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Anticorruption Agencies: Experience to Date. Richard E. Messick World Bank February 16, 2006. What Anticorruption Agencies Can Do. Enforce investigate claims of bribery and other crimes/ prosecute well-founded ones Prevent police conflicts of interest; simplify procedures Educate
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Anticorruption Agencies: Experience to Date Richard E. Messick World Bank February 16, 2006
What Anticorruption Agencies Can Do • Enforce • investigate claims of bribery and other crimes/ prosecute well-founded ones • Prevent • police conflicts of interest; simplify procedures • Educate • public, media, public servants • Coordinate
Countries with ACAs Part 1: Hong Kong, New South Wales, Singapore Africa: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia LAC: Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador ECA: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Asia: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal,Thailand
Recent Evaluations -- 1 • Very few examples of successful independent anticorruption commissions/ agencies. UNDP, Dec. 2005 • Agencies appear to be overloaded with expectations and tasks while vague definitions of mandates and powers . . . and the human and financial resources allocated to the agencies put strong limits on achieving these expectations. COE, July 2005
Recent Evaluations -- 2 • None of [the five African] ACCs studied have had a discernable or measurable impact on levels of corruption. U4, May 2005 • The majority of ACAs probably serve no useful purpose in combating corruption. Meagher, March 2005 • A mounting body of evidence [shows] they fail to reduce corruption. WBI, Sept. 2004
Why Create Them? • Crisis of legitimacy • Need to do “something”
Questions Ignored When Creating • One mission or many? • What will it do that existing agencies are not doing? • Why aren’t existing agencies performing? • Will existing agencies continue to perform function too?
Obvious Reasons Why Agencies Fail • Poor legal framework • Unrealistic expectations; try to accomplish too much too soon • Insufficient resources • Inadequate or poorly trained staff • Adversarial relations with other agencies (aka turf battles) • Absence of performance measures
More Fundamental Reason for Failure “The achievements of the last 150 years in every single area are achievements of narrow focus, narrow concentration. . . .Whenever an institution goes beyond a narrow focus, it ceases to perform.” Peter Drucker, 1999