Corruption, understood as the misuse of public office for private gain, has become a matter of global concern. Numerous measures being taken, not least in South Africa, to contain its spread are increasingly regarded as attempts in "fighting corruption". The South African public sector provides the context for this study where manifestations of corrupt behaviour may be observed and analysed. Particular attention is given to the role, relevance and costs which, as this study shows, must first be calculated in monetary terms as a fiscal end in order for the task of fighting corruption to produce a sustainable impact. The national strategy developed by the South African government has been compromised by the absence of sufficient resources being committed from the national fiscus for its implementation. It is misleading to assume that new laws and tighter regulations will of themselves serve to deter corrupt practices. One notices a plethora of public administration reforms being initiated to control and prevent corruption in line with international best practice. Yet, as this study concludes, such efforts even at higher fiscal cost will not necessarily contribute to reduced corruption. No attempt should be made to create a situation of a "zero tolerance" level of corruption as this is not possible. Ultimately, the challenge for the South African public sector is to seek ways of rationalising existing resources such that a single agency led by someone with moral authority can be vested with powers to lead the fight against corruption. / Public Administration / (D. Litt. et Phil. (Public Administration)

余琴. / "2013年8月". / "2013 nian 8 yue". / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-232). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in Chinese and English. / Yu Qin.

Corruption, understood as the misuse of public office for private gain, has become a matter of global concern. Numerous measures being taken, not least in South Africa, to contain its spread are increasingly regarded as attempts in "fighting corruption". The South African public sector provides the context for this study where manifestations of corrupt behaviour may be observed and analysed. Particular attention is given to the role, relevance and costs which, as this study shows, must first be calculated in monetary terms as a fiscal end in order for the task of fighting corruption to produce a sustainable impact. The national strategy developed by the South African government has been compromised by the absence of sufficient resources being committed from the national fiscus for its implementation. It is misleading to assume that new laws and tighter regulations will of themselves serve to deter corrupt practices. One notices a plethora of public administration reforms being initiated to control and prevent corruption in line with international best practice. Yet, as this study concludes, such efforts even at higher fiscal cost will not necessarily contribute to reduced corruption. No attempt should be made to create a situation of a "zero tolerance" level of corruption as this is not possible. Ultimately, the challenge for the South African public sector is to seek ways of rationalising existing resources such that a single agency led by someone with moral authority can be vested with powers to lead the fight against corruption. / Public Administration and Management / (D. Litt. et Phil. (Public Administration)

The thesis contributes to the search for sound anti-corruption laws and practices that are effective and fair. It argues for the respect for human rights in the crafting and implementation of anti-corruption laws as a requisite for successful control of corruption. The basis for this argument is threefold: First, human rights provide a framework for checking against abuse of state’s police power, an abuse which if allowed to take root, would make the fight against corruption lose its legitimacy in the eye of the people. Second, human rights ensure that the interest of individuals is catered for in the crafting of anti-corruption laws and practices thereby denying perpetrators of corruption legal excuses that can be exploited to delay or frustrate corruption cases in the courts of law. Third, human rights provide a useful framework for balancing competing interests in the area of corruption control – it enables society to craft measures that fulfils the public interest in the eradication of corruption while concomitantly assuring the competing public interest in the protection of individual members’ liberties – a condition that is necessary if the support of the holders of these competing interests is to be enlisted and fostered in the fight against corruption. The thesis focuses on the study of the non-conviction based assets recovery mechanism, a mechanism that allows the state to apply a procedure lacking in criminal law safeguards to address criminal behaviour. The mechanism is thus beset with avenues for abuse, which if unchecked could have debilitating effects not only to individual liberties but also to the long term legitimacy of the fight against corruption. In this regard, the thesis examines how the human rights framework has been used in Kenya and South Africa to check on the potential dangers of the non-conviction based mechanism and to provide for a proportional balance between the imperative of corruption control and the guarantee against arbitrary deprivation of property. The aim is to unravel the benefits of respecting human rights in the fight against corruption in general and in the non-conviction based assets recovery in particular. Kenya and South Africa are chosen for study because they provide two models of non-conviction based mechanisms with different levels of safeguards, for comparative consideration.

[Truncated abstract] The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis raised serious questions about the nature of East Asia's rise to economic prosperity, once labelled as a 'miracle' by the World Bank. In particular, East Asian governments were criticised for allowing rampant corruption to pervade their economies. At a conceptual level, the overwhelming majority of studies argue that corruption, defined as the misuse of public office for private gain, has impeded growth. Empirically, many studies have shown the detrimental impact of corruption on economic growth but few have analysed the particular effect of corruption on East Asia's economic growth in the years leading up to the 1997 Crisis, a period characterised by superior economic growth rates against the backdrop of corruption. This study seeks to fill that gap. By virtue of its clandestine nature, any study on corruption is subject to measurement limitations and this study is no exception. The only available data on corruption are indices published by a handful of various international organisations. Each of these indices follows a similar format: they are based partly or wholly on surveys of the corporate sector in each of the sample countries, the results of which are converted into corruption scores and used to rank the sample countries. Although there is a general consistency in rankings across the different indices, the survey questions tend to equate corruption with bribery. In one survey which questioned respondents about corruption and bribery in separate questions, the results indicated that the two are not necessarily synonymous at least in the minds of respondents. A brief analysis of the nature of corruption within East Asia reveals why the tendency to equate corruption with bribery can be misleading, and therefore raises doubts about the credibility of the aforementioned corruption indices. Many countries in East Asia are shown to harbour a network of patron-client relationships within a centralised framework. ... When using the available corruption indices as measures of corruption in a corruption-growth model that is applied to cross-sectional data covering 141 countries in 1996, corruption is found to have a significant positive relationship with economic growth for two of the corruption indices. However, no particular significant relationship is found to exist for East Asian countries within the sample. The corruption indices are then combined to produce a single index of corruption which is then used in a corruption-growth model and applied to panel data covering 33 countries over a twenty year period from 1984 to 2003. This time the corruption variable is found to have a significant positive relationship with economic growth for East Asian countries (excluding Singapore) during 1986-1996. Finally, the concept of rent-seeking is examined as an alternative to the typical principal-agent model of corruption used in the literature, based on its strong resonance with the particular nature of corruption in East Asia. A measure of rent-seeking is developed, and using cross-sectional data for 57 countries in 1996 reveals that rent-seeking has a significant positive relationship with economic growth.

Economic growth in a country can be explained by numerous variables, both positive and negative. Increasing levels of education, investment and openness are examples of factors generally believed to have positive effects on the economic progress, while corruption is one of the factors often regarded as detrimental to economic growth. The purpose of this thesis is to measure and analyze if the levels of perceived corruption in a cross-section of countries have affected their economic growth rates over the years 2004-2008. The study is carried out with four regressions on a sample of 123 countries and eight variables for the time period in question. The models are constructed on the basis of both the neoclassical growth theory and the endogenous growth theory. The found result contradicts the expected outcome; it shows that the perceived levels of corruption are significantly and positively correlated with economic growth. It is however found that countries with widespread corruption, in general developing countries, have experienced high economic growth over these years. A correlation the authors argue can explain the unexpected sign of the corruption variable.

Political corruption is a cancer - a malignant phenomenon that affects every political system and every person in the world. Corruption undermines the very fabric of society and the faith of people in their government. It makes goods more expensive, stymies development in developing nations, and it makes both the United States and the world a more dangerous place. Because of its negative effects and universality, corruption should be studied. Its study leads to greater understanding, the discovery of effective approaches to prevention, and restored faith in political systems. Its study also illuminates and breaks down barriers to effective government while empowering officials who put constituents before themselves to act. In this analysis, modern literature and analyses are examined to gain better understanding of the nature and wider study of corruption, rankings of the American states are analyzed and a meta-study completed to rank the states along broader criteria, and one particular state - Florida - is examined closely as a case study in political corruption. Why Florida? Florida is the fourth largest state in the United States, has a racially and socioeconomically diverse population, and the highest number of convictions for corruption of any other state for the last decade. The result of this study is a deeper insight into political corruption as a field of study, better understanding of defining and measuring political corruption, and potential policy remedies to reduce it. The results come with implications for a wide variety of academic fields with vested interest in the study of political corruption along with nonacademic audiences seeking to rid themselves of this cancer of government.

The lobbying of Parliament and the Government in the United Kingdom by wealthy or influential groups and individuals raises concerns about corruption and political equality. Professional lobbying is available mainly to those with significant resources and is often the most effective means of influencing decision-makers. Unchecked, it corrodes public trust in core public institutions. This thesis argues that the problems attending the lobbying of Parliament and Government in the UK need to be identified and understood more clearly so that targeted regulatory solutions can be determined. Currently, lawmakers, organisations and academics have struggled to propose clear pathways for identifying the main issues and understanding them. This is due to a failure to agree on the nature and scope of the central problems associated with lobbying, the relationship between them, and how they are relevant to the model of democratic government in the UK. To overcome this, an analytical framework called ‘institutional diversion’ is developed, tested and evaluated. The framework is developed from institutional corruption literature in the United States and is divided into three parts. Part 1 provides elements which help to identify specific lobbying concerns and provide a rich account of the underlying issues. Part 2 articulates a test to determine whether the identified problem in Part 1 causes a diversion from the purpose of the relevant public institution. It is argued that the critical purpose of decision-makers in Parliament and the Government is to ‘act in the public interest’ and that a diversion from that purpose can be tested using the two criteria of ‘integrity’ and ‘objectivity’. Further, it is not sufficient for a framework to simply identify and help to understand the concerns with lobbying. The logical next step is to identify solutions, and that process must also be rationally guided. Therefore, guidelines are developed from an analysis of an interview with the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists in the UK conducted specifically for this thesis. The guidelines are intended to help future reform analyses by highlighting the practical and political restrictions within which solutions must be developed otherwise they will be unlikely to succeed.

Corruption remains one of the most enduring phenomenon across the world and notably in Sub Saharan Africa where its scope and depth still culminate generally at distressing levels to a greater or lesser extent across countries and regions. This study presents an empirical analysis of the causes and association types of corruption across SADC countries. Through quantitative methods of analysis, it delivers an assessment of the conditional effect of the human capital and social development along with their respective and combined impact on a corruption model using panel data and multivariate regression estimates across the fifteen SADC countries for the period 2005 - 2013. The research then identifies other covariates economic or institutional - and their functional dependence to the hypothesised triad nexus - that may predict the diversity of corruption level outcomes in the region.The hypotheses considered and tested suggest that both human capital (HC) and social development (SD) are key determinants of corruption outcome levels. We report consistently strong R squared (R2) and high magnitude coefficients for the two variables under several estimation models and for various other control economic and governance variables. For robustness testing, alternate measures of corruption are also used. The results mostly but not entirely support the initial findings. The inclusion of the institutional variables does not confirm for SADC countries the largely found negative association of corruption with democracy and press freedom. Hence young and developing democracies across the region may not benefit from lower levels of corruption in the short run as institutional frameworks in formation remain weak. Meanwhile this research did not allow to derive clear arguments in relation to true causality and effects’ directions. The results remain agnostic with regards to causation between corruption and the selected explanatory variables. In the end human capital and social development in particular were found to be strong and consistent predictors of corruption control and the associations remain robust and significant under numerous specifications. While omnipresent rhetoric has largely focused on the political dimensions of corruption this study provides a substantial evidence and a nuance contribution to knowledge and literature to the concept of corruption by introducing the interaction effects of human capital and social development which indicate that both explanatory variables are consistent predictors of corruption control levels. In the footsteps of Sen’s theory, it offers a new frame which grants an understanding of the phenomenon of corruption from a capability and human development approach as a new avenue for research. All of which has crucial policy implications for concerned governments. Indeed, efforts to stamp out corruption should be designed first to eliminate or mitigate the root - conditions of its incidence focusing on policies geared towards better education and higher living standards. Relying chiefly on oversight agencies and lending disproportionate attention to enforcement actions and regulatory frameworks would indeed prove to be a misplaced priority. Fundamentally this thesis argues a new scheme of intelligibility, a renewed “episteme” of corruption which refers to the order of human developmental structures underlying the production of corrupt practices. / Business Management / D.B.L.

The purpose of the thesis is to evaluate the real impact of anti-corruption policies of the Czech Government. Therefore, the thesis firstly deals with the phenomenon of corruption and the fight against it in general. Subsequently, various anti-corruption strategies from 1999 to 2010 are introduced. Fundamental part of the thesis is devoted to an analysis of the Government's strategy in the fight against corruption between the years 2011 and 2012. Measures taken according to this strategy are examined in the light of the recommendations of NGOs that are engaged in the anti-corruption fight. The thesis sets out the strengths and the weaknesses of the strategy and points out the major flaws that need to be resolved as soon as possible. The third part suggests a solution to each of the problems that have emerged from the analysis. The proposals are mainly based on the recommendations of the anti-corruption organizations in the framework of the Reconstruction of the State and the Government's strategy in the fight against corruption between the years 2013 and 2014. Conclusion of the study shows to what extent is the current Czech government's anti-corruption policy successful.