Focus

Abstract

This chapter explains the Focus element of the SFRA approach, explaining why it is essential to disaggregate specific corruption issues and providing a series of sector-based typologies to help do that. It then offers a range of analysis methodologies and emphasises the importance of building shared understanding of corruption issues.

One of us (Heywood 2017) made the point some years ago that focus was one of the qualities most lacking in making progress against corruption: ‘The apparent mismatch between the attention focused on corruption and our collective capacity to make a practical difference naturally raises questions about what might be going wrong. This article identifies three reasons for such a discrepancy: the way in which corruption has been conceptualized in much mainstream academic research, resulting in “magic bullet” solutions based on institutional reconfiguration (hocus-pocus); the tendency of much research and anti-corruption advocacy to concentrate on nation-states as the primary unit of analysis (locus); and the lack of sufficient disaggregation of different types and modalities of corruption beyond crude binary divisions that do not recognize the complexities of an increasingly transnational world (focus)’ [emphasis added].

The second of us came to the same conclusion from a quite different direction, working on corruption with military forces and defence ministries around the world (Pyman 2017a). He realised that without breaking down corruption into very specific, comprehensible issues that organisations could collectively recognise and address, the momentum necessary for addressing the problems would never be developed or sustained.

Our approach developed from these two strong convictions and related experience. The SFRA method identifies three areas of analytical focus:

• First, disaggregate the specific corruption issues and problems. The problems need to be identified and the corruption issues identified as specific constraints. Generalities about corruption, like ‘nepotism’ or ‘collusion’, might be recognisable, but they are usually not actionable. SFRA suggests a powerful and novel way to do this without becoming overwhelmed.

• Second, do your homework in the analysis and quantification of the specific issues. There is nothing specific to SFRA about such analysis—there is plenty of guidance available and we simply list resources you might access.

• Third, build a shared understanding of the corruption issues that you face. This is harder said than done because everyone has a different idea of what ‘corruption’ is. The SFRA method focuses a lot of attention on addressing this, because without it there can be no unity of effort; it also illustrates the power of peer voting for focusing on the relative importance of the issues.

Each element is described in more detail below.

Disaggregate the Specific Corruption Issues

In order to focus on specific corruption issues, you will either already need to know what the issues are in your organisation/ sector, or you will need to develop a list of them, or you will need to be able to access the lists of issues from others who have been there before you. We think we can help a lot here. We have found that the principal corruption issues in each sector can be disaggregated into around 30–40 different specific issues.

This list, which fits easily on a single page, allows organisations to discuss what corruption issues are present in their particular context, to build a shared understanding of which issues are having most impact. CurbingCorruption.com has developed template lists, which wloped template lists, which we call typologies, providing a concise listing of the more common corruption issues for each sector.

About half of the corruption issues are very from one sector to another. For example, in policing, there are various forms of corruption at a high political level, such as allowing organised crime in specific areas or ensuring that independent oversight is permanently weak; corruption in the management of the police service, such as improperly promoting some officers or permitting poorly performing officers to stay in lucrative positions; corruption and lack of integrity in personal behaviour, such as evidence tampering or demanding illegal fines and so on. Similar differentiation exists in every sector: the corrupt police behaviour examples above are quite different, for instance, from pharmaceutical-related corruption issues within the health sector, which again are different phenomena from the corruption in relation to passing school exams within the education sector.

Other common corruption issues—such as corruptly influencing policy, favouritism in appointments or small-scale facilitation payments—sound the same from one sector to the next. However, our experience is that whilst these common issues may sound the same, they vary markedly from one sector to another. For example, the corrupt diversion of salaries en route from a government ministry to its employees may appear to be similar, but the modalities by which the salary diversion takes place are different from one sector to another.

Sector Typologies

The sector typologies that we propose, and which you can modify as you see fit, are valuable because they put the many diverse corruption issues onto one page. People who believe that corruption is fundamentally a procurement issue, or a finance issue, or a personnel issue, will be shown the other ways that it has impact. The typology is easy to understand and allows everyone to pick out the issues they believe are the most damaging and then enter into constructive discussion on how to address them. It is a powerful tool for building shared understanding among your team and among wider communities.

Of course, the number of possible issues is unlimited, but too much complexity renders a problem much harder to solve. Our experience is that 30–40 different issues is enough to provide granularity, but not so much as to overwhelm with complexity, whilst 50 is about the maximum that a team can encompass.

For example, see the typology in Fig. 5.1 for corruption in policing, which itemises 34 corruption issues. The 34 are grouped in whatever way seems to be most useful for those most likely to be tackling them. In most sectors, this results in them being grouped according to whether they relate to Policy, Finance, Personnel, Procurement, and Behaviour and Operations. Some of the issues are wholly sector-specific, as discussed above, such as most of those under the heading Behaviour and Operations. Generally speaking, the issues grouped under Policy or Behaviour and Operations tend to be the most sector-specific, whilst those under Finance, Personnel and Procurement tend to be more generic.

Fig. 5.1

Corruption typology—police services. Transparency International. See Pyman et al. 2012 ‘Arresting Corruption in the Police. The global experience of police reform efforts.’ At https://curbingcorruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pyman-Cohen-Boardman-Webster-and-Seymour-2012-Arresting-corruption-in-the-police.pdf

It bears repeating that presenting the possible corruption issues in such a simple way—and on a single page—has a big impact. Our experience is that it is transformative: suddenly teams can straightforwardly work together to decide whether this or that issue is important or not.

For example, the authors have used the typology of defence and military corruption issues, Fig. 5.2, in discussion with groups from numerous defence ministries and military forces around the world. Most groups are astonished—it enables them to point immediately, and without sensitivity, to the more critical issues. Similarly, whilst procurement is a common corruption issue everywhere, the detail in the typology table below enables most groups of defence personnel to point to bias in the writing of the technical specifications (Issue No. 21) as the dominant procurement problem. In the Taiwan group, whose results were shown earlier in Chap. 2, the Colonels were clear that they had one problem that bothered them above all others: the syphoning off of funds from the secret budgets by some of the top military leadership (Issue No. 8). A group from another Defence Ministry concluded that the issue most troubling them—not the biggest issue but the one causing the most organisational upset—was the covert selling off of weapons (Issue No. 7).

Fig. 5.2

Corruption typology—defence and military. Transparency International. See Pyman 2011 ‘Building integrity and countering corruption in defense and security: 20 practical reforms.’ Transparency International Defence and Security. At https://curbingcorruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pyman-2011-Building-integrity-and-countering-corruption-in-defence-and-security-20-practical-reforms.pdf

Typologies for four other sectors are given below: Health, School Education, Higher Education and Land.

Figures 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 in sequence here.

Fig. 5.3

Corruption typology—school education. CurbingCorruption. From Pyman and Kaplan 2021 ‘Curbing corruption in school education.’ At https://curbingcorruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/210618-Curbing-Corruption-in-School-Education.pdf

Fig. 5.4

Corruption typology—health. CurbingCorruption. From Pyman 2021 ‘Curbing corruption in health.’ At https://curbingcorruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/210618-Curbing-Corruption-in-health.pdf

Fig. 5.5

Corruption typology—higher education. CurbingCorruption. See Kirya 2021 ‘Curbing corruption in Higher Education.’ https://curbingcorruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/210618-Curbing-Corruption-in-Higher-Education.pdf

Fig. 5.6

Corruption typology—land. CurbingCorruption. From Shipley 2021, https://curbingcorruption.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/210618-Curbing-Corruption-in-Land-1.pdf

These typologies were first developed by one of us (Pyman) whilst an independent consultant, then with colleagues at Transparency International TI-DS and at CurbingCorruption.com.

Sector typologies from other sources are also available. For example, the construction typology in Fig. 5.7 was developed by the anti-corruption team at U4 for construction projects. That typology uses a different format but still has the same ‘all on one page’ simplicity (U4 2015).

Fig. 5.7

Corruption typology—construction. From U4 (2015) ‘Corruption in the construction of public infrastructure: critical issues in project preparation.’ https://www.u4.no/publications/corruption-in-the-construction-of-public-infrastructure-critical-issues-in-project-preparation-1

Make Your Own Typology?

In your own situation, you will have a choice between using one of these template typologies, where they exist, or developing your own, or a combination of the two. This is not a straightforward choice because it is our long experience that the moment you open up the question of what the issues might be—whether to colleagues, a working group or a contractor—you will quickly find yourself with a long, almost endless list of issues. Instead, we advocate that you develop the list in the following order of preference:

• 1. Use a pre-existing template of the issues in your sector.

• 2. Ask a group of experienced colleagues to meet together to consider how the nearest suitable typology could be improved for your situation without exceeding 40 issues.

• 3. Ask a working group to do the same. If you have to bring in a contractor, use one that is familiar with sector-based anti-corruption. We have quoted U4 in this book as one such organisation, but there will no doubt also be others.

• 4. Engage customers, citizens, users and youth groups.

An example of a recent collaboration in developing a sector typology is shown below. It is for water, a complex sector with the ‘usual’ mix of huge, obvious corruption issues and smaller, technical ones that can nonetheless lead to massive misuse of resources. In this case the typology was authored by a long-time water engineering professional working together with a political economy graduate student; they in turn built their collated view of the issues by interviewing water management professionals in the private sector, in government and in regulation. They focused their topic somewhat regionally by concentrating on water management corruption issues in the USA and in three regions of Mexico. The resulting typology is shown in Fig. 5.8 (Martinez-Rossignol et al. 2022, Martinez-Rossignol and Palmer-Moloney 2022). One aspect of that work was to highlight that interviewees were ‘uncomfortable in the extreme even talking about corruption’. This was the case in both Mexico and the USA, and helped to shape our view that better equipping organisation leaders and managers to discuss and address corruption needs to be an essential part of the corruption-reduction approach.

Fig. 5.8

Corruption typology—water management

Analysis and Context

Having identified the issues—a major step forward—analysis is needed of the frequency, the importance, the context and the impact of each issue.

Doing a technical analysis can be a two-day exercise, or it can be a six-month one. The quicker way is always attractive. Your own staff are usually aware of the corruption issues, often with extensive experience of working in large, complex, bureaucratic environments. Hence, they are likely to be the best informed about what the corruption problems are, which ones can be tackled immediately and which ones need to be left for later. You might give them the typology from the relevant sector review in CurbingCorruption.com and ask a group of them to analyse which are the more relevant ones and their relative importance.

This simple approach has the advantage that you can quickly capture the ‘top of mind’ knowledge of your senior professionals. It has disadvantages though: it is likely to focus on the more immediate issues, and it does not help in building broader awareness and, potentially, support for tackling the issues.

Alternatively, you may have access to specialist groups with extra knowledge, like the evidence from internal audit groups, regulatory agencies and professional fraud groups. Possibly combined with other external groups like community groups, private sector associations or civil society, you can get a more inclusive analysis done, still quite quickly. Such an analysis is more public than the internal analysis but has the potential advantage of generating broader support.

At the most thorough end of the spectrum, you can use groups with professional anti-corruption knowledge, preferably with specific sector expertise, as outlined earlier. These groups might be consultancies, or civil society, or think tanks. Such analyses are likely to take from two months to six months. In large initiatives, there are several analytical techniques you can consider, outlined below. There is also an obvious and often sizeable political advantage to having a thorough, independent analysis done of the corruption issues and risks. If you have time and funds, we recommend that you do such an analysis.

Analysis Methodologies

There are many methodologies for corruption analysis, but they all tend to do much the same thing. They identify, in turn, the underlying laws, regulations and guidelines governing the organisation; then the main processes; the key steps (both formal and informal) for each business process; and the strengths and the vulnerabilities to corruption of each step (based on weaknesses in the formal system and weaknesses in the capacity or incentives to implement the formal system).

Finally, they make some estimation of the scale of each type of corruption, usually through survey information. They might be able to access existing surveys that provide information on the perceived scale of the corruption types, or they may commission a survey, or they may do their own. These can be small—a ‘straw poll’ of 50 people—or they can be large. One education sector analysis that Pyman was involved in developed its own data based on 550 interviews. Such analysis techniques include Vulnerability to Corruption Analysis (VCA), Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) and Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDS). There are also others that are more community-based, such as citizen report cards pioneered by the Public Affairs Centre in India.

Example

The MEC’s VCA on education (MEC 2017):

• The analysis covered the whole of the Education Ministry, not just a sub-section.

• Work was based on an analytical set of the 36 education-specific corruption issues.

• The analysis was founded on a wide range of interviews, with segmentation of the target population, conducted with communities in the provinces as well as with central, provincial and district government.

• The analysis included a review of the written processes and relevant laws, to judge the extent of differences in practice.

• The active engagement of the Minister of Education right from the beginning was essential. Without this the assessment could not proceed.

• An active and extensive quarterly follow up over 18 months, with visits to the provinces, active engagement of local stakeholders and publication of findings.

Vulnerability to Corruption Analysis (VCA): A VCA, which is a systematic analysis of vulnerabilities to corruption, is used to identify problems, select priorities and sequence interventions in a sector-focused approach. Various organisations have provided guidance on how to do such assessments—such as IRI (2018), DFID (2010), USAID (2009) or the European Council (2010)—with the aim of developing concrete insights regarding forms of corruption, sources, implications, extent and vulnerabilities to corruption in particular sectors, agencies and functions in order to develop practical prevention measures. VCAs use a simple methodology focused on analysis of key government business processes. This approach normally involves initial meetings, usually with the most senior members of staff for each area, followed by observations of workplaces and processes, and then follow-up meetings with wider groups of staff to discuss, review and revise information on business processes. Efforts are made to understand both the formal (de jure) and informal (de facto) processes that are in place and operative. Elements of one such analysis, on the national education system, are shown in the text box below.

Extensive analyses of corruption issues using VCA were pioneered by Afghanistan’s Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring Committee, commonly known as ‘MEC’. Funded by international donors, MEC was the premier anti-corruption entity in Afghanistan; it was set up by Presidential decree in 2010 and led by a committee of six (three eminent Afghans and three international experts), and with an Afghan Secretariat of professional staff. MEC has since been dissolved.

Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS): PETS originated as a World Bank tool in the mid-1990s to monitor budgets and efficiencies in public spending. Often conducted on the basis of national-level expenditure, the tool has also been actively promoted for use by civil society organisations. The World Bank, working with the Transparency and Accountability Program (TAP) and Results for Development (R4D), produced a guidebook to help monitor projects and smaller-scale operations, for instance in health and education (Koziol and Tolmie 2010). Commenting on the application of PETS in education, Poisson (2010) observes: ‘PETS surveys aim to “follow the money trail” (mainly non-salary expenditures), from the central ministry of education level right down to the school level. These studies permit the calculation of rates of “leakage” in these flows […].’

World Bank Governance and Anti-Corruption Diagnostics: Developed in 1998, these World Bank tools enable disaggregation of the corruption issues at both the regional and the sector levels, as well as at country level (Recanatini 2017).

Quantitative Service Delivery Surveys (QSDS): This survey methodology, also developed by the World Bank, seeks to assess quality and performance in resource usage at frontline facility level. A guidebook to assist practitioners in using this instrument (as well as PETS) was developed as part of the World Bank Poverty Reduction and Economic Management data platform (Gauthier and Ahmed 2012).

Political Economy Analysis (PEA)

Those tasked with tackling corruption issues in any given sector are likely to know the context regarding the more political factors driving the corruption. But it may be valuable to consider these factors more formally. Who is gaining from each corruption type and why? Who might gain, who might lose from reducing corruption in this specific area? For each corruption type, who will support action to address it and who are the possible spoilers?

Doing a ‘Political Economy Analysis’ means that these issues are laid out in a structured way and can help decide which corruption types should be addressed. In simple terms, ‘Political economy is the study of how politics affects the economy and how the economy in turn shapes politics’ (Frieden and Iversen n.d.)—and that is as true at the sectoral level as it is at national level. Such an analysis can either be formally commissioned or done in-house, and we recommend the following guides:

• Whaites et al. (2023) Understanding Political Economy Analysis and Thinking and Working Politically

Adapted from work by the FCDO with input from the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice (TWP CoP), this guide outlines how to understand and use a set of analytical tools known as Political Economy Analysis, summarising various different types (from light-touch to more in-depth) and provides advice on how professionals can decide on what is most appropriate in a given context, applied to their own specific needs. The guide comprises a general overview of the approach, alongside specific guidance for those undertaking a PEA.

• Marquette and Peiffer (2020) Corruption Functionality Framework (available at: https://ace.globalintegrity.org/interactive-framework/)

A corruption functionality approach helps to explain why corruption persists in a way that other approaches often fall short. Whether the amounts of money involved are big or small, people engage in corruption because they believe that it will work for them in satisfying a need or solving a problem. People can—and do—justify their behaviours based on real or perceived ‘need’; this is why corruption persists. The key, though, for anti-corruption reformers is better understanding how corruption functionality works and—importantly—which functions really do need to be filled and which ones don’t. The framework, shown in Fig. 5.9, comprises the following four steps:

• Whaites (2017) The beginner’s guide to political economy analysis.

Fig. 5.9

The four-step corruption functionality framework. From Marquette and Peiffer (2020) ‘Corruption Functionality Framework.’ ACE Global Integrity. https://ace.globalintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GI-ACE_Research-Paper-Corruption-Framework-1.pdf

This guide surveys the best materials that are available while also adapting some approaches that incorporate wider ideas on politics and institutions. The guide affirms that there should never be an official ‘orthodoxy’ for PEA and so the emphasis is on questions, prompts and ideas to help thinking and practice, such as why do we do political economy analysis, and what is it; what kinds of issues and ingredients are often included in a PEA; how do we make sense of the different varieties of PEA; what tools are out there to help us conduct a PEA; what is thinking and working politically?

• Hudson et al. (2016) Everyday political analysis.

This is a framework for thinking about politics and power called Everyday Political Analysis (EPA). EPA is for anyone who is convinced that politics and power matter but feels less sure of how to work out what they mean for their programmes. This note introduces a stripped-back political economy analysis framework—stripped down to its barest bones—leaving only the essentials needed to help frontline staff make quick but politically informed decisions.

• ESID (2015) Making political analysis useful—adjusting and scaling.

This approach utilises three types of analysis: (1) agenda-setting analysis aims to establish a shared language and understanding; (2) problem-solving analysis aims to increase rates of implementation; (3) influencing analysis aims to develop a political strategy for change. Each type affects the questions to ask, the intended audience and even their timing. The report encourages organisations to start small and be pragmatic.

There are more guides to political economy analysis; see, for instance, OECD 2015; Hudson and Leftwich 2014; World Bank 2008; Khan et al. 2016. The World Bank organises and funds a training course in Political Economy Analysis by the Policy Practice, which has been running since 2008 (https://www.thepolicypractice.com/our-online-and-face-face-training).

Building Shared Understanding

We use the term ‘building shared understanding’ in reference to understanding three things: corruption in general, the aims of any remediation or corruption-reducing activity, and the corruption issues relevant to this organisation. Regarding understanding of corruption in general, we have already talked of this in Chaps. 2 and 3.

In relation to our aims, the starting question here is ‘what are we trying to achieve?’ Is it reduced corruption? Is it improved performance of the organisation? Is it a broader intent such as signalling determination to act against corruption? The more the aim contains multiple objectives, the less chance it will be achieved. We believe that—in most situations—the objective is NOT directly to reduce corruption nor to tackle corruption head-on as a generic problem. Instead, the aim is to reduce the corruption-generating barriers to the achievement of core performance objectives. This advice is not usually found in handbooks on corruption reform. But we believe that it is crucially important. Reducing corruption is not an end in itself but a means towards achieving more widely desired objectives in policy or service delivery.

The team can now have a substantive and informed discussion about what are the corruption issues in their context. In particular, where and how is corruption causing problems in delivering outcomes and results? The follow-up questions are: ‘How do you build on this shared understanding of the issues to get to a shared understanding of which issues can be addressed and which cannot? Which issues are soluble, which issues matter the most, which issues can only be circumvented or minimised, which issues are most risky to address?’

For the second stage of building a shared understanding of which issues matter the most, we advocate peer voting—subjective ranking of the issues among knowledgeable players.

To illustrate, we offer an example of a group using the peer voting method, drawn from the defence sector in Botswana. Widely regarded as one of the few success stories in national-level corruption reform, Botswana instituted a wide range of reforms several decades ago, on good governance, land reform and institutional design (Mungiu-Pippidi 2015: 144; Sarraf and Jiwanji 2001).

A group of top military officers reviewed corruption issues in defence during a day-long discussion in 2014 facilitated by Transparency International Defence and Security. Having worked through the typology of defence corruption issues as outlined above, they voted on the relative importance of each of them for the Botswanan military. Each of the 30 participants cast votes for what they saw as the three most critical issues. The results are shown below in Fig. 5.10, with the 29 issues listed down the left side and the number of votes received recorded in the horizontal bars.

Fig. 5.10

Peer voting by military officers of Botswana on defence corruption risks. Curbing Corruption. From Pyman and Heywood (2020) ‘The Sector Focus and Reformulation Approach (SFRA) enabling politicians, leaders, and managers to formulate practical strategies for corruption reduction.’ https://curbingcorruption.com/document/pyman-and-heywood-2020-practical-strategies-for-corruption-reduction-the-sector-focus-and-reformulation-approach-sfra/

The top three concerns were corruption in payroll/promotions/appointments, corruption in control of military intelligence services, and corruption in contracts. The three concerns were the subject of intense discussion, first on whether this ranking was ‘correct’, then on what to do about them (Pyman 2017b).

Using peer voting like this to rank the specific issues, then comparing and discussing the reasons for differences in ranking, is a powerful mechanism for bringing out how the different people around the table view the importance of each individual corruption issue. If you are leading such a discussion, there are two alternative ways to conduct the voting: either openly—asking each person around the table for their top three concerns and tallying the votes as you go round the table—or anonymously, asking each person to submit their three concerns on a piece of paper and then collating them to produce a ranked list of the group’s concerns.

How to do the ranking depends on the culture, the level of tension in the room, and your assessment of the group dynamics, given that the room will likely be a mix of victims of the corruption, those participating actively in the corruption, and superiors, subordinates, and outsiders. The choice will powerfully affect the openness and usefulness of the subsequent discussion. Sometimes a closed vote is the only safe way to bring issues out into the open. Other times, in more harmonious environments, open voting is a good exercise in building a common understanding.

From experience of leading and participating in such exercises in many countries (Pyman 2017b), these one-page, peer-voted lists of corruption concerns are revelatory for the participants. They are (mostly) pleased to see discussion of these issues out in the open. They are surprised that it was easier to do than any of them had expected. In more closed cultures, there is relief that those who usually dominate the discussion, the perpetrators and those concerned to keep the subject under wraps, usually the superiors, count for no more than anyone else in the closed voting. In more open or in less tense cultures, there can be amusement at the discomfort of those known to be involved when the ranking is revealed.

Most of all, this technique makes for very active conversations in which the usually taboo discussion of corruption within the organisation/institution/sector becomes discussable. Enabling such exchanges is arguably even more important than whatever the ranking exercise revealed.

The concept underlying our emphasis on building shared understanding and on voting together on the importance of the corruption issues is ‘sense-making’: the process by which people develop a shared understanding of their collective experiences. The concept, associated most notably with Weick (1995, 2001), was developed in the late 1960s as part of a movement that shifted thinking about organisations away from decision-making and towards how peoples’ understanding drives organisations’ behaviour.

Similar exercises have been used by others in developing a common approach to corruption reform, for example in the Philippines by Johnston (2010). Klitgaard (2019), also advising in the Philippines, uses the term ‘convening’ in place of sense-making. Sense-making has also come up in the corruption reform literature in the guise of complexity thinking, such as the analysis and understanding of anti-corruption experience in Malawi by Bridges and Woolcock (2017).