1. Anticorruption Agencies: Experience to Date
Richard E. Messick
World Bank
February 16, 2006

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. Why Create Them?
Crisis of legitimacy
Need to do “something”

7. 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?

8. 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

9. 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

10. Most Important Reason for Failure?