The Anticorruption Frontline

From Turkey to Egypt, Bulgaria to Ukraine, and Brazil to India, we witness the rise of an angry urban middle class protesting against what they see as fundamental corruption of their political regimes, perceived as predatory and inefficient. Corruption is near the top of all global protesters’ list of grievances – from the Occupy movement to the Arab Spring. Their countries have benefited to varying degrees from globalization, but their regimes have all failed to evolve politically to meet their expectations. Corruption has become the main explanation for failures in government performance, for networks of patrons and clients subverting fair competition, and for billions of Euro in disappearing public funds, national or foreign assistance income. The economic crisis exposed the hypocrisy of rich countries which control corruption at home but use it to advance their economic interests abroad. The rise in the last two decades of an international anti-corruption regime only raised awareness but failed so far to diminish corruption. There is increasing demand for good governance resulting in quality education and health systems, and denunciation of sheer bread and circus populism. Volume 2 of the ANTICORRP Anticorruption Report tackles these issues across key cases and developments. The report is grouped into three parts: 1. The frontline reports, tracing developments in Ukraine and Bulgaria, where people rebelled against corrupt leaders, plus Rwanda and Qatar, who advanced in good governance charts, but find themselves accused of sponsoring wars across borders or bribing FIFA officials; 2. The methodology to move beyond perception-based corruption indicators, in the form of a three-country study on procurement data which reveals how EU funds increase the risk of corruption in Central Europe; 3. The empirical evidence on why control of corruption works when it does, and does not work for the most part, in the shortened version of ANTICORRP’s first milestone report