Lucy Koechlin
Publications and news by Lucy Koechlin.
Publications
Informal networks as investment: A qualitative analysis from Uganda and Tanzania
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Governance, this paper interprets informal networks as investments made by citizens and business people to cope with the public sphere. Informal networks often orchestrate corruption, connecting public and private actors. The paper aims to understand their key characteristics, scopes, and functional roles.
Ten mini case studies from Tanzania and Uganda are studied. The research applies narrative analysis to explore the experiences of citizens, entrepreneurs, and low-level public officials, who built informal networks as a problem-solving mechanism. It uses a grounded theory approach. The findings serve as working hypotheses about variables and patterns emerging from the bottom-up analysis.
The paper outlines:
- Whether there are distinct types of informal networks associated with particular types of corruption;
- How, why and by whom these networks are built;
- Whether different individuals play specific roles;
- The unwritten expectations and norms that govern such networks.
The results highlight critical implications for anti-corruption practice, showing, for example, how this can be strengthened by shifting the intervention unit from individuals to networks.
About this article
This peer-reviewed article is based on extensive field research and analysis conducted by the Basel Institute’s Public Governance team in Tanzania and Uganda. The research was funded by UK Aid under the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence (GI-ACE) programme. See the links below for the open-access research outputs, including a full research report and two sets of case studies.
Policy Brief 8: It takes a network to defeat a network – What Collective Action practitioners can learn from research into corrupt networks
This Policy Brief distils recommendations for Collective Action practitioners based on empirical insights on certain forms of corruption involving private-sector actors.
Field research carried out in Tanzania and Uganda produced detailed case studies that show how informal networks link private and public sector actors to pursue common illicit goals, such as gaining an unfair business advantage, avoiding a sanction, decreasing taxes owed or jumping the queue at the point of delivery of public services. Corruption, most often bribery, is the currency that works to cement and nurture those networks.
This Policy Brief is based on that research and a series of in-depth interviews with Collective Action practitioners working in Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The goal is to extract insights from what we have learned about the networks that fuel corruption and discuss implications for anti-corruption Collective Action initiatives.
About this Policy Brief
This publication is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Policy Brief series, ISSN 2624-9669.
It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Suggested citation: Baez Camargo, C., Costa, Hans,V., J., Koechlin, L. and Wannenwetsch, S. (2021) It takes a network to defeat a network: What Collective Action practitioners can learn from research into corrupt networks. Policy Brief 8, Basel Institute on Governance.
The research underpinning this Policy Brief was funded by the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme, funded with UK Aid from the British people.
Informal networks as investment in East Africa
This report presents findings from a research project entitled Harnessing informality: Designing anti-corruption network interventions and strategic use of legal instruments” funded by UK Aid as part of the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE).
The project follows from a previous research project where the Basel Institute on Governance, in partnership with University College London and SOAS, researched informality and its relationship with corruption and governance in seven countries in East Africa and Central Asia. The findings from that research project suggested that corruption often takes place according to informal, unwritten rules. The findings from the seven countries supported the following observation:
“Corruption is most often not the result from the actions of a few, individual rotten apples operating in otherwise healthy governance systems; rather corruption is orchestrated by informal social networks that connect actors in the public and private realms and enable the pursuit of a variety of intransparent, often illicit, goals.”
In our current research project, we have aimed to understand how informal networks that are associated with different types of corruption are exactly articulated, operationalised and managed, with a view to distilling lessons of value to anti-corruption practitioners.
The present report sheds light on the functioning of informal networks in East Africa, based on evidence collected in Tanzania and Uganda. The report presents evidence, consisting of ten mini-case studies (six from Tanzania and four from Uganda) that describe informal networks associated with bribery and procurement fraud. The 10 cases are also analysed and implications for anti-corruption practice discussed.
Case studies from Uganda: GI-ACE research on informal networks and corruption
The four case studies in this collection form part of a research project entitled Harnessing informality: Designing anti-corruption network interventions and strategic use of legal instruments” funded by UK Aid as part of the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE).
The research project aimed to understand how informal networks that are associated with different types of corruption are exactly articulated, operationalised and managed, with a view to distilling lessons of value to anti-corruption practitioners.
The case studies describe informal networks associated with bribery and procurement fraud. They include visual graphics of the informal networks and connections between different actors.
Together with the research report and six case studies from Tanzania, they shed light on the functioning of informal networks in East Africa. The case studies were prepared with the help of Robert Lugolobi, independent consultant.
Contents:
- The use of informal networks to obtain a driver’s licence
- Network transactions involving the land registration office
- Informal networks in the transport, tour and ticketing business
- Informal networks in the chemical sector
Case studies from Tanzania: GI-ACE research on informal networks and corruption
The six case studies in this collection form part of a research project entitled Harnessing informality: Designing anti-corruption network interventions and strategic use of legal instruments” funded by UK Aid as part of the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE).
The research project aimed to understand how informal networks that are associated with different types of corruption are exactly articulated, operationalised and managed, with a view to distilling lessons of value to anti-corruption practitioners.
The case studies describe informal networks associated with bribery and procurement fraud. They include visual graphics of the informal networks and connections between different actors.
Together with the research report and four case studies from Uganda, they shed light on the functioning of informal networks in East Africa. The case studies were prepared with Dr. Danstan Mukono of the University of Dar es Salaam.
Contents:
- Seeking tax clearance through informal networks in Dar es Salaam
- Informal networking and tendering practices in local government
- Informal networks and transactional exchange in the transportation sector
- Informal networking for business startup
- Informal networking and the formalization of unplanned urban land
- Informal connections and favoritism in service levies and business licences
Informal governance: comparative perspectives on co-optation, control and camouflage in Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda
This article applies a novel conceptual framework to characterise and assess the repertoire of practices used by informal networks to redistribute power and access to resources. These distinct norms and practices are typologised as co-optation, control, and camouflage. Co-optation involves recruitment into the network by means of the reciprocal exchange of favours. Control is about ensuring discipline amongst network members by means of shaming and social isolation. Camouflage refers to the formal facades behind which informality hides and is about protecting and legitimising the network. All three are relevant to a more fine-grained understanding of corruption and its underpinnings.
Findings from our comparative research in three East African countries (Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) suggest that these informal practices are relevant to an understanding of the choices and attitudes of providers and users of public services at the local level. Adopting this analytical lens helps to explain the limited impact of conventional anti-corruption prescriptions and provides a basis to develop alternative strategies that harness the potential of social network dynamics to promote positive anti-corruption outcomes.
This article was published by the International Development Policy journal in a special issue devoted to African Cities and the Development Conundrum. The full electronic version of the book is available in open access on the International Development Policy Journal website. The paperback version is available for order through Brill.
Informal Governance and Corruption – Transcending the Principal Agent and Collective Action Paradigms in Tanzania
Alternative title: Dismantling networks of corruption: challenges and opportunities in reforming informal governance in Tanzania.
This Tanzania country report is part of a research project funded by the Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) Programme of the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the British Academy.
The project has identified informal practices in selected countries in order to establish their general and specific features in comparative analysis; assess their impact based on the functions they perform in their respective economies and indicate the extent to which they fuel corruption and stifle anticorruption policies.
The comparative research design involves seven countries from two geopolitical groups East Africa and Post-Soviet countries as follows:
- East Africa: Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda
- Post-Soviet countries: Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia
The goal of the research is to produce evidence for the relevance of informality in support of the ‘localisation’ of anticorruption strategies and promoting the development of a new generation of policies that may harness the transformative potential of local patterns of informality.
See the research findings on the Basel Institute’s Informal Governance website.
Non-State Actors as Standard Setters
This analysis of ‘globalised’ standard-setting processes draws together insights from law, political sciences, sociology and social anthropology to assess the authority and accountability of non-state actors and the legitimacy and effectiveness of the processes. The essays offer new understandings of current governance problems, including environmental and financial standards, rules for military contractors and complex public-private partnerships, such as those intended to protect critical information infrastructure.
The contributions also evaluate multi-stakeholder initiatives (such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative), and discuss the constitution of public norms in stateless areas. A synopsis of the latest results of the World Governance Indicator, arguably one of the most important surveys in the area today, is included.
Working Paper 5: Poverty and corruption: About poorer and richer ways of life
The Millennium Development Goals were adopted by the global community under the aegis of the UN in 2000. The first of these goals aims at halving absolute poverty of the about 1.1 billion people who live on less than 1 US dollar a day.
Although poverty reduction has always been an important concern of development policy, the Millennium Development Goals have brought it back onto centre stage with renewed vigour, in that joint efforts to reduce poverty worldwide has become a moral as well as financial obligation of the global community. Just a glance at the global development indicators reveals how urgent the renewed efforts to fight extreme poverty, especially – and not surprisingly – in least developed countries.
According to the UN statistics the number of persons living in extreme poverty has decreased slightly between 1990 and 2001; but it is still estimated that worldwide still approximately one billion people live on less than 1 US dollar a day.
About this Working Paper
This paper is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper Series, ISSN: 2624-9650.
Working Paper 4: An evaluation of national integrity systems from a human rights perspective
In the past decade the prevention of corruption has been recognised as a prerequisite for sustainable and equitable development. Academics, policy-makers and activists working towards such governance reforms have come a long way in the relatively short period since corruption has been actively addressed both in the North and the South.
However, corruption remains a serious problem in many societies, sectors and international transactions, affecting the lives of millions of people who go about their daily business. Transparency International, an international non-governmental organisation against corruption, was one of the first and certainly the most influential NGO to break the spell and speak out against corruption worldwide. In order to support and inform its policy approaches, Transparency International framed an approach called the National Integrity System to better understand the interdependent causes of corruption and to address them more effectively.
Strikingly, however, this approach does not draw from or have any linkages with the rights-based approach to development, which has gained tremendous momentum in the same period. This is all the more noteworthy as both the causes and consequences of corruption have obvious linkages with human rights violations.
Given this disconnection between the two discourses, the following contribution is aimed at illuminating both approaches individually with regard to their merits in preventing corruption, and trying to define synergies and potential areas of dialogue and interaction.
It is structured in the following way: first, the rights-based approach to development will be outlined briefly; second, the concept of the National Integrity System will be elaborated, with particular emphasis on, thirdly, the NIS country reports, and fourthly conclusions will be drawn from the comparison of the two approaches.
About this Working Paper
This paper is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper Series, ISSN: 2624-9650.