Fazekas, M., Allakulov , U., Hernandez Sanchez, A. (2020). Water and Sanitation Sector Integrity Risk Index. GTI-WP/2020:04, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

We employ a data-driven approach to develop a composite Water Integrity Risk Index (WIRI) made up of a host of objective proxy indicators as well as survey-based measures of corruption experience to identify and assess integrity risks in the urban water and sanitation sector in selected settlements around the world. Unlike broader-scope corruption indices, the WIRI outlined in this …

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Dr Resimić, M. (2019). Public-private relationships in defence procurement in the EU: The case of the UK. GTI-WP/2019:04, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Defence procurement is sensitive to corruption and state capture risks, because the government enforces secrecy and awards high value contracts to firms in a market dominated by a few large players (Pyman, Wilson & Scott, 2009; Courtney, Cockcroft & Murray, 2002). Defence procurement in the UK has some additional risks considering that around 50% of its contracts are …

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Renon, E. (2019). Does the Defence Industry Capture the State in France? GTI-WP/2019:03, London, UK: Government Transparency Institute.

State capture is the disproportionate and unregulated influence of interest groups or companies, where they manage to bend state laws, policies and regulations by paying illicit contributions to political parties and for election campaigns, buy parliamentary votes, presidential decrees or court decisions, as well as through illegitimate lobbying and revolving door appointments. State capture can also arise from the more subtle close …

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Brenner, D. and Fazekas, M. (2020). Legislative Effects of Regulatory Impact Assessment: A Comparative Event History Analysis of Modifications of Law in France, Italy, Hungary, and the UK. GTI-WP/2020:03, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Regulatory instability, which is a frequent modification of adopted laws, is costly for society. Regulatory Impact Assessments (RIAs) are designed to improve the quality of legislation, however, we know little about RIAs’ impact on legal stability. Therefore, this paper analyses whether RIAs influence the incidence and frequency …

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Adam, I. & Fazekas, M. (2020). Are emerging technologies helping win the fight against corruption? A review of the state of evidence. GTI-WP 2020:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is often thought of as a uniformly positive tool making governments more transparent, accountable, and less corrupt. However, the evidence on it is mixed and often misunderstood. Hence, this article carries out a systematic stocktaking of ICT tools’ impact on corruption, offering a nuanced and context-dependent assessment. …

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Adam, I., Fazekas, M. & Tóth, B. (2020). Measuring the benefits of open contracting: Case studies on Mexico, Paraguay, and Slovakia. GTI-WP/2020:01, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

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Enhancing the transparency of government in general and of public procurement processes in particular has been increasingly on the agenda of governments, civil societies and businesses as evidenced by initiatives such as the Open Government Partnership which has seen 70 OGP members making 189 open contracting …

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Fazekas, M. & Hellmann, O. (2019). Elections and corruption: incentives to steal or incentives to invest? GTI-WP/2019:02, Budapest: Government Transparency Institute.

Despite the fact that most political systems around the world now hold regular multi-party elections, we know little about the effect of elections on political corruption. To address this gap in the literature, we employ a multi-method research design—combining unmatched and matched quantitative comparisons with a qualitative small-N study of Indonesia and the Philippines—to analyse a novel government contracting …

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Oliveira, A., Fabregas Masllovet, A. & Fazekas, M. (2019). Auction Length and Prices : Evidence from Random Auction Closing in Brazil (English). Policy Research working paper; no. WPS 8828. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group. 

Electronic reverse auctions are the most used competitive method for procurement of goods and non-consulting services by the Federal Government of Brazil. These auctions are closed randomly, which perfectly satisfies fairness considerations but may be suboptimal from an efficiency perspective. There are concerns that tenders are …

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