This literature review will address the idea of World Bank’s Anti-Corruption policy in order to address whether it can be improved through the adoption of a Political Economy Analysis (PEA) framework. In 1996, the President of the World Bank, John Wolfensohn addressed the ‘cancer of corruption’ as a major impediment to growth. Since then the World Bank has had a mounting concern over corruption. Today, the Bank’s anti-corruption strategies incorporate concerns over ‘good governance’, particularly in underdeveloped countries. The World Bank has since employed a stakeholder approach to address the political dimension of creating ‘good’ governance. Yet academics and policy makers agree the World Bank’s anti-corruption initiatives continue to
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From this emerged the pilot project for the Agent-Based Stakeholder Model (ABSM). Realising political considerations could give donor institutions an edge over policy issues; the ABSM was created in order to access the deliberation process for reform between stakeholders. The Bank claims that the ABSM applies ‘advanced political science techniques to stakeholder analysis’ (Nunberg et al: 2010). It is adaptive to ongoing change in the political process, and creates a better understanding of political power (World Bank: 2010). Yet, it should be realised that the stakeholder model is a theory of organizational management commonly employed by corporations and business in order to gain the consensus of interest groups. The ABSM draws on economic theory such as rational choice in order to observe how the outcomes of the World Banks word is ‘subject to risk trade-offs, where each stakeholder tries to get their preferred reform outcome’ (Nunberg et al: 2010). Weiss (2001), Khan (2006) and Bukovansky (2006) all criticize the Bank for it’s overtly technocratic, economic and rationalist approach to corruption. For Bukovansky, anti-corruption debate remains ‘dominated by a liberal, individualist rationalism which fails to adequately articulate and fully explore the necessity of moral and political agency in the pursuit of collective good’ (Bukovansky, 2006: 201). The ABSM can be seen as an attempt to regain moral and political agency in developing countries. Yet, by definition, the ABSM is ‘a quantitative simulation of complex political bargaining dynamics that predicts stakeholder in real time’, ‘an intelligent software that can easily be uploaded to any computer’ (Nunberg et al, 2010: 25). While it the Bank realises the ABSM is only a small part of operationalizing political economic analysis in reform, it continues to see the
From this emerged the pilot project for the Agent-Based Stakeholder Model (ABSM). Realising political considerations could give donor institutions an edge over policy issues; the ABSM was created in order to access the deliberation process for reform between stakeholders. The Bank claims that the ABSM applies ‘advanced political science techniques to stakeholder analysis’ (Nunberg et al: 2010). It is adaptive to ongoing change in the political process, and creates a better understanding of political power (World Bank: 2010). Yet, it should be realised that the stakeholder model is a theory of organizational management commonly employed by corporations and business in order to gain the consensus of interest groups. The ABSM draws on economic theory such as rational choice in order to observe how the outcomes of the World Banks word is ‘subject to risk trade-offs, where each stakeholder tries to get their preferred reform outcome’ (Nunberg et al: 2010). Weiss (2001), Khan (2006) and Bukovansky (2006) all criticize the Bank for it’s overtly technocratic, economic and rationalist approach to corruption. For Bukovansky, anti-corruption debate remains ‘dominated by a liberal, individualist rationalism which fails to adequately articulate and fully explore the necessity of moral and political agency in the pursuit of collective good’ (Bukovansky, 2006: 201). The ABSM can be seen as an attempt to regain moral and political agency in developing countries. Yet, by definition, the ABSM is ‘a quantitative simulation of complex political bargaining dynamics that predicts stakeholder in real time’, ‘an intelligent software that can easily be uploaded to any computer’ (Nunberg et al, 2010: 25). While it the Bank realises the ABSM is only a small part of operationalizing political economic analysis in reform, it continues to see the