Transparency International in search of a constituency: the franchising of the global anticorruption movement

The post-Cold War political map displays three major developments, which deserve close attention: the global expansion of democracy; the growth and changing nature of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs); and the evolution of corruption and anticorruption from a non-issue into a global concern at all levels of decision-making. Linking all three developments is the birth of a new anticorruption actor in May 1993: Transparency International (TI), a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) based in Berlin whose mission was recently redefined as ‘to work to create change towards a world free of corruption’. Although the global anticorruption movement is wider than TI, this NGO has gained the reputation of the most prominent civil society “corruption fighter” at the global level. Despite frequent references to its local constituencies and bottom-up approach to internal governance, TI is not a typical grass-root NGO. It was founded by a group of high profile people, “grey suits”, from international organisations. In less than a decade, TI has moved from being a tiny “briefcase” NGO to become a franchised and complex organisation: it comprises approximately 90 National Chapters of a variable size and nature. TI had to look downwards in search of national constituencies where most of the anticorruption instruments it battled for at the international level need to be ratified, implemented and evaluated. The purpose of this paper is to assess the process of franchising of Transparency International, the implications it had upon its internal governance and the variations that can be found across its constituent parts, the National Chapters

The regulation of conflicts of interest in parliament: The case of the Portuguese Assembleia da República

In recent years, the problematic relationship between conflicts of interest and corruption has been a sensitive one to democracy. Although conflicts of interest have not always resulted in corruption, they do constitute an important opportunity structure for such illicit behaviour. The Portuguese attempt at regulating conflicts of interest in parliament has been paradigmatic: eight legislative interventions to the first Statute of MPs in less than two decades and parliament was still unable to create an appropriate ethical framework to prevent financial impropriety deriving from the accumulation of the representative mandate with other outside jobs and activities. The incremental nature of adjustments, the peculiar “tailor made” nature of legislation and the importation of regulatory models “in place” abroad, raise important aspects in regard both to the scope and efficacy of the instruments adopted as well as the legislators’ intentions and willingness to move on with the necessary reforms. This paper attempts to assess the regulatory performance and reform efforts of the Portuguese Assembleia da República in addressing MPs’ conflicts of interest through the analysis of the control framework adopted, namely, rules of disclosure and legal constraints to accumulation

The strategic relevance of business relationships: a preliminary assessment

The ubiquitous contention within the Industrial Networks literature - that business relationships are one of the firm´s most important resources - has not been, in our viewpoint, thoroughly explored. Hence we argue that the ‘Resource-based View of the Firm’ (‘RBV’) may complement the network-based reasoning on the strategic relevance of business relationships. A theoretical framework is proposed – a competence-based view of the firm – which solves RBV´s terminological and inconsistency problems and, more importantly, assures compatibility with the network perspective´s assumptions. The possibility of cross-fertilizing the Industrial Networks and RBV theories seems not only real, but also conceptually profitable for both theoretical fields.Business Relationships, Industrial Networks, Resource-Based View of the Firm, Competence-Based View of the Firm

Understanding capital structures for companies in the renewable energy market

In order to understand renewable energy companies’ financing decisions, we analyzed 33 E.U. and 17 U.S. renewable energy producers from 2007 to 2014 and later analyzed EDP Renováveis and some of its peers in order to identify any patterns concerning their financing decisions. Our results were inconclusive but possibly suggest that pecking order theory partially explains capital structure decisions. Moreover, we believe business risk is an important determinant of financial structures. It seems that leverage is influenced by the way firms sell energy to the market and the way governments support their activity. The longer is the regulatory guidance provided by governments, the greater is the certainty concerning future expected cash flows which will consequently translate into higher levels of leverage.Com a intenção de perceber de que forma as empresas produtoras de energias renováveis se financiam, analisámos 33 empresas da União Europeia e 17 empresas dos Estados Unidos. De seguida, analisámos a EDP Renováveis individualmente assim como três concorrentes da empresa para identificar algum padrão nas suas decisões de financiamento. Embora inconclusivos, os nossos resultados indicam que a teoria de pecking order explica parcialmente as suas estruturas de capital. Adicionalmente, a nossa pesquisa leva-nos a acreditar que o risco de negócio é um determinante importante das estruturas financeiras destas empresas. Existem indícios de que a alavancagem financeira está relacionada com a forma como as empresas vendem a energia no mercado e com a forma como os governos apoiam a sua actividade. Parece que maior é a orientação prospectiva da política regulatória fornecida pelos governos ao mercado, maior é a certeza quanto a futuros fluxos de caixa e consequentemente, maiores serão os níveis de alavancagem das empresas do sector

Regulating Ethics in Parliaments: Measuring Regime Robustness

Ethics regulation in parliaments has grown significantly over the last decades, as a result of political scandals, public outcry, and policy diffusion promoted by international organizations. Ethics regulatory regimes vary according to the focus of the norms (compliance vs. integrity or transparency vs. sanctions) and according to the degree of externalization of oversight and enforcement mechanisms (external to parliament, internal, or mixed). The mere existence of regulation says little about how strong these regimes are. Drawing on original data collected through an institutional checklist of 21 indicators, we develop an Ethics Regulation Robustness Index to measure the scope of norms, the strictness of sanctions, and the powers granted to oversight and enforcement bodies in 17 European parliaments. Our findings suggest that the externality of the oversight and enforcement is not a good predictor of the robustness of the ethics regulations.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Understanding corruption through the analysis of court case content: research note

Purpose The two main objectives of this project were to advance knowledge about the way corruption and related offences are structured and operate in society and to draw inferences on the efficiency and efficacy of the judicial authorities in handling reported offences with the ultimate goal of improving and effecting control policies. Design/methodology/approach In this research note the authors attempt to explore the relevance of judicial materials. The authors developed an analytical framework to extract information from court case decisions and analysed 838 court cases on corruption and related offences in Portuguese first instance courts for the period 2004–2008 to map the distribution of corruption and related offences, understand the anatomy of corruption as a criminal offence and learn from the judicial system's capacity to investigate, prosecute and trial reported occurrences. Findings Most corruption cases took place in the major metropolitan areas, involved municipalities as passive agents and construction companies as active agents and had to do with urban sprawl and land management policies. Court data also allowed the authors to gauge the areas or sectors of activity more exposed to corruption risks. Generally speaking, these tend to be those areas or sectors characterized by high levels of informality and clientelism, high profitability ratios deriving from political decisions, unbalanced supply-demand of decisional goods and services, disorganised and fragmented regulation, low levels of transparency and insufficient or misguided supervision. Research limitations/implications The framework for analysis is replicable in other contexts with minor adjustments. The major limitation is access to court decisions/narratives. This project was developed in partnership with the Portuguese Public Prosecutor's Office. This has facilitated access to those materials. For those wishing to use the database, the major limitation is that it covers only the period 2004–2008. Practical implications The court narratives confirm that in cases where the complaint is complemented by documentary, audio, video and photographic evidences collected by special investigative means the subsequent production of proof in court is more effective. The data also suggests that cases reported from inside the organisation where the offence takes place are likelier to reach the trial phase, thus reinforcing the need for diversifying and strengthening reporting mechanisms and procedures and the guarantees to those who are willing to collaborate with the auditing and investigative authorities. Social implications The authors contend that court cases of corruption and related offences yield important and useful policy-oriented information that should not be overlooked by decision-makers when upgrading their efforts to fight corruption. Originality/value This research note introduces a novel dataset on corruption court cases in Portugal. The policy significance of this dataset is threefold: (1) it provides decision-makers a more detailed mapping of the volume and distribution of corruption and related offences across the country than that provided by standard judicial statistics; (2) it fosters knowledge on key sociological aspects of the corrupt fact, thus helping decision-makers to understand better the type of actors, objectives, contexts, resources and exchanges involved and (3) it helps to understand the dynamics of judicial proceedings and how certain procedural and institutional features impact on outcomes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

CENTRIST3D : um descritor espaço-temporal para detecção de anomalias em vídeos de multidões

Orientador: Hélio PedriniDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: O campo de estudo da detecção de anomalias em multidões possui uma vasta gama de aplicações, podendo-se destacar o monitoramento e vigilância de áreas de interesse, tais como aeroportos, bancos, parques, estádios e estações de trens, como uma das mais importantes. Em geral, sistemas de vigilância requerem prossionais qualicados para assistir longas gravações à procura de alguma anomalia, o que demanda alta concentração e dedicação. Essa abordagem tende a ser ineciente, pois os seres humanos estão sujeitos a falhas sob condições de fadiga e repetição devido aos seus próprios limites quanto à capacidade de observação e seu desempenho está diretamente ligado a fatores físicos e psicológicos, os quais podem impactar negativamente na qualidade de reconhecimento. Multidões tendem a se comportar de maneira complexa, possivelmente mudando de orientação e velocidade rapidamente, bem como devido à oclusão parcial ou total. Consequentemente, técnicas baseadas em rastreamento de pedestres ou que dependam de segmentação de fundo geralmente apresentam maiores taxas de erros. O conceito de anomalia é subjetivo e está sujeito a diferentes interpretações, dependendo do contexto da aplicação. Neste trabalho, duas contribuições são apresentadas. Inicialmente, avaliamos a ecácia do descritor CENsus TRansform hISTogram (CENTRIST), originalmente utilizado para categorização de cenas, no contexto de detecção de anomalias em multidões. Em seguida, propusemos o CENTRIST3D, uma versão modicada do CENTRIST que se utiliza de informações espaço-temporais para melhorar a discriminação dos eventos anômalos. Nosso método cria histogramas de características espaço-temporais de quadros de vídeos sucessivos, os quais foram divididos hierarquicamente utilizando um algoritmo modicado da correspondência em pirâmide espacial. Os resultados foram validados em três bases de dados públicas: University of California San Diego (UCSD) Anomaly Detection Dataset, Violent Flows Dataset e University of Minesota (UMN) Dataset. Comparado com outros trabalhos da literatura, CENTRIST3D obteve resultados satisfatórios nas bases Violent Flows e UMN, mas um desempenho abaixo do esperado na base UCSD, indicando que nosso método é mais adequado para cenas com mudanças abruptas em movimento e textura. Por m, mostramos que há evidências de que o CENTRIST3D é um descritor eciente de ser computado, sendo facilmente paralelizável e obtendo uma taxa de quadros por segundo suciente para ser utilizado em aplicações de tempo realAbstract: Crowd abnormality detection is a eld of study with a wide range of applications, where surveillance of interest areas, such as airports, banks, parks, stadiums and subways, is one of the most important purposes. In general, surveillance systems require well-trained personnel to watch video footages in order to search for abnormal events. Moreover, they usually are dependent on human operators, who are susceptible to failure under stressful and repetitive conditions. This tends to be an ineective approach since humans have their own natural limits of observation and their performance is tightly related to their physical and mental state, which might aect the quality of surveillance. Crowds tend to be complex, subject to subtle changes in motion and to partial or total occlusion. Consequently, approaches based on individual pedestrian tracking and background segmentation may suer in quality due to the aforementioned problems. Anomaly itself is a subjective concept, since it depends on the context of the application. Two main contributions are presented in this work. We rst evaluate the eectiveness of the CENsus TRansform hISTogram (CENTRIST) descriptor, initially designed for scene categorization, in crowd abnormality detection. Then, we propose the CENTRIST3D descriptor, a spatio-temporal variation of CENTRIST. Our method creates a histogram of spatiotemporal features from successive frames by extracting histograms of Volumetric Census Transform from a spatial representation using a modied Spatial Pyramid Matching algorithm. Additionally, we test both descriptors in three public data collections: UCSD Anomaly Detection Dataset, Violent Flows Dataset, and UMN Datasets. Compared to other works of the literature, CENTRIST3D achieved satisfactory accuracy rates on both Violent Flows and UMN Datasets, but poor performance on the UCSD Dataset, indicating that our method is more suitable to scenes with fast changes in motion and texture. Finally, we provide evidence that CENTRIST3D is an ecient descriptor to be computed, since it requires little computational time, is easily parallelizable and achieves suitable frame-per-second rates to be used in real-time applicationsMestradoCiência da ComputaçãoMestre em Ciência da Computação1406874159166/2015-2CAPESCNP

L'Association des Elèves de l'UniCampo (AAUC) : d'un réseau d'acteurs à une organisation de développement

The main objective of APPRI Workshop was to analyse conditions for implementing alternative action-research practices in partnership for development, taking into account the difficulties of "official" research and of the rural world, faced with the major challenges of sustainable development in the South. One originality of APPRI was to compare experiences from rural zones of Africa, with those of the UNICAMPO Peasants' University set up 10 years ago in the Brazilian Nordeste, a semi-arid region where small holders' farms exhibit some major similarities with those in Drylands Africa. The "Peasants' University" concept was unanimously chosen as a place to unify partnership initiatives bringing together research, rural development officers, farmer's organizations and rural communities. These Peasants' Universities will be places of learning where a common vision is shared for implementing development and environmental improvement activities. The APPRI group unanimously accepted that technical and institutional innovation in partnership is paramount. It needs to be co-constructed from local know-how and scientific and technical knowledge. Information and communication between all those involved in development needs to be revised and strengthened for ore interactivity and efficiency in order to contribute to cultural recognition and social economic transformation of rural communities. L'objectif de l'atelier APPRI était principalement d'analyser les conditions de mise en œuvre de pratiques alternatives de recherche-action en partenariat pour le développement, prenant en compte les difficultés de la recherche "officielle" et du monde rural face aux grands enjeux du développement durable au Sud. Une originalité d'APPRI était de confronter les expériences des zones rurales africaines à celles de l'Université Paysanne UNICAMPO mise en place depuis 10 ans dans le Nordeste brésilien, région semi-aride où les petites exploitations familiales présentent de grandes similitudes avec celles des zones sèches d'Afrique. Le concept d' "Université Paysanne" a été retenu à l'unanimité comme lieu de fédération d'initiatives en partenariat regroupant la recherche, les agents du développement rural, les organisations et groupements de producteurs et les communautés rurales. Ces universités paysannes seront des lieux d'apprentissage où se partage une vision commune pour la mise en œuvre d'actions de développement et de valorisation du milieu destinées. De façon unanime, le groupe APPRI2008 admet que l'innovation technique et institutionnelle en partenariat est centrale. Elle doit être co-construite à partir des savoirs locaux et de la connaissance scientifique et technique. L'information et la communication entre tous les acteurs du développement doivent être repensées et renforcées pour être plus interactives et plus efficaces afin de participer à la reconnaissance culturelle et la transformation sociale et économique des communautés rurales

How is the relationship significance brought about? A critical realist approach

The markets-as-networks theorists contend, at least tacitly, the significance of business relationships for the focal firm – that is, business relationships contribute somewhat to the focal firm’s survival and growth. We do not deny the existence of significant business relationships but sustain, in contrast to the consensus within the Markets-as-Networks Theory, that relationship significance should not be a self-evident assumption. Significance cannot be a taken-for-granted property of each and every one of the focal firm’s business relationships. We adopt explicitly a critical realist position in this conceptual paper and claim that the relationship significance is an event of the business world, whose causes remain yet largely unidentified. Where the powers and liabilities of business relationships (i.e., their functions and dysfunctions) are put to work, inevitably under certain contingencies (namely the surrounding networks and markets), effects result for the focal firm (often benefits in excess of sacrifices, i.e., relationship value) and as a result the relationship significance is likely to be brought about. In addition, the relationship significance can result from the dual influence that business relationships have on a great part of the structure and powers and liabilities of the focal firm, i.e., its nature and scope respectivelyinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio