ROMANIAN ACADEMIC SOCIETY WARNING ON THE RATKING ALINA MUNGIU-PIPPIDI ROMANIAN ACADEMIC SOCIETY www.undp.ro

Definition of early warning TIMELY POLICY REPORT ANALYZING RISKS FOR A CRISIS TO DEVELOP AND PROVIDING POLICY ADVICE TO AVERT OR SOLVE A CRISIS SITUATION Monitoring trends Prediction of outcomes Evaluation of policy options

An early warning can be many things to many people... THE OBJECT IS... internal conflict, crises, refugee flows, humanitarian disasters, famine, state failure WITH THE PURPOSE OF... prediction, informing policy, conflict prevention, raising awareness

Specificities of South-Eastern Europe Weak states characterized by poor management of unstable economies, dominance of the informal sector incapacity of states to cope with the ordinary provision of basic public goods such as law and order inability of political actors to divide resources equitably among various ethnic groups sharing a state. Policy warnings: based on monitoring political, social and economical events and trends with special attention to actions likely to precipitate the onset of crises in high-risk situations or lack of action needed to solve critical situations.

Corruption as grease of civil service, not business

Bad experience feeds mistrust...

CORRUPTION OR WIDESPREAD ADMINISTRATIVE MALFUNCTION? 23% rely on personal connections. The rest have to bribe. Mistreatment and bribe-giving are strongly correlated. Satisfaction with service received by personal connection

HABIT OF BEING ABUSED FEEDS MORE ABUSE- less than a quarter civic competents

DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO CALL IT CORRUPTION THEN? the norm is made by discriminative public service, not by the impartiality, impersonality and fairness supposed to characterize modern bureaucracies. both pre-war rural societies and Communist societies were based on status groups and uneven access to public goods. Belonging to such a group or network predicts satisfaction with public service, bribe does not. Status beats money. A favor may be granted to acknowledge superior status or establish one own without money being even involved. This informal structure beats any formal rules or regulations and feeds public mistrust Therefore, ‘corruption’ manifests itself often not just by use of a public position to seek personal gain, but more broadly as widespread infringement of the modern bureaucratic norms.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? PRINCIPLES Not only the “business” environment, but the public sector environment in general must be the target of sanitization policies. One Agency to bind together administrative ethics and performance SO PREVENT CORRUPTION Make representatives accountable The test of political will is in the use of instruments already at hand

Policy recommendations and what HAS been done so far... MAKE TRANSPARENCY THE NORM Freedom of Information Act as an accountability act ADOPTED Policy-making transparency act ADOPTED

Policy recommendations and what has NOT been done so far... criminalize conflict of interest remove law and order agencies from political interference build horizontal accountability empower the consumer by government-NGO partnerships