Why Civil Society Cannot Battle it All Alone: The Roles of Civil Society Environment, Transparent Laws and Quality of Public Administration in Political Corruption Mitigation

Utilizing a large-N data that covers about 20000 observations from about 200 countries from 1789 to 2018 from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, and anchored on institutionalism as an overarching theory, and the nascent literature on civil-society corruption nexus, the paper looks at the predictive capacity of civil society environment, transparency of laws and predictability of enforcement, and rigorousness and impartiality of public administration in political corruption. Using a four-step hierarchical multiple regression, results show that while civil society and its structure is a significant determinant of the level of political corruption, the introduction of transparency of laws and predictability of enforcement, rigorousness, and impartiality of public administration, and civil society environment in the regression model accounted for additional variance in political corruption. Practical and theoretical implications, particularly on civil society-corruption nexus and the broader corruption-democracy linkage, are discussed

Conditional and Differential? Locating the Role of Civil Society in Anti-corruption Policy Outcomes [védés előtt]

Quantitative, and to a much lesser degree qualitative, research is the dominant approach to corruption. However, the call to investigate the contextual dependencies of corruption is brought about by the failure of anti-corruption approaches that do not tackle other actors or institutions and issues simultaneously. One approach that can tackle the complex nature of corruption from this perspective but remains wanting in corruption research is Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Much more limited is the application of QCA in understanding civil society’s anti-corruption role. The supposed place of civil society in anti-corruption is even more compounded by contemporary events that directly assault their presence in countries, regardless of the type of government or economic development in place. This closing of civic space phenomenon is part of the broader democratic backsliding or autocratization that has pervaded even long standing and consolidated democracies. Locating the place of civil society given such contexts poses a daunting challenge, as one may ask: if democratic grounds are backsliding, where are anti-corruption efforts anchored on? As such, the dissertation intends to look at configurations of (democratic) political institutions that enhance or mitigate corruption while trying to locate the position occupied by civil society in this respect. Taking a cue from the civil society-corruption nexus and the broader democracy-corruption linkage scholarship, with institutionalism as an overarching theory, the dissertation hopes to contribute to the discourse via three related studies. Results • The first of these serves as a springboard for the argument that civil society cannot battle corruption all alone. While internal civil society characteristics may have a part in corruption mitigation, through a large-N quantitative analysis, the study highlights the importance of civil society environment, transparency of laws and predictability of enforcement and rigorousness and impartiality of public administration on corruption. • Noting that the formula derived from regression analyses shows the average net effects of the independent variables, the second study looks at the combinatorial effects of conditions necessary and/or sufficient for the outcome high perceived corruption to occur through fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). o The configurational analysis of 33 episodes of contemporary autocratization from the third wave (1994- 2017) confirm the conditionality of civil society’s effects as the condition robust civil society organizations combines with the presence of extensive media freedoms and simultaneously the presence of wide and independent public deliberations to produce the outcome high perceived corruption. o The pathway to corruption in these states experiencing autocratization also includes two sufficient conditions: the presence of high political exclusion as well as the absence of sociopolitical integration. No necessary precondition was found for the outcome presence of high perceived corruption. Given the pretext of equifinality and multifinality in QCA, the third study extends the second but in the context of 30 democracies that did not experience substantial autocratization episodes in the same given period. o The results are interesting although not surprising under the theoretical underpinnings of QCA: the absence of high perceived corruption in non-autocratizing states is not brought about by robust civil society organizations (in their presence or absence; or individually or in combination with other conditions) but instead by the presence of wide and independent public deliberations combined with the absence of high political exclusion. The latter is also a necessary condition for the outcome of interest. o While the conditionality of civil society’s effect is confirmed in the second study, the third highlights the possibility of the differential impacts of civil society depending on context. Limitations of the dissertation are discussed and venues for future research are presented

Patronage Politics and Clientelism in Housing Welfare: The Case of Gawad Kalinga (GK) Villages in Parañaque City, The Philippines

Patronage politics has become a defining charac-teristic of the Philippine political landscape. Clientelism, a form of patronage, is often studied as disadvantageous in governance and democratic consolidation. While the patron-client framework remains the most influential among schools of thought that explain Philippine politics, transforma-tions in a clientelist exchange are evident given changes in political, cultural and economic settings. Using this frame of new clientelism, we look at and revisit the structure of patronage in the provision of housing welfare in the Philippines, focusing now on the roles of three important actors— the nongov-ernmental organization, the state through the local government and the recipients or beneficiaries— in an urban setting, thus deviating from the traditional conception of patronage and clientelist politics. This relationship of clientelist exchange is presented in our Accomplice-Principal-Accessory (APA) model ofclientelism, with the local government unit of Parañaque City as accomplice, the Gawad Kalinga (GK) as the principal agent, and the recipients or beneficiaries as accessories in the provision of hous-ing welfare

Institutional change, corruption and e-government transformation in the Philippines: The Benigno Simeon Aquino III administration

Institutions direct the enduring features of political and social life and of all human behavior. While standard institutionalisms explain why these institutions continue to exist, they fall short in providing a coherent explanation for why they change. Similarly, the focus of mainstream theories of institutional change on crises as structures, disregarding agential properties, challenges their explanatory ability. Anchored on the theory of institutional change and through the utilization of archival research and documentary analysis, this paper addresses the transformation of domestic political institutions by determining the nature and direction of institutional change in the Benigno Simeon Aquino III (PNoy) administration's (2010–2016) e-governance agenda. His and the country's resolve to follow daang matuwid (straight and righteous path) saw the transformation of damaged public institutions into more transparent and responsive ones. This would not have been possible, even with the presence of both domestic and international triggers, had the President not used his institutional preferences and capacity to effectuate the change needed. Arguably, while the institutional context creates both opportunities and constraints for policy makers, the purposive actors decide whether to seek change in their structural environments. Keywords: anticorruption, e-governance, human agency, institutional change, institution

Of digital footprints and transparency: E-government maturity and corruption in the Philippines

Why has corruption in the Philippines exacerbated despite efforts from the state to curb it? Why have governmental reforms seemingly failed in addressing issues of transparency and accountability? These raise several questions about the strength of anticorruption institutions and mechanisms and therefore of governance reforms of the state. In an attempt to understand the curious relationship of the Philippines with corruption, the study looked at the impact of automation on two important aspects of governance: elections and education. Research on e-governance document the import of ICT use and automation in the government in the reduction of opportunities for corruption. Similarly significant is the organizational capability, including the state of human and financial resources, leadership and culture, of the agencies to carry out far reaching information systems policies and programs. Thus, employing the e-government maturity framework by Kim and Grant (2010) and the extant literature on the e-government- corruption nexus, the paper assesses the cases of the Philippines Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and the Department of Education (DepEd). Using data culled from secondary sources and interviews, the results provide that While both agencies of government have introduced automation in the fulfillment of their mandates and in the improvement of transactions within their offices, the COMELECs efforts lag behind those of the DepEd despite the presence of technological breakthroughs. The state of human and financial resources and that of leadership and organizational culture in these institutions perhaps point as well to their readiness in implementing far-reaching information and e-government systems. Only a capable agency can successfully draft, create and implement a system that not only delivers basic services to its constituents efficiently but also one that has the capacity to lessen or minimize the possible occurrence of corruption in these transactions. With the creation of a separate Department of Information and Communications Technology under the PNoy administration through Republic Act 10844, much is expected in the transformation of the e-government programs and their implementation in each of the agencies of the government

Street-based corruption in the Philippines: Exploring kotong frame alignments between enforcers and motorists in a city in Metro Manila

Corruption is a pervasive problem in the Philippines. Previous studies have focused on institutions and culture as factors behind the persistence of corruption in the country. Moreover, the emphasis has been on corruption that occurs within the bureaucracy. In this qualitative, exploratory study, we explored the possibility of the shared understanding, the frame alignments between the local state authorities and drivers as a possible explanation behind the persistence of street-based form of corruption known as kotongan or kotong. Based on the interviews conducted, results showed that there is a shared understanding between state authorities and drivers as to what kotong is, the benefits they derive from the transaction, and the factors behind the acceptance of kotong. © Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2017