The paper sets out opportunities for Collective Action in a number of areas where a concerted approach seems essential if the multiple risks associated with corruption are to be successfully managed.
It proposes specific actions to be taken by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to help donors move forward with this agenda.
There has been limited private sector engagement in OGP to date. This discussion paper commissioned by the OGP Support Unit seeks to explain why this is so and suggests some options for promoting increased private sector engagement going forward.
Corruption, particularly bribery of government officials, inflicts substantial damage on people, society, and the world, and warrants control. Collective efforts to control corruption tend to focus on rules and compliance with those rules. This paper suggests that collective action also consider the creation of strong ethical cultures in business firms. Implementation of such programs is impeded by the difficulty in prescribing a course of action and by the difficulty in measuring the strength of an ethical culture.
The Banknotes Ethics Initiative (BnEI) is an anti-corruption collective action initiative founded in 2013. It addresses the internal compliance standards of its members combined with a rigorous accreditation process administered by an external accreditation council.
The objectives of BnEI are also supported by 38 central banks, and now, some five years after its inception, the BnEI is picking up on one of its driving themes – ensuring fair competition in the procurement of banknotes.
This document addresses the High Level Reporting Mechanism (HLRM) and its contributions to fairer market conditions in Colombia, where it is being piloted in connection with the public procurement process for the 4G Road Project. Using a Public Private Partnership approach, the 4G Road Project will be carried out over the course of seven years, completing 8,000 km of roads at an investment of US$25 billion.
The role of the HLRM will be to ensure that the program is less vulnerable to corruption and bribery risks.
This paper argues that for Collective Action to be effective, it requires a multi-stakeholder strategy that includes key international actors; enforcement agencies, policy makers, civil society, the development community and international business. It uses the maritime industry as a case study, explaining the challenges that can arise in an industry-led Collective Action and how a multi-stakeholder strategy can support such initiatives.
Improving public services for citizens. The programme seeks to strengthen the capacities of public servants to provide efficient and effective services to citizens, with quality, integrity and transparency.
The traditional criminal response has been insufficient in the combat against corruption, money laundering and other financial crimes. Billions of dollars continue to be laundered by individuals and criminal organisations through and ever-growing myriad of complex financial schemes. Official Development Assistance (ODA), a fundamental tool of development policy, is equally prone to corruption, embezzlement and abuse — to the extent that up to 30% of disbursements may be siphoned off by corrupt actors and criminal organisations.
Control of corruption in a society is an equilibrium between resources and costs which either empowers or constraints elites predatory behavior. While most research and practice focuses on legal constraints, this paper investigates normative constraints, deemed to be more important, especially civil society and the press. Fresh evidence—both historical and statistical—is found to support Tocqueville’s assertions regarding the importance of collective action and the joint action of media and associations in not only creating a democratic society, but controlling corruption as well.
Although both the problem of corruption and its detrimental effects on society, economy, and environment has widely been recognized, corruption remains one of the most challenging problems of today. In light of globalization, the exclusive focus on compliance-oriented measures such as sharpening laws seems to be more and more ineffective.