Corruption and state capture have emerged after the fall of the Berlin wall as main threats to democracy, economic growth and a rule based international world worder. The United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNACAC, 2003), the Sustainable Developing Goals (Goal 16), the European Union and the United States all pledged to eradicate corruption, defined as a policy problem and uphold government integrity. In addition to being a developmental problem, as pointed out by Nobel prize laureates (2024) Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, corruption is thus increasingly recognized on the global scale as a major threat to fundamental human rights principles, such as non-discrimination and equal participation in all aspects of social and political life. Globalization and the end of the Cold War ushered in novel, relatively unregulated venues where individuals found new opportunities to take advantage of to make illicit gains across borders. Starting with 2003, an international normative order based on public integrity has slowly emerged, accompanied by conditionalities for international aid and, more recently, sanctions. The election of President Trump and the suspension of the enforcement of Foreign Corrupt Practice Act by his administration leads the world in uncharted territories. In this course, we explore corruption as a policy problem (creating social and economic consequences) and discuss anti-corruption not merely as a repressive tool but as the challenge for societies to formulate, implement, and sustain policies that promote merit and fairness over patronage, clientelism, and corruption in the allocation of shared resources. We also review the anti-corruption experiences of the past 25 years, investigate the right balance between a country’s sovereignty and international anticorruption interventions, and discuss how globalization can survive crony capitalism. Group and individual class exercises will allow students to gain experience in how to benchmark good governance, diagnose corruption, design a stakeholder analysis for corruption problems, plan contextual strategies, build coalitions, and get familiar with key concepts such as crony capitalism, kleptocracy, state capture, and clientelism.

#Knowledge and understanding By the end of the course, students will: - Acquire knowledge on the growing community of international anticorruption and rule of law building, the fastest growing market in development. - Learn how to diagnose the prevalence of corruption and its causes (context diagnosis). - Learn how to measure corruption across countries and time so to assess effectiveness of policy interventions (measuring corruption). - Learn how to analyse corruption mechanisms for different policy areas (market competition, health, education), deconstruct the policy failures which generate corruption (corruption as a policy problem) and identify solutions. #Application of knowledge - Gain experience in reading and coding governance indicators. - Become acquainted with engaging in critical discussion in front of a larger audience, communicating questions or comments in a clear way to the rest of the class, thus stimulating a general debate. - Develop policy analysis skills.

This course addresses the core themes, theories and methods within the field of corruption studies. Teams link of the course: https://rb.gy/if4ie1

Heidenheimer, A. J., Johnston, M., & LeVine, V. T. (Eds.). (2024). Political corruption: A handbook. Taylor & Francis. Available on Google Books Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2015). The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption. Cambridge University Press. Available on Google Books

On-site interactive lecture (90 min) on site followed by a next day seminar session (90 min). Guest speakers, group presentations and exercises fill in the seminar. Please note that some class times may be changed due to guest availability. The guests will be interviewed by professor and class rather than lecture, to keep a dynamic format. #Chat GPT policy. The professor checks all the assignments for originality and requires that if Chapt GPT is used a clear specification is made on why and how it was used, adding the specific request made by the student.

The course grade will be based on continuous assessment, designed to fully prepare students as skilled analysts. Specifically, the grade for this course will be determined on the basis of the following components: 1) Assignment 1 – group work (25%). The students will join a group and work jointly to prepare a 4-5000 words essay and a ppt presentation on corruption and anticorruption in a given sector. The essay must be submitted at the end of the semester on the exam day after the presentations calendar is below. The feedback from the presentation will serve to finalize the essay. A template will be provided. 2) Assignment 2 – individual work (40%). Students will individually work to check government transparency in one country starting from the existing Transparency Index (T-Index). and complete it with new relevant information for political corruption. This assignment has two distinct parts and three seminar are dedicated to discussing the methodology to be used and receiving feedback. 2.1 At the end of week 4, submit an Excel sheet for a selected or assigned country with your checks and confirmation/infirmation of coding for the de facto transparency of your country of choice. This counts as 50% of assignment 2. 2.2 At the end of week 9, submit the xls sheet assessing the state of political finance transparency for your country case on the basis of the questionnaire discussed in session 4 seminar. Every student will be able to present their findings during weeks 8 and 9. This counts as 50% of assignment 2. 3) Class participation (10%). This includes a peer review on group work and a social media blogpost or short self or group video communicating an insight developed in the research or the overall class. Students are allowed to be absent a maximum of 3 classes. Each extra missing class, up to 2, can be compensated with a book review of 1000 words, which will be checked for originality and graded pass/fail. Group topics: 1. Undue influence (European institutions and United States) 2. Oligarchy (Russia, India, United States, Italy) 3. Corruption and public contracting (government favoritism) 4. Corruption and the Pharma sector 5. Corruption and anticorruption in international organizations (FIFA and UN Oil for Food) 6. Corruption and anticorruption in heritage 7. Corruption and anticorruption in tax evasion 8. Preventive anticorruption in the European Union: Whistleblowing regulation, Money Laundering regulation, and OLAF 9. Repressive anticorruption policies. Law enforcement – EPPO and the EU arrest warrant 10. Corruption and security: Afghanistan and Russia

The multisite European Center for Anticorruption and State-Building (ERCAS, www.againstcorruption.eu) chaired by Professor Pippidi owns databases on corruption, and has several donor clients (such as World Bank, UNODC, European institutions, ANAC). MA theses are encouraged based on both quantitative and qualitative (country studies, international organizations, policy analysis designs) using the data and the real clients cooperating with the centre. The best will be published as working papers (see examples in the WP collection of www.againstcorruption.eu).