A Comparative Study of Inequality and Corruption

We argue that income inequality increases the level of corruption through material and normative mechanisms. The wealthy have both greater motivation and opportunity to engage in corruption, while the poor are more vulnerable to extortion and less able to monitor and hold the rich and powerful accountable as inequality increases. Inequality also adversely affects peoples social norms about corruption and beliefs about the legitimacy of rules and institutions, and thereby makes it easier to tolerate corruption as acceptable behavior. Our comparative analysis of 129 countries utilizing two-staged least squares methods with a variety of instrumental variables supports our hypotheses, using different measures of corruption (the World Banks Control of Corruption Index and the Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index). The explanatory power of inequality is at least as important as conventionally accepted causes of corruption such as economic development. We also find a significant interaction effect between inequality and democracy, and evidence that inequality affects norms and perceptions about corruption, using the World Values Survey data. Since corruption also contributes to income inequality, societies often fall into vicious circles of inequality and corruption.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 22. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Globalization, NGOs and Multi-Sectoral Relations

This paper seeks to make sense of the impact of globalization on nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations. We argue that globalization processes have contributed to the rising numbers and influence of NGOs in many countries, and particularly in the international arena. International NGOs and NGO alliances are emerging as increasingly influential players in international decision-making, and we discuss some of the roles they can be expected to play in the future. We consider whether the emergence of domestic and international NGOs as important policy makers strengthens or weakens the future of democratic accountability, and we suggest several patterns of interaction among civil society, government and business in future governance issues.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 1. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Towards A Field of Transnational Studies and a Sociological Transnationalism Research Program

Each day, the news vividly depicts how social life crosses, alters, transcends and even transforms borders and boundaries. The destruction of the World Trade on September 11, 2001, one of the most potent symbols of cross-border western capitalism, by members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network is perhaps the most powerful example of the transnational nature of todays world. These ostensibly novel transnational phenomena and dynamics have clear historical analogues and antecedents. Indeed, human social formations and processes have always crossed borders to a significant degree. Even contemporary nation-states and the nation-state system have been transnationally constituted and shaped over time and space in powerful ways. These forms and processes of transnationality are the focus of a burgeoning yet fragmented body of scholarship particularly across sub-fields of sociology and closely related social science disciplines. But scholars who produce this work generally treat their efforts as unconnected to each other and work on them in isolation. There is thus both tremendous value in and potential for constructing a sociology of transnationalism. In this paper, we develop the four intellectual foundations of this field. These foundations offer a heuristically rich and compelling set of empirical, methodological, theoretical, philosophical, and normative ideas and options for scholarship that cast new light on a range of old sociological concerns such as power, inequality, culture, identity, organizations, and governance. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 24. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Global norms, organisational change: framing the rights-based approach at ActionAid

This article examines the adoption of the rights-based approach (RBA) to development at ActionAid International, focusing in particular on its Education Theme. Although there has been a considerable volume of work that examines the rise of RBA, including in the pages of Third World Quarterly, the power dynamics and conflict involved in shifting to RBA have largely gone unnoticed and explored. Using the methodological tools of discourse analysis and social movement theory on strategic issue framing, I examine how ActionAid leadership worked to ‘sell’ RBA to somewhat-resistant staff and partners. I argue that ActionAid struggled to reconcile its commitment to global rights norms with the ongoing needs-based programming at country-level. This raises important questions about the power dynamics involved when an NGO undergoes a process of organisational change, even when, as is the case with RBA, this is widely seen as a progressive and desirable transition

Évaluation d’impact visant à améliorer le développement (EIAD) : repenser, remanier et réformer

Version anglaise disponible dans la Bibliothèque numérique du CRDI: Impact evaluation for improving development (IE4ID ): rethinking, reshapin

A View from the Top: International Politics, Norms and the Worldwide Growth of NGOs

This article provides a top-down explanation for the rapid growth of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the postwar period, focusing on two aspects of political globalization. First, I argue that international political opportunities in the form of funding and political access have expanded enormously in the postwar period and provided a structural environment highly conducive to NGO growth. Secondly, I present a norm-based argument and trace the rise of a pro-NGO norm in the 1980s and 1990s among donor states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), which has actively promoted the spread of NGOs to non-Western countries. The article ends with a brief discussion of the symbiotic relationship among NGOs, IGOs, and states promoting international cooperation

Aging Dams, Dam Removal, and Sustainable Development

Khagram will discuss adaptive management of existing dams for sustainable development. He will review environmental impacts and mitigation, social impacts, decision making and governance, water quality and human health and safety. Finally, he will talk about decommissioning dams, and policy and practice implications

On Creating Public Value: What Business Might Learn from Government about Strategic Management

Over the past twenty years, scholars from both the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School have worked with public sector executives to develop a concept of "strategy in the public sector". The symbol of this idea became a "strategic triangle", the purpose of which was to focus the attention of government managers on three complex issues they had to consider before committing themselves and their organizations to a particular course of action: • First, what was the important ""public value"" the organization sought to produce? • Second, what ""sources of legitimacy and support"" would be relied upon to authorize the organization to take action and provide the resources necessary to sustain the effort to create that value? • Third, what ""operational capabilities"" (including new investments, innovations and alliances) would the organization rely on (or have to develop) to deliver the desired results? In the following paper, the authors apply this "strategic triangle" to corporate strategy, focusing on the question, "what would it mean for our conceptions of corporate strategy if we started thinking that corporations, too, had to be more systematically concerned about their wider 'legitimacy and support'? In recent years there has been a sharp escalation in the social roles corporations are expected to play. Companies are facing new demands to be accountable not only to shareholders, but also to other stakeholders such as customers, employees, suppliers, local communities and policy makers. As a result of this changing business environment, the authors argue that the concept of organizational strategy developed for government agencies may work as well or even better than traditional business models when applied to business organizations. At a minimum, this is probably true for private sector organizations that operate in intensely politicized environments, or that depend on maintaining a certain kind of social credibility and legitimacy in order to be successful in consumer and investor markets.Version of Recor