THE CORRUPTION IN
FRAGILE STATES BLOG

By Diana Chigas and Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church We were asked to identify the top challenges and “good practices” for developing countries...

By Hope Schaitkin New material on social norms change seems to be appearing every week. It can be hard to keep up with it, let alone...

By Kiely Barnard-Webster and Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church With every experimental action, there needs to be feedback (informal and formal monitoring and evaluation), reflection and adaptation. Kuleta Haki, an experiment in collective corruption resistance in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), offered a unique opportunity to learn about systemic corruption in the criminal justice sector (CJS), and the possibilities of collective action as an effective response. The recent Exter

By Kiely Barnard-Webster The central contribution of the Network [for its members] is that members no longer feel alone in the fight against corruption during their individual actions of resistance. – Kuleta Haki Transition Review, December 2017 Is collective action effective for fighting corruption in fragile states? For one collective action effort, members now prefer to resist with a group behind them. Kuleta Haki, an experimental anti-corruption project, celebrated

By Ben Cislaghi In this post Ben Cislaghi discusses two points for thinking about norms and corruption: first, social norms are not an...

By Caryn Peiffer In this post Dr Caryn Peiffer discusses her research on the impact of anti-corruption awareness raising programs....

By Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church and Russell Hathaway The literature on social norms and corruption needs to improve, and definitions need...

By Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church and Russell Hathaway Read our newest work on this topic, Understanding Social Norms: A Reference Guide for...

By Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church and Russell Hathaway In this post Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church and Russell Hathaway begin their deep dive...

By Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church There are a number of shortcomings in the predominant approaches underlying anti-corruption programming...

By Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church When programming does not fit the issue it is meant to address, creating significant change becomes highly unlikely. As Diana Chigas and I posit in our paper Taking the Blinders Off: Questioning How Development Assistance is Used to Combat Corruption , much current work assumes corruption is a “simple” problem and therefore reacts with a “simple” (e.g. predictable cause-effect based) solution. The academic debate has unintentionally contributed

By Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church Corruption is a complex, dynamic, and often contradictory phenomenon. It is hidden yet widely acknowledged, harmful yet at times beneficial, where a victim today can be a perpetrator or beneficiary tomorrow. It distorts the rule of law, keeps essential basic services out of reach of the poor, exacerbates grievances, and buttresses illicit power structures within the state apparatus, all the more so in fragile and conflict-affected states. The int

In early 2015 CDA partnered with RCN Justice & Démocratie to develop a detailed theory of change focusing on the interconnectedness