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This report by Richard E. Messick from the World Bank explores the role and challenges faced by anticorruption agencies (ACAs) globally. It examines their enforcement, investigative, preventive, and educational capacities and highlights the discrepancies between expectations and actual performance. The report reviews various ACAs in regions such as Africa, East Asia, and Latin America, and critiques their effectiveness. It underscores the crucial factors leading to agency failures, such as lack of resources, poor legal frameworks, and unrealistic expectations. The insights aim to foster a better understanding of the needed reforms for ACAs.
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Anticorruption Agencies: Experience to Date Richard E. Messick World Bank February 16, 2006
What Anticorruption Agencies Can Do • Enforce • investigate claims of bribery and other crimes/ prosecute well-founded ones • Prevent • police conflicts of interest; simplify procedures • Educate • public, media, public servants • Coordinate
Countries with ACAs Part 1: Hong Kong, New South Wales, Singapore Africa: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia LAC: Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador ECA: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Asia: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal,Thailand
Recent Evaluations -- 1 • Very few examples of successful independent anticorruption commissions/ agencies. UNDP, Dec. 2005 • Agencies appear to be overloaded with expectations and tasks while vague definitions of mandates and powers . . . and the human and financial resources allocated to the agencies put strong limits on achieving these expectations. COE, July 2005
Recent Evaluations -- 2 • None of [the five African] ACCs studied have had a discernable or measurable impact on levels of corruption. U4, May 2005 • The majority of ACAs probably serve no useful purpose in combating corruption. Meagher, March 2005 • A mounting body of evidence [shows] they fail to reduce corruption. WBI, Sept. 2004
Why Create Them? • Crisis of legitimacy • Need to do “something”
Questions Ignored When Creating • One mission or many? • What will it do that existing agencies are not doing? • Why aren’t existing agencies performing? • Will existing agencies continue to perform function too?
Obvious Reasons Why Agencies Fail • Poor legal framework • Unrealistic expectations; try to accomplish too much too soon • Insufficient resources • Inadequate or poorly trained staff • Adversarial relations with other agencies (aka turf battles) • Absence of performance measures
More Fundamental Reason for Failure “The achievements of the last 150 years in every single area are achievements of narrow focus, narrow concentration. . . .Whenever an institution goes beyond a narrow focus, it ceases to perform.” Peter Drucker, 1999