Corruption as a Development Policy Issue: Tracing the Formulation and Implementation of Theories of Change
- Against the backdrop of mounting public demand for action against corruption the world over, the central objective and motivation behind this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of strategies that can help societies improve their control of corruption. More specifically, it investigates the overarching, policy-relevant research question of how to render donor-supported anti-corruption efforts more effective. Rooted in a cumulative research design, this thesis consists of three papers that approach the research question from different angles.
The first paper lays the theoretical groundwork by tracing the historic roots of the widespread view today that corruption is unacceptable and delimits the corruption phenomenon conceptually by comparing it to its opposites. In addition, it places corruption in the context of the grand theories of development and derives the main theories of change from the corruption literature.
The second paper connects contemporary corruption research with anti-corruption practice and identifies paradigmatic shifts in donor-supported anti-corruption efforts. It discusses the most frequently adopted anti-corruption instruments and develops typologies of interventions to facilitate a systematic analysis of the fragmented landscape of donor-supported anti-corruption activities.
The third paper applies the analytical framework introduced in the second paper to study the case of the World Bank. The paper presents and interprets the first comprehensive inventory of World Bank activities that addressed corruption explicitly between 1996 and 2016. Building on the inventory data and on expert interviews, the paper investigates the impact of factors internal and external to the World Bank on the institution’s anti-corruption programming.
Overall, the in-depth analysis of a major donor revealed that organizational-level factors such as those related to the underlying financial model, organizational culture, and policy mandate may constrain the anti-corruption policy formulation process and lead to inapt design and reduced effectiveness of anti-corruption reforms. From this finding follows the practical conclusion for donors that giving greater consideration to internal incentive structures and its impact on development policy design may contribute to improving the effectiveness of interventions.