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Activitites in 2008
Coordinators:
Emilia Sičáková-Beblavá, Institute of Public Policy, Comenius University, Transparency International Slovakia, Bratislava, Slovakia
Katarína Staroňová, Institute of Public Policy, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
Discussant: Ronald Maclean Abaroa, World Bank
Place: The16th NISPAcee Annual Conference, Bratislava, Slovakia
The coordinators of the WG on Public Sector Transparency invited
contributions for its meeting at the NISPAcee conference 2008 on the
theme:
"Anti-corruption measures in policy making"
The working group session began with a discussion on the classification of
anti-corruption tools from the perspective of policy instruments
stressing legal, information, economic and administrative tools. As for
the information tools, eight papers were presented and discussed. They
focused on the implementation of access to information acts in Slovakia
and Poland, lobbying, transparency of political party financing,
participation of central and local in the decision-making process, the
use of web sites by local governments as well as the use of annual
reports to increase the transparency of the central government level.
Within the framework of economic anti-corruption tools, the
anti-corruption effects of the 2004 active labour market policy reform
in Slovakia was discussed.
The approach to corruption by the utilisation of economic tools was also discussed in concrete practice in Columbia and Romania. Both presentations stressed the importance of leadership and anti-corruption education of local leaders who have the power to implement and enforce anti-corruption tools. Also two anti-corruption administrative tools were presented – the institute of special courts and court management.
Last, but not least, is the issue of sustainability. We found that the level of controversy is not a good guide to sustainability of the reforms. Surprisingly, the ideologically charged changes have high levels of sustainability even when they were initially controversial and the steps that have proven to be less sustainable are those where specific interest groups remain opposed and where the reform has not managed to create a powerful constituency in favour of the new status quo.
This Working group was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency.
Price: 
