Summary of the impact

Because corruption involves illegal activities of public officials, data about the scale and objects of bribery is not readily available. Without such evidence, policymakers are handicapped in identifying points for effective intervention. Rose's survey research on post-Communist countries developed innovative measures to monitor the payment of bribes by citizens for public services. Transparency International (TI) is the world's leading non-governmental organisation campaigning against corruption, and it has incorporated the survey methodology in its key research tool, the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB). From 2008 to 2013 Transparency International has conducted three major rounds of Global Corruption Barometer surveys that interviewed upwards of 450,000 people in more than 110 countries on every continent. Results have been disseminated worldwide through the 90 national chapters of Transparency International. Rose's expertise in sampling has also been used to improve value-for-money expenditure on GCB surveys in the many developing countries it covers.

Underpinning research

Context: Since the fall of the Berlin Wall more than two dozen post-Communist countries have been faced with the challenge of transforming their political, economic and social institutions, and replacing the legacy of corrupt regimes with public services delivered in accord with the rule of law. Policymakers in intergovernmental agencies such as the World Bank and the UK Know How Fund quickly learned that assumptions appropriate to modern democratic market societies did not fit the problems facing half of Europe and Eurasia.

Richard Rose, as Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy (CSPP) at Strathclyde, has been involved in more than 100 nationwide sample surveys in post-Communist countries. Each round of surveys asked a common core of questions, creating a unique source for monitoring trends within nations, and comparisons across nations. This research, which is independent of government, produced "bottom-up" evaluations of the relation of citizens with 17 new post-Communist regimes through surveys collectively described as the New Europe, New Russia and New Baltic Barometers. The compilation of the Barometer surveys drew on Rose's extensive experience of working with survey institutes on the collection of data, publishing public policy analyses of major services of welfare states across the OECD world, and a network of contacts with policymakers and research funders across Europe and in intergovernmental agencies. The research has been financially supported by the ESRC, the Austrian Ministry of Science, Central Bank research funds in Austria and Sweden, the World Bank, the EU, the National Science Foundation and other bodies.

In January 2012 Rose commenced a four-year ESRC project on the Global Experience of Corruption, undertaking secondary analysis of questions he pioneered and which are now incorporated in multi-national surveys of the Latin American Public Opinion Project, the Afrobarometer, the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) and the Eurobarometer, as well as Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer. The evaluation of concepts, question phrasing and answers are published by the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at Strathclyde and distributed internationally to the policy community and academic researchers through the Anti-Corruption Research Network of Transparency International.

Key findings: from this on-going research (1993 - 2013) include the following important insights:

• Having contact with a public service is a precondition of paying a bribe. Barometer surveys therefore ask whether people have contacted different services before asking about bribe payment. Contact is much more frequent for health and education than for courts and taxation.
• The payment of bribes varies between services. Even if high contact services are less corrupt, they may still have the same absolute level of bribery as more corrupt low-contact services.
• Opportunities for low-level public officials to seek bribes vary with their discretion in delivering services and with whether it is a monopoly or users have not-for-profit or market alternatives.
• Laws and directives applying equally to all services are insufficient. The reduction of bribery also requires measures that target specific features of particular services. These can include repealing requirements for permits that are the object of bribes; computerizing marking of student examinations; and posting publicly information about queuing for hospital admission.
• Contact with public services varies through the life cycle of an individual, thus increasing the likelihood of individuals at some point in time paying a bribe.
• Paying bribes and public perceptions of government corruption negatively influence trust in political institutions and support for democratic regimes.

Key researchers at Strathclyde

1. Professor Richard Rose, Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy (in the School of Government and Public Policy) from 1976 to 2006 then from 2012 to present) was responsible for the design of all Barometer questionnaires, publications and dissemination.
2. William Mishler, Visiting Professor at Strathclyde since 1994, has been a key collaborator in data analysis and academic publications. He is currently on leave from the University of Arizona and is a Visiting Professor in School of Government and Public Policy (Jan 2012 - Dec 2015).

References to the research

Notes on the quality of the underpinning research

The UK Data Archive at Essex has accepted more than 100 Barometer surveys for distribution and use worldwide. Peer group assessment of the quality of this work is demonstrated by the ESRC decision approving a £456k grant to the CSPP for work in 2012-15 with Transparency International as project partner. Rose has also been invited to give seminars at the University of Oxford and London School of Economics on this body of research.

Details of the impact

Process from research to impact

In 1993 a group of ex-World Bank employees with third world experience founded Transparency International (TI) in Berlin to undertake a global campaign to reduce government corruption. When TI launched its Research Advisory Committee in 1998, Rose became a pro bono founder member along with other specialists from the World Bank, Yale and Göttingen universities, development agencies and international management consultants. Transparency International is an evidence-based global advocacy organisation, which has been responsible for commissioning global surveys of corruption since 2003. It uses the evidence from these surveys to lobby organisations such as the World Bank, European Commission and The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

A key TI resource is the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), which includes questions on the payment of bribes for major public services [Source A]. Since 2008 there have been three Global Corruption surveys; in 2009 (covering views of 73,132 people in 69 countries); in 2010/11 (covering more than 100,000 people in 100 countries) and in 2013 (covering 114,000 people in 107 countries).

The following evaluation has been given by Dr. Robin Hodess, the Group Director of Advocacy and Research for TI:

"Transparency International is highly supportive of the work undertaken by Professor Richard Rose on studying corruption issues around the world. We have been able to draw upon the academic expertise of Richard Rose for a number of our research tools. Most significantly, the design of Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer survey, which this year will cover more than 100 countries on every continent, has been influenced by the contribution of Professor Richard Rose, a longstanding member of our Research Advisory Committee. His specialist knowledge of sampling problems in developing countries has been of value in evaluating proposals for fieldwork and his innovative module of questions measuring the experience of bribery has enhanced the value of the data that we will distribute to inter-governmental organizations, the global media and, via our chapters in 90 countries to relevant policy-makers and the wider anti-corruption community" [Source B]

Types of impact (2008 -2013)

1. Shaping and influencing the work of Transparency International. Rose has contributed to the design of the Global Corruption Barometer surveys since 2009. His expertise in the area of data collection led them to focus on bribery and corruption in public services. His input ensured that these surveys included questions on paying bribes for major public services such as health, education, police, tax collection, and offices issuing permits, and stressed the importance of asking whether non-payment of a bribe was due to non-contact with services or delivery according to the rule of law. Rose was also consulted on the content of TI presentations at the European Survey Research Association Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 15-19 July 2013 [Source C], which brought together producers of major multi-national continental surveys, sponsoring organisations and TI's Research and Advocacy Team to suggest ways in which the design of questionnaires may be expanded in order to provide more and better data that can be used in the worldwide effort to reduce corruption.

2. Efficiency within Transparency International. This non-governmental organisation sub contracts out large-scale survey work to global survey providers, who tender for the contracts. Rose advises TI on this aspect of `value for money' and the cost per country. In preparation for the 2013 GCB survey, Rose evaluated key characteristics of previous surveys on a country by country, and variable by variable basis and advised on the suitability of different sampling methods proposed, e.g. face-to-face, telephone, via internet in the developing countries included in the total survey budget of more than €750,000 for fieldwork.

3. Advocacy campaigns: TI uses the GCB in its advocacy campaigns that have an impact on national governments and major intergovernmental organizations. It maintains a substantial Communications and Advocacy staff in Berlin, with a website [Sources D and G] that is international both in content and reach. It has access to intergovernmental institutions concerned with reducing corruption, including OECD, the European Commission, the World Bank and UN agencies. To put pressure on national governments, it has 90 national chapters that take initiatives on their own and draw on TI's central resources and, where there is strong resistance from the national government, as in Russia, seek to mobilize international opinion and institutions to put pressure on their national government. In addition to the work of TI, Rose disseminates the results of his own research into corruption in Russia to policy makers and related organisations in the UK, such as the Serious Fraud Office.

4. Publicizing and fighting corruption worldwide. From 2008 to 2013 Transparency International has conducted three major rounds of Global Corruption Barometer surveys that interviewed upwards of 450,000 people in more than 110 countries on every continent. The Global Corruption Barometer now includes questions about whether and how citizens would seek to take actions to report bribes and reduce corruption. Transparency International uses evidence from its 2013 Global Barometer Corruption report to endorse recommendations to give national citizens specific tools that they can use to fight against corruption. (P.4 of its 2013 Report, on website) In addition, in this period questions about contact and paying bribes have been asked in surveys of the EBRD Life in Transition survey of post-Communist countries, the Latin American Public Opinion Project and the Eurobarometer. The results of these surveys are disseminated worldwide on a multi-lingual basis through Transparency International's Secretariat in Berlin and 90 national chapters, through national offices of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and through the US Aid for International Development. Since they are in the public domain and available via the internet, the evidence can be picked up by national media and by elected representatives seeking to put pressure on governments that tolerate their officials extracting bribes from citizens. [Sources E and F]. Leading members of TI also highlight the need to fight against corruption [Sources H and I]. The importance of this corruption research is illustrated by acceptance for attendance at 23-25 September, 2013 joint CSPP-Transparency International Workshop in Berlin on use of surveys in combatting corruption. Representatives of the World Bank, European Commission, OECD, European Bank for Research and Development, UN Development Programme, UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the UK Department for International Development attended.

5. Increasing awareness of the importance of contact with specific public services. The dissemination of surveys of the experience of bribery has moved the discourse around combatting corruption from the fight against `corrupt countries' to pinpoint problems with specific services. Health care and education, the two services that Rose's research has identified as among those most likely to involve bribery, are of central importance in achieving three of the eight Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations. "As the Global Corruption Barometer 2013 shows, corruption is seen to be running through the foundations of the democratic and legal process in many countries, affecting public trust in political parties, the judiciary and the police, among other key institutions" from `Key findings' GCB survey 2013 [Source J].

Summary: The political and economic significance of bribery is far greater than the sums that actually change hands as payments. Corrupt public affiliations tend to reduce support for a regime and provide an incentive for street demonstrations that call for its downfall, as has been shown in Moscow, Istanbul and Cairo. Bribery reduces the effectiveness and increases the cost of health, education and other investments in human capital. The rents collected as bribes reduce the efficiency of enterprises and increase costs to their consumers. Bribery also handicaps the competitiveness of enterprises in an increasingly globalized economy, discourages direct foreign investment and wastes foreign aid.

Sources to corroborate the impact

A. Global Corruption Barometer http://www.transparency.org/research/gcb

B. Statement from Group Director Advocacy and Research. Transparency International

C. Document: `Understanding cross-country public perceptions of bribery and corruption' by Deborah Hardoon, Research Manager, Transparency International

D. Transparency International website http://www.transparency.org.uk/

E. Pressure on Governments
http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/eu_leaders_must_end_financial_secrecy

F. Pressure on Governments
http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/financial_secrecy_in_the_spotlight

G. Advocacy: http://www.transparency.org.uk/get-involved/advocacy

H. Link to public lecture by leading member of Transparency International
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid9217793001?bctid=2224106084001

I. Frank Vogl, Waging War on Corruption: Inside the Movement Fighting the Abuse of Power (2012) Rowman & Littlefield

J. Document — detailing the results of GCB Survey 2013.