Transparency, Accountability, and Corruption Displacement

透明度、问责制和反腐败

• 批准号: 1424348
• 负责人: Clark Gibson
• 金额: $ 31.54万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1424348&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Transparency; Accountability; Corruption; Displacement

Despite ample funding from the international community, anti-corruption interventions have largely failed to contain corruption. Scholars and policymakers agree that increasing transparency and improving accountability should reduce corruption. Armed with information about corrupt actions, citizens will punish corrupt officials. Institutions of accountability are a key part of this mechanism, as they provide the channel through which citizens and political superiors can act on the information. Yet, the evidence to support these arguments is mixed. Corruption is common across different transparency and accountability environments, from countries rich in information and avenues for taking action against corruption to countries lacking in both. This project will address several possible reasons for this divergence between theory and results. Drawing on work in behavioral economics, it will discern whether politicians respond strategically to anti-corruption interventions by shifting their corruption to forms less vulnerable to detection and punishment. Furthermore, it will combine top-down anti-corruption efforts, such as large-scale audits of accounts, with a bottom-up effort targeting citizens, which typically are executed separately. Finally, the interventions in this project will educate citizens about the roles and responsibilities of government and the action options available to them, in addition to informing them about corruption among their government officials. The interventions of this project will occur in Malawi's local (district) government. To address some of the deficiencies of past anti-corruption interventions, the interventions will combine a regularly scheduled top-down audit of the district government with a bottom-up intervention designed to involve citizens in the anti-corruption process and educate them about their government and avenues of action available to them. The citizen transparency intervention will include broadcasting the main findings about their officials on the local radio, providing written reports about the treated officials to a randomly selected group of citizens, and calling selected district officials before a group of chiefs, civil society representatives, media representatives, and a randomly selected group of citizens to discuss the findings. The meeting will also educate citizens about the avenues of reporting corruption and demanding a reduction in corruption available to them. Shifts in corruption patterns within each district will be measured by conducting a survey of the district officials after the transparency interventions and comparing the results to the 2013 baseline survey. This work holds great promise for both policymaking and science. Donors and international organizations believe that corruption undermines prosperous and peaceful governments in Africa. By providing a specific theory of behavior and creating precise measures of individual corruption, this project will advance the debate regarding institutions, politician incentives, and behavior. By using randomized experiments, this project employs some of the most rigorous designs and tests available to social scientists. Finally, by sampling actual politicians in the surveys measuring outcomes, this project explores political phenomena with those who actually practice politics. Insights from this project can prove invaluable to inform not just the study of corruption, but also its practical dimensions. The design uses actual audits executed by official government personnel, making this study's findings and implications very relevant to those interested in combating corruption. The project findings will be presented to policymakers and researchers in the form of discussions, policy papers, and research articles to academic, government, and policy audiences. This project will also train dozens of citizens -private and government officials- in research methods.

尽管国际社会提供了足够的资金，但反腐败干预措施在很大程度上未能遏制腐败。学者和政策制定者同意，提高透明度和提高问责制应减少腐败。有关于腐败行动的信息，公民将惩罚腐败的官员。问责制机构是这种机制的关键部分，因为它们提供了公民和政治上级可以采取信息的渠道。然而，支持这些论点的证据混合在一起。腐败在不同的透明度和问责制环境中很普遍，来自富裕的信息和对腐败行动采取行动的途径的国家对两者都缺乏腐败的国家。该项目将解决理论和结果之间这种差异的几个可能原因。利用行为经济学的工作，它将辨别政治家是否通过将其腐败转移到不太容易受到侦查和惩罚的情况下对反腐败干预进行战略反应。此外，它将结合自上而下的反腐败工作，例如大规模的帐户审核，以及针对公民的自下而上的努力，这些努力通常是单独执行的。最后，该项目的干预措施将教育公民有关政府的作用和责任以及他们可用的行动选择，除了向他们通报政府官员之间的腐败。该项目的干预措施将发生在马拉维地方（地区）政府中。为了解决过去反腐败干预措施的一些缺陷，这些干预措施将结合定期安排的地区政府的自上而下的审计和旨在使公民参与反腐败过程的自下而上的干预措施，并向他们教育他们的政府和所采取的行动。公民透明度干预将包括在当地广播电台上广播有关其官员的主要发现，向一群随机选择的公民提供有关治疗官员的书面报告，并在一群酋长，民间社会代表，媒体代表和一群随机选择的公民讨论这些发现之前，将选定的地区官员召集。会议还将教育公民报告腐败的途径，并要求减少他们可用的腐败。每个地区内的腐败模式的转变将通过对透明度干预后的地区官员进行调查来衡量，并将结果与​​2013年基线调查进行比较。这项工作对决策和科学都有很大的希望。捐助者和国际组织认为，腐败破坏了非洲繁荣与和平的政府。通过提供特定的行为理论并创建个人腐败的精确度量，该项目将推动有关机构，政治家激励措施和行为的辩论。通过使用随机实验，该项目采用了一些最严格的设计和测试，可供社会科学家使用。最后，通过在衡量结果的调查中对实际的政客进行取样，该项目探讨了实际实践政治的人的政治现象。该项目的见解可能是无价的，不仅可以告知腐败研究，还可以告知其实际维度。该设计使用官方政府人员进行的实际审计，使这项研究的发现和含义与有兴趣打击腐败的人非常相关。该项目的发现将以讨论，政策论文以及研究文章的形式向政策制定者和研究人员提出，向学术，政府和政策受众提供。该项目还将在研究方法中培训数十名公民和政府官员。