concepts, scope, and potential

Returning the ill-gotten gains of corrupt officials to their rightful owners has become a global priority since the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). Assets acquired through corruption and then transferred abroad are part of the broader phenomenon of illicit financial flows (IFFs), which deprive developing countries of their domestic resources. According to some estimates, tens of billions of dollars are lost to different kinds of IFFs from Africa every year. Asset recovery as envisaged by UNCAC offers a path to repatriate the share of IFFs that relates to corruption, although the total amount recovered so far pales in comparison to the estimated outflows. How can asset recovery serve development goals? Practitioners and activists can build on a range of initiatives from development cooperation, mutual legal assistance, and rules concerning financial transparency. New policies in the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom show how key jurisdictions increasingly take a progressive stance on asset recovery and work with developing countries to overcome obstacles. Yet challenges and blind spots remain. To make the most of the existing tools, political objectives must be aligned across several dimensions of foreign policy and financial regulation

Following a Global Script?

Since the end of the Cold War, international organizations and states have developed programs to promote (good) governance at the country level. Regional organizations have gained an important role in governance transfer because they constitute an intermediary level of agency between the nation-state and global institutions. This paper maps the governance transfer of nine regional organizations in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. We analyze the objectives, approaches, and instruments used to promote the creation and transformation of governance institutions in target countries. This comparison shows that similar standards and instruments have been adopted throughout the areas of study, in line with the notion of a global governance script. At the same time, we find important differences with regard to when and how the regional organizations prescribe and promote “good” governance institutions at the national level. Research on diffusion and comparative regionalism is ill- equipped to account for this double finding of increasing similarities and persisting differences. The paper calls for a more agency-centered approach that conceptualizes governance transfer as an institutional choice by states. We identify factors that elicit states’ demand for governance transfer, on the one hand, and that shape its institutional design, on the other.Seit Ende des Kalten Krieges haben Internationale Organisationen und Staaten Programme entwickelt, um „Gutes Regieren“ in Mitgliedstaaten und Drittländern zu fördern. Regionalorganisationen sind als Vermittler zwischen nationalen und globalen Institutionen wichtig für solche Governance-Transfers. Dieses Papier erfasst den Governance-Transfer von neun Regionalorganisationen in den Amerikas, Afrika, Asien und im Nahen Osten. Dabei analysieren wir die Ziele, Ansätze und Instrumente für die Schaffung oder Veränderung von Institutionen in Zielländern. Dieser Vergleich zeigt Ähnlichkeiten bei Standards und Instrumenten, was auf die Ausbreitung eines „globalen Skripts“ für Governance hindeutet. Allerdings unterscheiden sich Organisationen auch darin, wie und wann sie bestimmte Governance-Institutionen in Mitgliedstaaten vorschreiben und fördern. Die Diffusions- und Vergleichende Regionalismusforschung ist auf einen solchen Doppelbefund schlecht vorbereitet. Unser Papier schlägt einen stärker auf Akteure fokussierten Ansatz vor, der Governance-Transfer als Konsequenz staatlicher Entscheidungen ansieht. Wir identifizieren Faktoren, die einerseits die Nachfrage nach solchen Prozessen und andererseits ihre institutionelle Ausgestaltung beeinflussen