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In recent years, the problematic relationship between conflicts of interest and corruption has been a sensitive one to democracy. Although conflicts of interest have not always resulted in corruption, they do constitute an important opportunity structure for such illicit behaviour. The Portuguese attempt at regulating conflicts of interest in parliament has been paradigmatic: eight legislative interventions to the first Statute of MPs in less than two decades and parliament was still unable to create an appropriate ethical framework to prevent financial impropriety deriving from the accumulation of the representative mandate with other outside jobs and activities. The incremental nature of adjustments, the peculiar “tailor made” nature of legislation and the importation of regulatory models “in place” abroad, raise important aspects in regard both to the scope and efficacy of the instruments adopted as well as the legislators’ intentions and willingness to move on with the necessary reforms. This paper attempts to assess the regulatory performance and reform efforts of the Portuguese Assembleia da República in addressing MPs’ conflicts of interest through the analysis of the control framework adopted, namely, rules of disclosure and legal constraints to accumulation.

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This literature review examines donor approaches to anti-corruption using available policy, project, and academic material. This first entails a discussion of the main conceptual issues such as the definitions of, and theoretical approaches to, corruption. This is then complemented by a discussion of implementation issues - through the comparison of different bilateral and multilateral donor approaches to corruption and an analysis of lessons learned from past experience. The paper concludes by highlighting areas for further work.

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Studies of ‘national integrity systems’ are part of the new international concern with corruption and its prevention. Alan Doig and Stephanie McIvor coordinated studies of 18 countries, and reflected on their method in Public Administration and Development (2003). This article compares their conclusions with an overview of a subsequent study of 12 small island states in the South Pacific using the same method. Though the sample was not chosen with scale in mind, smallness may explain some of the similarities between the Pacific Island cases, particularly the risks associated with offshore financial centres, trust funds and investments. Their relative size and weakness has also made them targets for direct intervention by Australian police and officials to rebuild anti corruption institutions. The article goes on to show how the evidence from the Pacific Island cases raises questions about some of the standard proposals for anti corruption reform: stronger parties, an ICAC, civil society coalitions and greater accountability and transparency.

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The paper investigates the relationship between corruption and accountability in the Pacific Islands, using evidence from surveys of 'national integrity systems' in 14 states. It identifies and assesses four international initiatives to improve accountability and reduce corruption: public sector reform; peer review of accountability systems; cleaning up offshore financial centres, and the intervention of Australian officials on the ground. The paper finds that the relationship between increased accountability and reduced corruption is not straightforward. Moves to improve financial accountability may increase the chances of corruption being detected, but greater political accountability may increase the incidence, or suspicion, of corruption. Comparison between the 14 suggests that accountability and levels of corruption vary independently of each other.

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Transparency International (TI) is an international non government organisation founded in 1993 to combat corruption in international business activities. The paper looks at TI both as an agent and critic of ‘market civilisation’, paying particular attention to some of the techniques has developed including: networking; the franchising of national chapters; the publication of an annual ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’; the publication of a ‘Source Book’ on the web; and the development of Business Principles for Countering Bribery. Civilisation may be a coercive process, and the paper is particularly concerned with the kinds of power deployed in these techniques. It analyses them as examples of ‘policy transfer’ and as the results of processes of mimicry and professionalisation that lead to ‘institutional isomorphism’, and draws some conclusions about the spread of civilisation.

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In recent years, governments and legislatures have made an unprecedented effort to improve regulatory systems of political financing which had been perceived by many as fraught with corruption. Some countries have been more sensitive to the problem than others given the nature and extent of occurrences, but the successive waves of reform show how difficult it has been for the political class to arrive at an adequate control response. The reform panorama of the 1990s has been characterised by incremental, short-lived and non-comprehensive articulation of control instruments and monitoring/enforcement shortcomings. The general regulatory context was one of reforming to address scandal and an increasingly discontented public opinion towards parties and their representatives. Despite different national responses and understandings of the major issues of concern, there has equally been a convergence of the type of measures adopted and an increasing cross-country transfer of knowledge about the panoply of instruments available. What this paper will argue, however, is that “similarities” concern more the form rather than the substance of control. The transfer of regulatory instruments has taken place faster than the expected convergence of standards of conduct. Drawing from different regulatory experiences, the article deals with a series of interrelated issues of political financing regulation: liberal versus regulatory approaches to political financing; public versus private modes of political financing; balancing revenue and expenditure; rules of publicity and publication of accounts; making parties accountable internally and externally to monitoring bodies; matching penalties to offences. The aim is to provide a general reflection of the general features of the law and practice of political finance as a preliminary step towards more general conclusions about the challenges facing political financing regulation today. In short, the article attempts to address two overarching questions: Do laws on political financing suffice to constrain party related illegality? Why certain countries do better than others in face of the degree of cross-country transfer of knowledge and regulatory innovation achieved in recent years?

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The post-Cold War political map displays three major developments, which deserve close attention: the global expansion of democracy; the growth and changing nature of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs); and the evolution of corruption and anticorruption from a non-issue into a global concern at all levels of decision-making. Linking all three developments is the birth of a new anticorruption actor in May 1993: Transparency International (TI), a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) based in Berlin whose mission was recently redefined as ‘to work to create change towards a world free of corruption’. Although the global anticorruption movement is wider than TI, this NGO has gained the reputation of the most prominent civil society “corruption fighter” at the global level. Despite frequent references to its local constituencies and bottom-up approach to internal governance, TI is not a typical grass-root NGO. It was founded by a group of high profile people, “grey suits”, from international organisations. In less than a decade, TI has moved from being a tiny “briefcase” NGO to become a franchised and complex organisation: it comprises approximately 90 National Chapters of a variable size and nature. TI had to look downwards in search of national constituencies where most of the anticorruption instruments it battled for at the international level need to be ratified, implemented and evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to assess the process of franchising of Transparency International, the implications it had upon its internal governance and the variations that can be found across its constituent parts, the National Chapters.

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The global upsurge of interest in corruption has led to the proliferation of anti-corruption instruments in international law. Such legal responses to corruption may be usefully divided into three interrelated planes of action: the promulgation of formal international legal instruments by organisations such as the UN and OECD; the work of national bureaucratic agencies cooperating across borders to enforce national anti-corruption laws; and the work of wholly non-governmental organisations such as Transparency International. The difficult task of regulating transnational actors, particularly corporations, requires an understanding of how these planes interact, and which elements would best be strengthened to further the fight against corruption. Furthermore, such regulation must carefully balance questions of efficacy against those of legitimacy. The purpose of this paper is to assess modern regulatory literature, particularly regarding corporate behaviour, and draw from it lessons for the development of the international anti-corruption legal regime.

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When the Indian Ocean tsunami swept across a large part of the Indonesian province of Aceh on December 26, 2004, the international response was extraordinary. People everywhere opened their hearts and their wallets to the victims. Governments, Non-Government Organisations and international agencies did likewise. In no time nearly US$6 billion had been pledged for Aceh's reconstruction and rehabilitation. Because of Indonesia's reputation for high levels of corruption, the Indonesian Government and donors gave strong public undertakings that the funds would not end up in the wrong hands. This paper examines the problems that are likely to be encountered in meeting such an undertaking.

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Ideas about ‘culture' are often used to explain, or excuse, corruption. Willingness to talk, or silence, about corruption are also cultural phenomena. Social scientists often talk about corruption in different ways from policy makers and public opinion. The paper compares how 'culture' has been conceptualised in reports on 'National Integrity Systems' in 14 Pacific Island states. It identifies a number of common themes and issues in the relationship between culture and corruption including the question of gifts versus bribes, nepotism, the role of churches and the media. The paper finds differences between elite and popular opinion about corruption, and links between suspicions of corruption and ethnic divisions. It concludes with consideration of the impact of different understandings to anti-corruption practice.

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Knowledge may be embodied tacitly in the experience of an organisation’s members, as well as explicitly in its files and records. Government and non-government organizations may need to manage their stocks of knowledge differently. The paper compares the knowledge management tasks facing government and non-government organizations in the field of anti corruption. The NGO Transparency International has generated an array of indices, tools, and websites to give authority to its advocacy. Its task is to package and repackage existing information. An Independent Commission Against corruption draws on the same pool of information to create useful knowledge about subjects of investigation, recommendations for prevention, and lessons for education. Government agencies also must deliberately keep some knowledge secret. More knowledge is not always a good thing, and may inhibit effective action.

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Corruption exists in every society, but the extent of corruption varies enormously among countries. Governments have taken up the challenge of reform to lessen the scope and severity of corruption. However, it is puzzling to see some countries are more successful than others, even if they have similar geographic, cultural and historical background. How the transformation from widespread corruption to clean government has been accomplished is thus an intriguing research question and practical policy problem. Manion (2004) considers the problem of anticorruption reform, in comparative case study of anticorruption reform in mainland China and Hong Kong. This paper examines Manion’s theory with the anticorruption experience of another member of “Greater China” – Singapore. It finds that whereas Singapore’s experience supports Manion’s theory about the importance of independent, powerful and well-financed anticorruption agency, a comprehensive anticorruption strategy and the existence of rule of law, it does not prove that a political system allowing high degree of political freedom is necessary to successful anticorruption reform. This may imply that Manion’s conclusion that mainland China has passed a “point of no return”, and that its anticorruption reform will not succeed unless it embraces a non-Leninist political system, is problematic. Singapore’s experience also suggests other factors that Manion (2004) does not consider, such as economic liberalisation, country size and degree of urbanisation.

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‘Corruption’ may be the dark side of the relationship between personal relationships and the work of organisations. The paper considers how studies of Public Administration, and related ideas such as bureaucracy, management and governance, have viewed personal relationships. It then links these views to corresponding approaches to preventing corruption. The third part of the paper looks at anti corruption activity in PNG in light of the relationship between personal relationships, the work of organisations and broader ideas of the public interest.

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