KickBack - The Global Anticorruption Podcast KickBack

Dr. Magnus Öhman, senior political finance adviser at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, speaks to the Kickback team. Magnus discusses the challenges of corruption and political trust against the wider global context of increased democratic backsliding. There is specific focus on approaches to tackling the problem of illicit finance in politics, including the potential of artificial intelligence for improving transparency.

Grant Walton, Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy (Australian National University, speaks to Dan Hough about his research on corruption in Papua New Guinea (PNG). A key focus for Grant has been to explore what people understand by corruption in PNG and how this compares to Western understandings of the term. The disconnection between the two has implications for how we approach messaging on countering corruption which risks being ineffective or even backfiring if it does not account for local understandings. Grant also outlines the formal state anti-corruption institutions in place in PNG, leading to discussion on the appropriate roles for external actors in supporting these institutions.

Publications mentioned by Grant in the podcast can be found on his research profile, here: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/people/academic/grant-walton?tb=publication

Professor Dan Hough (University of Sussex), Professor Elizabeth Dávid-Barrett (University of Sussex/ International Anti-Corruption Academy) and Dr. Roxana Bratu (King's College London) provide an introduction to corruption measurement debates. They explore questions like:

How has measurement of corruption changed over the three decades?

What are the best tools currently available for measuring corruption?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of these tools?

What are 'proxy indicators' for measuring corruption?

What do users actually want from corruption measurement tools?

Andrew Wedeman, Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, speaks to Professor Dan Hough about the politics of anti-corruption campaigns in China. Andrew analyses the anti-corruption campaign instigated by President Xi Jinping and also puts this into historical perspective. Andrew and Dan discuss the effects this campaign has had on Chinese society at all levels and whether there really is any evidence of progress in controlling corruption in the country. Andrew additionally talks about some of the challenges in researching these issues and where research on this topic could go next in China.

Cheri-Leigh Erasmus, Global Director of Learning at the Accountability Lab, speaks to Dan Hough, Professor of Politics at the Centre for the Study of Corruption. She describes Accountability Lab's distinctive approach to building integrity in the civil service with examples from across the globe. She shares some lessons from this work and offers plenty of ideas for how to engage new audiences in anti-corruption work.

You can see more on the work of Accountability Lab here, https://accountabilitylab.org/

Claudia Baez Camargo, Head of Public Governance at the Basel Institute, talks to Liz Dávid-Barrett about her work on applying social norms theory to analysing corruption issues. The episode takes in examples of applied research in East Africa and Ukraine, while Claudia's thinking on corruption is also influenced by her upbringing in Mexico.

Claudia describes some successes in altering social norms around corruption in health settings but equally some of the challenges in sustaining these initiatives. In addition, Claudia talks about her work analysing informal networks of corrupt actors as well as how we might use insights from behavioural science to improve anti-corruption interventions.