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Digitizing Collective Action: How Digital Technologies Support Civil Society’s Struggle against Corruption

  • This dissertation looks at the use of digital technologies in anti-corruption. It thereby responds to the increasing prominence of the fight against corruption as a research topic, and issue to address for activists and politicians around the world, as well as the ever-growing impact of digitalisation on governance. It answers the research question in what way and how effectively information and communication technology contribute to the control of corruption. In its first part, this dissertation provides an overview of the past twenty years of academic publications on the use and the effectiveness of digital technologies in anti-corruption. I structure the available literature according to its level of analysis, looking at theoretical and large-n studies compared to case specific and qualitative work. I also structure it according to the mechanism that is linking different technologies to a better control of corruption, namely e-government access, upward transparency, downward transparency and mobilisation. In doing so, it highlights gaps in the literature and open questions to research. Subsequently, I am zooming in on the role of civil society in its use of digital technologies, arguing that digital technologies are a tool that can support the role of civil society in controlling corruption. This argument builds on anti-corruption theories and thus lays the groundwork for testing it in two different settings. First, I provide evidence from a global, quantitative dataset, using marginal effects analysis to provide evidence for a positive correlation of civil society capacity, access to information and communication technology and better control of corruption. Second, I analyse a case study, looking at the use of e-procurement in Ukraine since 2014. I am testing if different civil society capacities in Ukrainian regions had an impact on corruption risks measured in Ukrainian tenders. While the quantitative data analysis gives clear, positive results concerning the relationship described above, the case study on Ukraine does not offer conclusive evidence on the effectiveness of civil society capacity and ICT access in the fight against corruption. The dissertation concludes by calling for future research into this relationship, especially by using data on public procurement.

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Metadaten
Document Type:Doctoral Thesis
Language:English
Author(s):Kossow Niklas
Advisor:Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Grzegorz Ekiert
Referee:Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
Hertie Collections (Serial Number):Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School (06/2020)
Publication year:2020
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
Granting Institution:Hertie School
Thesis date:2020/11/20
Number pages:128
DOI:https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-3702
Release Date:2020/12/04
Notes:
Chapter 2 and chapter 3 of the dissertation are published here:

Kossow, Niklas, and Roberto Martínez Barranco Kukutschka. "Civil society and online connectivity: controlling corruption on the net?." Crime, Law and Social Change 68.4 (2017): 459-476. 

Kossow, Niklas. "Digital anti-corruption: hopes and challenges." In A Research Agenda for Studies of Corruption by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Paul Heywood (eds.). Cheltanham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.
Notes:
Shelf mark: 2020D005 + 2020D005+1
Hertie School Research:Publications PhD Researchers
Licence of document (German):Creative Commons - CC BY - 4.0 International
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