Parliamentary Transparency and Accountability

This report presents and discusses what evidence exists about initiatives to promote transparency among legislators, members of parliament (MPs), and legislative processes and what impact this has had on legislative accountability. In this report we distinguish between two types of accountability: vertical (in which citizens play a direct role in holding the powerful to account) and horizontal (in which legislators hold the executive to account). With regard to vertical accountability, the effects of three policy initiatives are reviewed: i) increased information about MPs including through ICTs; ii) disclosure of MPs’ assets; and iii) disclosure of MPs’ election expenses and funders. Compared to more recent transparency initiatives, such as registers of beneficial ownership information, these initiatives have had a few years to generate some evidence about impact. In relation to horizontal accountability, the impact of transparency on the effectiveness of Public Accounts Committees is reviewed. The choice to focus on this Committee was also made on the basis of available research

Transparency and Performance

This report presents and discusses the evidence on impact from greater donor transparency, particularly in terms of accountability. This report distinguishes between two types of aid information: information collected and disseminated by donor agencies about the results of their activities (looking closer at results based management), and information open to the public about aid flows (what normally goes under the definition of aid transparency)

Donor Support to Strengthen Public Financial Management in Partner Countries: Outcomes, Experiences, and Ways Forward

This report presents and discusses recent evidence about donor efforts to strengthen public financial management (PFM) in developing countries. This review summarises recent empirical evidence, drawing from recent academic studies, evidence assessments, and donor reviews. It also reviews some recent theoretical contributions in relation to donor approaches to PFM support

Barriers to Increasing Tax Revenue in Developing Countries

A brief review of the literature, informed by comments from a range of tax specialists, suggests four principal groups of reasons why tax systems do not yield higher revenues in many developing countries: (1) Internal political factors (2) Administrative constraints (3) External political factors: multinational companies and other investors (4) The structure of developing country economies However, the issues involved are complex, and simple and direct answers do not exist. Professor (Emeritus) Richard Bird, chair of the Advisory Group of the International Centre for Tax and Development at the Institute for Development Studies, comments that “My more than 50 years of work on these matters in more than 50 countries continues to provide me more with questions than with answers.

Questionable assumptions and unintended consequences: a critical assessment of the international donor community’s fight against corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa

Following 15 years of high policy attention to curbing corruption in developing countries, this thesis concerns the effects of polices induced by the international donor community on curbing corruption in sub-Saharan Africa. I approach this question by assessing, in three stand-alone empirical chapters, the effects increased political competition, economic liberalisation, and the use of judicial punishment for corruption-related crimes have had on curbing corruption in sub-Saharan Africa. In the first empirical chapter, I assess the effect on corruption from increased political competition following the third wave of democratisation. While popular theories propose that political competition helps curb corruption by inducing political accountability, I find instead, in the sub-Saharan African context that in times of tense political competition the incumbent ensures his victory by buying the loyalty of the elite through distributing state resources for private means. This prebendal politics is, in turn, associated with higher levels of corruption. In the second empirical chapter, which concerns economic liberalisation and its effect on corruption, I ask what happens to corruption as the formal institutions governing the market change. Using insights from a case study on Rwanda, I find that corruption transforms rather than disappears in the advent of economic liberalisation. The third empirical chapter concerns the use of punishment for corruption-related crimes. By using politically contextualised information on prosecutions, I find that such anti-corruption interventions risk being used for political ends instead of curbing high level impunity. The overarching conclusion from this research endeavour is that corruption in the subSaharan African context has a political function which makes the reforms prescribed by the donor community difficult, or illogical, to fully comply with. The political functionality of corruption must therefore constitute the analytical cornerstone when developing anti-corruption policies in order to set realistic expectations and avoid unintended consequences

Cabinet size and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

There is frequent public and media concern over the cost of bloated cabinets in many Sub-Saharan African countries. Scholarship on elite clientelism links cabinet positions with corruption and practices that undermine sound policymaking. This article presents new data on the number of ministers in African governments and documents a robust negative association with several measures of governance, both across countries and in a regression framework that exploits within-country variation over time and accounts for various potential confounders. This suggests policymakers, donors, investors, and citizens should pay close attention to the number of ministers appointed to the cabinet. Although the article cautions against simplistic policy prescriptions, a sizable increase in the number of ministers is likely bad news for governance

Targeting Signal Transduction Pathways in Metastatic Breast Cancer: A Comprehensive Review

This review summarizes some of the key signaling pathways involved in tumor progression and some of the novel therapies that are in development for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer patients