Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Empirical Research: Methodological, Ethical and Security Challenges

Abstract

Corruption takes place behind the closed doors, which makes empirical research on corruption challenging. After decades of corruption research, we still struggle to produce reliable measures of corruption and assess the success of anti-corruption efforts. From case studies, to experiments and large-n comparisons – all of these methods require dealing with the challenges that secrecy around corruption poses[MP1] . Moreover, increasing tendency of the democratic backsliding poses security issues for corruption researchers in many countries. Often, especially during the field studies, researchers have to rely on the interviews from informants, whose security depends on the ethical standards of the researchers. Practically, corruption researchers face the dilemma of producing transparent and replicable data, but at the same time, they have to keep the identities of the informants and respondents in secret. In addition, researchers studying corrupt actors may themselves walk on the thin ice of security and facing ethical dilemmas of boarders of their research. It makes the questions of data management, security and ethics highly relevant, more than most other research fields in the social sciences. For this panel, we welcome contributions that critically reflect on limitations and benefits of particular methods of data collection and its analysis in corruption research, both quantitative and qualitative. We also invite papers that address ethical and security-related issues in applying different methods of researching corruption.

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