Richard Sambaiga
Publications and news by Richard Sambaiga.
Publications
Addressing Bribery and Associated Social Norms in Healthcare: Results of a Behaviour Change Intervention in Tanzania
This open-access, peer-reviewed journal article examines the results of a pilot behavioural intervention in Tanzania. The project tested a behavioural anti-corruption intervention to reduce bribery in a hospital. It targeted deeply ingrained social norms while also leveraging the social networks and influence of key staff members.
The research was funded by the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme of the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It was a collaboration between the Basel Institute on Governance, the UK Behavioural Insights Team, the University of Dar es Salam and the University of Utrecht.
Abstract
Practices of bribery in the delivery of public services become entrenched when they are driven by social norms of reciprocity.
The resulting economies of favours, which are common across diverse geographical regions, are resilient to conventional anti-corruption measures because they are underpinned by strong social pressures.
This article describes the results of a behaviour change intervention to address gift-giving as a form of bribery in a Tanzanian hospital. The intervention utilised environmental cues and a peer-led network approach to deliver messages aimed at disincentivising bribery.
An exit survey of hospital users indicates a reduction of the ‘gift-offering propensity score’, capturing self-declared behaviour, from 23% before implementation of the intervention to 13% afterwards. We find similar changes in the enabling norms score.
Semi-structured interviews with hospital users and health workers further support these findings.
These results suggest that practices and norms around bribery might be changed through a multi-pronged approach that addresses both the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ side of bribery.
Using behavioural insights to reduce gift giving in a Tanzanian public hospital: Findings from a mixed-methods evaluation
This is the final technical report of the research project Addressing bribery in the Tanzanian health sector: A behavioural approach.
Previous research has shown that social norms of gift-giving and reciprocity are linked to patterns of bribery in the Tanzanian health sector. Health facility staff that do not accept a gift or reciprocate a favour are often punished by means of gossip, criticism, and even social isolation, further enforcing the norms. On the other hand, gift-giving and bribery exacerbate inequality in access to healthcare, as patients who are able and willing to give gifts might receive preferential treatment at the expense of those who cannot afford them. At the extreme, gifts and other unofficial payments become a requirement for access to services, with life threatening consequences for the most vulnerable groups.
In this mixed-methods evaluation we aimed to understand the feasibility and potential impact of a multi-component behavioural intervention on rates of gift exchange between users and staff of a public regional referral hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The intervention aimed to shift users’ (i.e. patients and individuals accompanying them to the health facility) and health providers’ attitudes and perceived social norms around gift-giving, and to reduce actual exchange of gifts (i.e. the behaviour).
This research project was funded by the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE), funded with UK aid from the UK government. The project implementation was a collaboration between the Basel Institute on Governance, the UK Behavioural Insights Team, the University of Dar es Salam and the University of Utrecht.
The technical report is free to share under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence.
Using behavioural insights to reduce gift-giving in a Tanzanian public hospital Findings from a mixed-methods evaluation
This report relates to the research project Addressing bribery in the Tanzanian health sector: A behavioural approach. As part of the project, a pilot behavioural intervention was implemented at a Tanzanian hospital that aimed to shift hospital users’ and health providers’ attitudes and perceived social norms around gift-giving. It also aimed to reduce actual exchanges of gifts.
The research project as a whole was funded by the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (GI-ACE), funded with UK aid from the UK government. The project implementation was a collaboration between the Basel Institute on Governance, the UK Behavioural Insights Team, the University of Dar es Salam and the University of Utrecht.
The technical report is free to share under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence.
Petty corruption in the public sector: A comparative study of three East African countries through a behavioural lens
This article presents comparative evidence about the relevance of behavioural drivers in relation to petty corruption in three East African countries. It discusses the potential to incorporate behavioural insights into anti-corruption policy-making.
Persistently high levels of bureaucratic corruption prevail in many countries across the African continent. This along with the limited effectiveness of conventional anti-corruption prescriptions call for a contextualised understanding of the multiple factors determining corruption-related decision-making.
Adopting a behavioural lens involves accounting for the human factor as it relates to the effects of sociality and social constructs on propensities for corruption. As such, this novel approach complements the literature that has sought to understand corruption on the basis of political, economic, and institutional drivers and constraints.
Field research conducted in Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda found evidence for such behavioural drivers, showing that citizens are swayed by social pressures and beliefs that ultimately spur petty corruption by endorsing associated maladaptive practices. Sustained by social norms of group solidarity and reciprocity and legitimised by commonly shared perceptions of corruption as the norm, the research points to a problematic overlap of the public (formal) and the socio-cultural (informal) spheres.
By adding a behavioural dimension to the study of the drivers of corruption, this article seeks to contribute towards the development of more effective anti-corruption policy formulation that acknowledges the pitfalls attached to behavioural factors that conventional anti-corruption prescriptions have largely failed to address.
The article was published in the open-access African Studies journal on 19 August 2020.
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.
Behavioural influences on attitudes towards petty corruption: a study of social norms, automatic thinking and mental models in Tanzania
The UK Department for International Development (DFID), through its East Africa Research Fund (EARF), commissioned the Basel Institute on Governance to conduct the research project “Corruption, Social Norms and Behaviours in East Africa” aiming at shedding light into those “[behavioural] factors that influence the propensity for poor people to engage in, resist and report ‘corrupt transactions’” in three East African countries, namely, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
This report presents the main findings from the field research activities for the case of Tanzania conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Dar es Salaam. The study focused on the health and education sectors.
Between condemnation and resignation: a study on attitudes towards corruption in the public health sector in Tanzania
Chapter 8 in Corruption in Public Administration: An Ethnographic Approach, edited by Davide Torsello.
Despite the growth in literature on political corruption, contributions from field research are still exiguous. This book, edited by Davide Torsello, provides a timely and much needed addition to current research, bridging the gap between macro level quantitative indicators of corruption and micro level qualitative evidence through an innovative ethnographic approach to the study of corruption and integrity in public administration.
Claudia Baez Camargo’s two contributory articles highlight the key findings of field research conducted in Mexico and Tanzania as part of the Basel Institute’s contribution to ANTICORRP.
For the Tanzanian study, Baez Camargo and her co-author Rodrigo Megchún Rivera explore the attitudes towards corrupt practices in the health sector among citizens in Dar es Salaam and how those are linked to coping mechanisms that have been spontaneously organised at the community level as well as to generalised perceptions on the role of the state and the prevailing legal order in contemporary Tanzania.
Between Condemnation and Resignation: A Study on Attitudes towards Corruption in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (ANTICORRP study)
This paper highlights the key findings of a study conducted as part of the Basel Institute’s contribution to ANTICORRP WP4 “the ethnographic study of corruption.”
It explores the attitudes towards corrupt practices in the health sector among citizens in Dar es Salaam and how those are linked to coping mechanisms that have been spontaneously organised at the community level as well as to generalised perceptions on the role of the state and the prevailing legal order in contemporary Tanzania.