The paper focuses on EU’s good governance promotion and its impact in old member states, new member states and about one hundred and twenty aid recipient countries in the developing world. It is an empirical investigation into the question if human agency external to a country can influence the transition of a society from corruption as governance norm -where public resource distribution is systematically biased in favor of authority holders and those connected with them- to corruption as an exception, therefore a state that is largely autonomous towards private interest and the allocation of public resources is based on ethical universalism (everyone treated equally and fairly)? The question is crucial for the crusade against corruption that international donors have launched at the World Bank call in early nineties, and which has meanwhile acquired an international legal framework in the United Nations Convention against Corruption and many other treaties or conventions, as well as impressive assistance funds to back it up.
The focus of on the European Union for three reasons. Firstly, EU is the world's leading provider of Official Development Assistance (ODA), secondly, it has important conditionalities related to rule of law and control of corruption in relation with its financial assistance (indeed, ‚norms‘ promotion is a cornestone of EU assistance), and third, it has an unprecedented ambition to bring even its member states to comparably high quality of governance, due to the need to manage the common currency, the euro. 12 % of the total ODA from the EU Institutions per year was allocated to the government and civil society sector that includes, among other areas, development of public sector and administrative management, development of anti-corruption organizations and institutions, and legal and judicial development. Furthermore, political conditions for EU financial assistance are clearly stipulated (for instance, the Cotonou agreement, the European Neighborhood Policy documents, the association and deep trade agreements, the Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification of some new member states, aside the general Copenhagen criteria for enlargement of the EU.)
This paper is the empirical sum-up of a book to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, Promoting Good Governance in Other’s People Countries, itself a sequel to The Quest for Good Governance. How Societies Build Control of Corruption, published by Cambridge University Press in 2015. The data and original research is based on the EU FP7 ANTICORRP project,[1] the largest academic research project on corruption to-date.
[1] www.anticorrp.eu
