corruption broadly as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. This can happen anywhere, and can be classified as grand or petty, depending on the amounts of money lost and the sector where it occurs.

A good insight on the latest Greek socio-political developments

I copy the article which has been retrieved from Globalpost.com and conducted by Ken Maguire

I think that the article is extremely objective in terms of the facts provision. I would add that the main source of insecurity for the people is derived by the government itself (both the elected ex government of Pasok and the current transition government) which do not hold any social legitimacy at all among the majority of Greeks. 

 

Where Greeks hide their savings

With safes and Swiss accounts, rich Greeks could stand to profit from the crisis.

Demonstrators burn an EU flag during a protest in Thessaloniki on November 17, 2011 against austerity measures demanded by the new unity government to persuade its creditors to release bankruptcy-saving loans. Greeks are draining local banks in favor of Swiss accounts, London property and cash stashed in home safes. (Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP/Getty Images)

An aspiring local Russian civic society project to combat corruption

I reproduce the article by Alexander Elkin and Aleksey Shlyapuzhnikov which is retrieved from the Transparency International Blog 

Alexander Elkin and Aleksey Shlyapuzhnikov of the Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiative Transparency International Russia (TI Russia) talk about engaging the public in anti-corruption work with the help of new technologies.

Several years ago, an intellectual movement called Lebed (which stands for “the swan” in Russian) was created with the aim to bring together intellectuals, journalists, scientists and public figures of the Vladimir region in Russia. The goal of the movement was to unite the efforts of modern thinking people of the region to develop tools for efficient civic activism. From the very beginning the movement was in contact with TI Russia, because the main field for civic activism in Russia in recent years is anti-corruption work.

Freedom of Information Requests in the UK

Today I became aware of this ultimate website whatdotheyknow.com. Apparently, by using the platform of the site anyone may submit an online request to any UK public institution. Covered by the Freedom of Information Act, the public institutions are obliged to respond within a predetermined time interval regardless of the type of the query or the characteristics of the citizen who submitted it. Thus, the role of the portal is essential to provide the environment where the status of the requests will be continuously monitored by users who, amongst others, will be in position to check the speed of the response or the quality of the answer etc.

I personally found the site extremely innovative and interesting, despite its simplicity. It is a true tool or weapon for any active citizen and a good way of increasing the transparency of the public bodies.

 

 

6-Question Campaign to Monitor access to information by Access-info.org

I reproduce the article from access-info.org

Original Post Stable Link: http://www.access-info.org/en/budget-transparency/200-6-question-campaign

Global Monitoring Finds Widespread Violations of Right to Information

4 October 2011, Ottawa – The largest global monitoring of the right of access to information in practice, the Ask Your Government! 6 Question Campaign has found widespread violations of the right to information with only 1 in 4 requests resulting in provision of full information.

480 requests for budget information were submitted in 80 countries by a global network of civil society organisations. No information at all was provided in response to over half of the requests and 38% of the requests elicited no response from the government body to which the request was sent (mute refusals).

The poor results come in spite of the fact that requesters made multiple resubmissions of the six questions, totalling 1061 formal requests made in the 80 countries, accompanied in many cases by phone calls, additional letters, faxes, and e-mails, and in some countries personal visits to the relevant public authorities.

As they presented the findings of the Ask Your Government! 6 Question Campaign in Ottawa during at the 7th International Conference of Information Commissioners, human rights organisations Access Info Europe and the Centre for Law and Democracy called on governments to improve respect for the right to information in practice.

Country Ranking Chart by Results

Full Report for the Ask Your Government! 6 Question Campaign

Detailed Results Chart by Country

 

TI Bulgaria Reports Alarming Rate of Potential Vote-Sellers - by novinite.com

Original Article Stable Link: http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=133068

 

I REPORT THE ARTICLE

Diana Kovacheva, Executive Director of the Bulgarian branch of Transparency International has said that the current share of potential vote-sellers among Bulgarians threatens to skew election results amid a low turnout. Photo by BGNES

12% of Bulgarians would sell their vote according to a study of the local unit ofTransparency International presented Wednesday by Program Director Katya Hristova.

When asked if they would sell their vote, 12% of Bulgarians said they would use the opportunity, while 1% said that they could not decide.

In Greece, 'corruption pervades every corner of life' - by Jon Henley

I repost the newblog post by the Guardian

Original article stable link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/oct/20/europe-breadline-corrution-pervades-corner

AT THE BOTTOM I INCLUDE MY COMMENT

Jon Henley is travelling through Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece to hear the human stories behind the European debt crisis. Here Leonidas Pitsoulis describes Greek corruption

Many Greeks have extremely low levels of personal debt – by western standards. Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images

Leonidas Pitsoulis, 43, returned to Thessaloniki seven years ago after leaving at 18 to study and then teach in America and at the LSE in London. Coming back as an adult after leaving as a teenager was an eye-opener, he said.

Silver blasts Standard & Poor’s, “whose advice has more often than not led investors toward the losing side of bets” - by Royal Statistical Society

The Article was retrieved by the Royal Statistical Society

As turbulence in global financial markets continues in the wake of the downgrading of US debt by Standard & Poor’s (S&P), statistician Nate Silver has made a withering critique of the agency's "fundamentally flawed" ratings.

Objective statistical measures have been proved to be more reliable than S&P's ratings, in part says Silver because ratings changes are serially correlated – a move either way is likely to be one of a successive series. Hence the ratings are "inefficient about how they incorporate new information."

He opines: "No competent brokerage firm would ever convey that kind of information to investors. If I signal to you that I’m likely to accept a cheaper price tomorrow than I am today, nobody would buy at today’s price."

In Why S. & P.’s Ratings Are Substandard and Porous, published in his fiverthirtyeight column in the New York Times, Silver uses various analytical approaches to test the ratings' reliability and to "reverse-engineer" them to determine how S&P reaches its conclusions.

He notes that S&P takes account of GDP, sovereign debt, debt:GDP ratio, inflation rate, annual and long-term deficits but "also places very heavy emphasis on subjective views about a country’s political environment … these political factors are at least as important as economic variables in determining their ratings".

Silver says that S&P's ratings "have an extremely strong relationship" withTransparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, a governance indicator which has been criticised in some quarters as too subjective. Using regression analysis on S&P's ratings, he concludes that "the subjective Corruption Perceptions Index is more closely related to the S&P ratings than any of these economic fundamentals."

Making the point that he doesn't necessarily disagree with downgrade of the US rating, Silver comments on S&P's historic ratings of debt-worthiness for countries including Ireland, Spain, Iceland and Greece. He concludes these gave "no insight … about which countries in Europe were relatively more likely to default."

Using a country’s ratio of net debt to GDP – a poor measure in objective terms – "would have been a better predictor of default," he says, citing research from Carmen M. Reinhart published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research which found that objective, statistical indicators significantly outperformed S&P ratings as predictors of default.

As recent events show, there is a relationship between credit agencies' ratings and market sentiment and investors' behaviour. But Silver finds that "S&P ratings tend to lag, rather than lead, the market … in cases where the market’s view of default risk is misaligned with S&P’s, S&P is a good bet to change their rating to catch up to market perception".

He tests this by putting S&P ratings for countries from June 2009 into a regression equation with credit default swap prices - which indicate market perception of default risk – from the same date. The credit default swap prices proves to be "a statistically significant predictor" of S&P’s 2011 rating, implying "that the markets pick up on salient information about the countries’ default risk before S&P does".

Taking this a step further, "Evidence from the past five years suggests that it may be worthwhile to adopt a contrarian investing strategy that specifically bets against S&P’s ratings," says Silver. S&P does influence market perceptions but actual debt prices are a "compromise between daft investors who take S&P’s ratings to be gospel, and savvier ones who have conducted their own analysis and have concluded that the country is at significant risk of default. By betting against S&P’s ratings, you’re taking the side of the smart investors — and getting a subsidy from the suckers who think S&P’s price is right."

In conclusion, Silver writes that "relying on the consensus of the market is almost certainly better than relying on Standard & Poor’s, whose advice has more often than not led investors toward the losing side of bets. The fact that billions of dollars in wealth are tied up in the judgments of a company with such a poor record is all the proof you should require that the global financial system is in need of reform."

Original Link: http://www.rssenews.org.uk/articles/20110809_1

Are women less corrupt than men? - by Farzana Nawaz

The article is retrieved by the Transparency International Blog 

Author: Farzana Nawaz

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize has put women’s rights in the spotlight. Gender and corruption have been on Transparency International’s radar from sometime. Our global corruption survey found that women perceive higher levels of corruption than men, but were less likely to report it. Last month Transparency Rwanda published a survey on gender-based corruption in the workplace. Last year we published a working paper on the issue.

In this article, published on the Anti-Corurption Research Network last year, Farzana Nawaz, programme coordinator in the Research and Knowledge Group of the TI secretariat, introduces the issue and some of the problems dealing with the gender angle.

Gender and corruption is a surprisingly recent issue in anti-corruption scholarship. The first wave of research into the gendered dimensions of corruption focused on whether women are more or less corruptible than men, and whether the promotion of women in public life can be an effective anticorruption strategy. A second line of enquiry examined the impact of corruption on women as a group, building on the growing evidence that corruption has a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups in society. Both of these strands of research have already generated a wealth of policy-relevant insights that advance our understanding of the interplay between corruption and gender.

Are Women Less Corrupt than Men?

Several early, mainly econometric contributions to this discussion claimed that there is indeed a link between higher representation of women in government and lower levels of corruption. An influential study of 150 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia by the World Bank, for example, came to the conclusion that women are more trustworthy and less prone to corruption, a finding later corroborated by additional research from the World Bank.

However, the concept that women inherently possess greater integrity has been challenged. Anne Marie Goetz argues that this idea fails to account for the ways in which gender relations may limit women’s opportunities to engage in corruption, particularly when corruption functions through all-male networks and forums from which women are excluded. Read more.

Link of the original article: http://blog.transparency.org/2011/10/07/are-women-less-corrupt-than-men-and-other-gendercorruption-questions/ 

Access Info Europe - AsktheEu.org

AsktheEU.org:

New one-stop portal makes requests for EU documents easy

Brussels/Madrid, Wednesday 28 September 2011 - on 28 September 2011, the 9th
International Right to Know Day, pro-transparency human rights group Access
Info Europe will be unveiling the AsktheEU.org web portal by which the
public can ask for information from EU bodies.

Research on Corruption

I offer some links that can be useful on corruption related research:

• Transparency International: Latest News, Research, Data and Reports


• ACRN: Anti-corruption research network. Exceptional resources and contacts


• Internet Center for Corruption Research: Latest News, Events and Research


• UN Procurement Capacity Development Center: Reports on initiatives and guidelines for regional and coutnry specific methods to limit public procurements


• WB AntiCorruption: Useful resources on the field of anticorruption (focused on the public sector)


• WB Transparency, Accountability and Anti-Corruption


• WB Governance and Anticorruption


• Harvard Ethics Center: A number of research projects coordinated by Prof. Edmond Safra


• Justice Harvard: A legal and philosophical approach to corrupt practices


• Governance Assesment Portal: Exceptional Website full of resources, data and research worth a read


• Revenue Watch: Datasets on Tranparency of the mineral, oil and gas producing countries