The Octopus programme is a technical co-operation programme against corruption and organised crime initiated by the Council of Europe in 1996. This publication contains a number of papers which discuss training and education policies to strengthen efforts to combat corruption within public administration systems in central and eastern European countries, using case studies to consider experiences and best practice examples from the Czech Republic, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Russian Federation, Serbia and Ukraine.
Anti-corruption programmes, projects and campaigns have come to constitute an essential aspect of good governance promotion over the last two decades. The post-communist countries in Eastern Europe have presented one of the first key targets of transnational anti-corruption efforts, and indeed most of these countries have shown an impressive record of respective measures. Yet path-breaking institutional and policy developments have not set in before the mid-2000s both at the international level and in most Eastern European countries. Are these the beginnings of a mutually synergetic success story? In order to answer this question, we need to better understand the complex interplay between the international and domestic domains in this policy field and geographic region. This book provides in-depth and comparative insights about this interplay, with a particular focus on the involvement of domestic social movements, governmental political machines and international legal mechanisms. We find that, on all three levels of analysis, political and material interests of relevant actors are complemented and at times contradicted by normative claims. Moreover, at the interfaces of the three levels, coincidental and spontaneous developments have largely outweighed systematic implementation and coordination of appropriate anti-corruption strategies. This book is based on a special issue of Global Crime.
During several past years countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have introduced important anti-corruption reforms. However, corruption remains high in the region. This report identifies progress achieved in the region as well as remaining challenges which require further action by countries. The report analyses three broad areas of anti-corruption work, including anti-corruption policies and institutions, criminalisation of corruption and law-enforcement, and measures to prevent corruption in public administration and in the business sector. The analysis is illustrated by examples of good practice from various countries and comparative cross-country data. The report focuses on eight countries in the region which participate in the OECD/ACN initiative knows as the Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan which including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. It also presents examples from other countries in the region to give a broader perspective for the analysis. The report covers the period between 2008 and 2012, when the second round of monitoring of Istanbul Action Plan countries was implemented, and is based on the results of this monitoring.
Document from the year 2021 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Eastern Europe, grade: 5, , course: political system, language: English, abstract: The whole world is facing the problem of corruption. In addition to the problems of poverty, the main problem is the corruption that causes poverty, lowers local investment, lowers international interest in investing. This phenomenon can not be stopped with words and political rhetoric, many international countries are reluctant to invest in the West. Due to the level of corruption political parties come to power using vain rhetoric that they fight corruption, many court hearings are held against the corrupt that the court fails to convict them of corruption. Corruption is a global evil harmful to states, harmful to economic development for human well-being, not infrequently the world despairs because of the art of intent to greatly reduce this phenomenon, but hopes always exist and this is positive, strategies the many anti-corruption scandals that exist from different governments suggest that humanity does not give in to an evil such as corruption and by people who work for the state or companies and are involved in such illegal work.
This book examines the relationship between corruption scandals and transitional processes in post-Milošević Serbia after 2000. The study challenges the view that corruption has always been understood as a conflict between private interests and the public good, as these concepts are defined in Western democracies, and explores how anti-corruption discourse has been used for political mobilisation. Through an examination of high-profile political scandals in Serbia, the author shows how the meaning of corruption changed over time. In the early 2000s, corruption focused on the legacy of Milošević’s rule and was identified through the public’s limited access to the privatisation process. By the end of the decade, conceptualisations of corruption in public debate were so diversified that each anti-corruption measure undertaken by the state was interpreted as an act of corruption by other voices in the discourse. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in corruption studies, discourse analysis and Balkan politics.
