Agencies and policies

MA-Thesis / Master von Christoph Seidler

Abstract:

In this book, I want to examine how bilateral donors perform in fighting corruption. Taking an actor-centred, policy-oriented approach I focus on three selected bilateral agencies that are heavy-weights in the aid scene: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the British Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

Each of the three agencies that I focus on faces corruption individually. At the same time corruption remains a common problem, given its negative consequences on development. In this book, I take a rationalist perspective. I argue that donors perform well in fighting corruption when they cooperate. In other words: when donors try to fight corruption individually in their target countries, they risk a suboptimal outcome on the global scale - or as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) phrases it: „The risks associated with a piecemeal response, in which various donor organisations act in a deliberate but uncoordinated way, are set to increase.” Donors thus face a problem of collective action, as fragmentation of anticorruption (AC) work is often hindering success.

Regime theory provides tools to overcome problems of collective action. When states establish a regime in a certain issue area, they do so to better pursue their own individual and rational interests. In the current case, it is in the bilateral donors´ interest that their official development assistance (ODA) is used as effectively as possible. To achieve this, they need to fight corruption in their partner countries and at home in a coordinated way.

Thus the question which this book addresses is: Does current cooperation between bilateral donors constitute a working international regime for fighting corruption in bilateral development cooperation?

In order to answer this question, I use the following variables: the cooperation in the field of anti-corruption in bilateral development cooperation will be the independent variable, whereas the existence of a regime in this field will be the dependent variable. Other possible independent variables such as the power distribution in the international system shall be regarded as fixed. This assumption shall be permitted as the idea of a hegemonic state in a regime entirely devoted to more or less altruistic development cooperation seems to be somewhat absurd.

To operationalize the independent variable, I take two steps. In the first step, I take a look at the normative level in examining key policy papers of the three donors. My assumption is the following: states cooperate when they all incorporate the same contemporary policy thinking in their papers. To define contemporary policy thinking, I use the work of OECD/DAC. This group's documents, which draw upon the earlier work of the World Bank and Transparency International, reflect the smallest common denominator of ideas of the most important donor countries.

I realize that by focussing on the OECD/DAC countries, I leave out a fraction of donors that are not members of this group. According to BROWNE about one tenth of total ODA – perhaps between 5 billion USD and 10 billion USD per year – is accounted for by donors of the south who are not members of the OECD/DAC. The largest donors from this group are China and India.

Yet leaving these donors out of the picture seems to be justified when theorizing about a possible AC regime in development cooperation. Both India and China are not signatories of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. For the moment they do not seem to be interested in finding any regime on aid effectiveness or fighting corruption. It remains to be seen if the UN's new bi-annual Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) can bridge the gap between OECD/DAC donors and the donors from the south.

To sharpen the picture of the current AC state of the art in bilateral DC, I have added recent insights from scholars to better reflect the edge of academic reasoning in the field. My assumption: if donors incorporate all the core findings from the OECD papers as well as fresh academic insight simultaneously in their policy papers, they cooperate. For every donor, I map the concordance between the agency's strategy and the OECD recommendations on an ordinal scale (high, middle, low).

In a second step, I look at how the policies are actually applied by taking a look at the aid allocation patterns of the three donors at issue. I examine whether similarities between donors can be found in this case. Through coordinated actions at the country level donors could avoid supplying aid to the most corrupt states. In doing so, they would show that their AC policies are more than just lip service. Only in this case can a working regime develop.

To operationalize the dependent variable, I need to define what regimes actually are. I use KRASNER'S classical definition of regimes as „sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations”.

This book is structured in the following way: the section following this introduction provides information on the environment that donors operate in. Here, I deal with problems of defining and quantifying corruption as well as with the influence of corruption and development and the role of donors in fighting corruption. In the section thereafter, I examine whether roles and norms for a possible regime exist by looking at key policy documents of the OECD, USAID, DFID and Sida. After that I turn my attention to the three donors’ aid allocation patterns to see if normative and implementation aspects of fighting corruption coincide. In the last section, I present the key findings of this book and suggest ideas for future research.

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Text Sample:

Chapter 3., Towards an AC regime in bilateral DC:

The main argument of this book is that donors perform well in fighting corruption when they cooperate. I argue that in this case, they would need to form an international regime to fight corruption in their partner countries and at home in a coordinated way. This would be in their own rational interest as it would secure that their ODA is used as effectively as possible.

In this section, I examine if such a regime indeed exists. I start off by briefly explaining the idea of international regimes in general. I then continue to apply this theory to the field of this work. I use KRASNER'S definition of an international regime to show how the recent work of the donor community could be forming the basis of an AC regime in the making. I then continue to describe some basic rules and norms of this developing regime, based on key OECD/DAC documents.

However, I do not address the question of compliance. Similar to BUKOWANSKY, I find the proposed regime still too young to judge its effectiveness. SANDHOLTZ and GRAY also do not speak about enforcement aspects in what they call not a regime but „the existence of international norms”.

A few words on regimes: In trying to theorize about international governance, scholars have developed the concept of international regimes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These scholars were in fact looking to provide an alternative to neo-realist approaches that dominated IR at that time. Thus, regime theory is distinct from neo-realism on the one hand and liberalism on the other. It can be described as part of a neo-institutionalist world view. One of the basic ideas behind this concept was to understand regimes as „something more than temporary arrangements that change with every shift in power or interests”, that is distinct from one-shot agreements on the one hand and international organizations on the other. A first important use of the regime concept was the area of international trade, where scholars sought to explain how the economic institutions formed after World War II could be sustained in a time when the hegemonic USA were temporarily losing power. Later, the concept of regimes has been expanded to areas such as environment, communication and security.

In a somewhat classical definition, KRASNER describes regimes as „sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations”. KRASNER further defines principles as „beliefs of fact, causation, and rectitude”, norms as „standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations”, rules as „specific prescriptions or proscriptions for actions” and decision-making procedures as „prevailing practices for making and implementing collective choice”. Thus, principles and rules provide the normative framework for regimes, while rules and decision-making procedures provide specific injunctions for appropriate behaviour. KRASNER notes that „changes in rules and decision-making procedures are changes within regimes” whereas „changes in principles and norms are changes of the regime itself”.

Although the definition of regimes has been contested by some scholars, „the study of international regimes made an important contribution by supplementing the technical aspects of formal IOs with the norms and rules governing state behavior”. The concept has been broadened and deepened since its first appearance in scholarly literature. The social-constructivist influences on the concept of regimes are particularly important. Constructivist scholars such as RISSE namely attacked one rationalist assumption of the regime theory: the fixed preferences of the actors. Constructivists rather argued that the preferences of the states can indeed be altered by a regime that they are part of. Scholars of the regime theory have responded by including this possibility in their theory.

For practical reasons, I assume that in the present case of the developing AC regime, donors’ interests do not necessarily need to be altered by the regime in the short run. I have chosen to treat donors' preferences as fixed, as I understand the AC regime in bilateral DC as something nascent. Thus, the period under review is short enough to assume that the regime has not persisted long enough to alter the preferences of its participants.

What could the regime look like?

The idea of a developing international anti-corruption regime has been raised in the scholarly literature. While BUKOVANSKY has argued for a regime that is largely based on a moral foundation, I argue in a purely rationalist tradition. This is because it seems to be in the rational interest of the major donors to form a regime on AC in bilateral DC. YOUNG has described three developmental sequences for international regimes. He labels them „spontaneous orders”, „negotiated orders”, and „imposed orders”. In my view, the developing AC regime in bilateral DC that I want describe here is a form of the „negotiated orders” that YOUNG describes as „conscious efforts to agree on [...] major provisions, explicit consent on the part of individual participants, and formal expression of the results.” More precisely, I understand the developing AC regime in bilateral DC as a „partial or piecemeal negotiated order” where „many problems [are] to be worked out on the basis of practice and precedent.” The bilateral donors have the rational interest that their ODA is used as effectively as possible. This is the main driver to set up the regime; the practical problems are to be solved during the ongoing work.

But why was the regime formed in the first place? Again, YOUNG offers an explanation. He argues that leadership is a necessary condition, or „a critical determinant of success or failure in the processes of institutional bargaining that dominate efforts to form international regimes”. From the three types of leadership that YOUNG presents – structural, entrepreneurial and intellectual – I find the idea of intellectual leadership most appropriate for the field in question. It is the power of ideas that „shape[s] the thinking of the principals in the process of the institutional bargaining.” In terms of leadership, the work of the OCED is important. The organization that is also active in the broader discussion on aid effectiveness pushed for a regulation in the field of AC.

I would like to start from KRASNER'S definition to show that an AC regime in bilateral development cooperation is currently forming. Let me start with a theoretical assumption. If there really was a regime in the making, we would need to see the following: a) a distinct problem in the international relations, b) a „set of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures”, c) various actors with expectations that converge around these principles, norms, rules, and procedures.