The responsibility for governments to address bribe solicitation derives from internationally recognised anticorruption standards all of which prohibit the ‘demand side’ of bribery, namely, the solicitation by a public official of an undue advantage.

This practitioners’ handbook provides the required tools for contextualising social accountability initiatives aimed at empowering citizens to engage in anti-corruption actions. The material herein contained has been developed through a collaborative effort with UNDP and reflects the findings from academic research conducted in the scope of the ANTICORRP research consortium (anticorrp.eu).

Financial crimes such as corruption, fraud, and embezzlement generate significant profits, often at the expense of the public budget. These proceeds of crime are usually hidden outside of the country where the crime was originally committed, and laundered through complex financial and commercial transactions, often spanning across numerous jurisdictions.

Social accountability has become a favoured approach among most major multilateral and bilateral donors to develop grass roots mechanisms for democratic governance. In a successful scenario, citizen participation can promote more responsive governments and better provision of basic services by linking users’ feedback to the policy design, implementation and monitoring activities typically undertaken by the state.

It has been estimated that roughly 1.6 trillion USD in criminal proceeds are laundered through the international financial system each year. To put this in perspective, this sum is more than the combined GDPs of Switzerland, Portugal, Romania, Belarus, and Austria in 2011.

Anti-money laundering systems have the potential to curb the use of proceeds of corruption and other crimes by the perpetrators. An effectively implemented anti-money laundering framework limits the channels through which illicit funds can be laundered, making crime riskier and reducing the incentives for corrupt activities.

The working paper outlines the historical background and early experiments in the field of Collective Action. It also examines methods and challenges and depicts recent examples of Collective Action initiatives.

About this Working Paper

This paper is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper Series, ISSN: 2624-9650.

The art trade market is global, highly fragmented and complex, involving a great variety of operators. In light of this complexity, the current level of regulation and existing compliance efforts by individual operators has proven to be insufficient. With some competitors engaged in unethical or illegal behaviour, operating profitably while acting with integrity and ethics is increasingly difficult.

As awareness of the role governance in the performance of health systems has increased, so has the need to come up with systematic means to evaluate governance shortcomings to develop adequate interventions.

Strengthening accountability in public service provision is increasingly recognized as a precondition to improve the performance of the health sector in low-income countries. However, progress in this field has been hampered to a great extent because of empirical difficulties in measuring and assessing accountability.