What are our origins?

WBI’s anti-corruption activities date back to late 1994, when in collaboration with Transparency International, then EDI (now WBI) facilitated a first workshop in Uganda.

The Governance work in the past was characterized by a sizeable number of somewhat disparate set of one-off, stand-alone, activities, with (formerly called) EDI carrying them on its own. These activities were focused largely on awareness-raising (emphasizing narrow issues of corruption). They were carried out by EDI without linkages or partnerships Bank-wide, courses were face-to-face and thus the limited number of participants implied high unit costs, while impact was relatively modest.

Substantively, the emphasis was on narrow issues of bribery/administrative corruption, without addressing ‘grand corruption’ or linking to the broader challenges of governance; and there was an artificial divide between governance at the national, sub-national and firm-levels. Also, there was a dividing ‘wall’ between traditional public sector management on the one hand, versus ‘voice’ and participation (including collective action methods involving parliaments, civil society, the media, etc), on the other.

In 1996, in a major speech at the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings, James Wolfensohn unveiled a new program and expressed the institution’s commitment to “…help any of our member countries to implement national programs that discourage corrupt practices.” Since then, the World Bank has mainstreamed anti-corruption programming, which has entailed an expansion and evolution of its program, encompassing a broader focus upon action-oriented improvements.

What is our strategy?

Partnering with the rest of the World Bank Group, with outside organizations, and with the many stakeholders within client countries, WBI takes an integrated approach to capacity building, governance, and anticorruption. WBI’s governance and anticorruption strategy emphasizes:

• Going beyond public sector dysfunction (the ‘symptom’) to assist countries in integrating institutional, regulatory and economic reforms (the ‘fundamentals’)
• Implementing rigorous empirical diagnostics and analysis
• Bringing about collective action, through participation and broad based bottom up coalitions
• Building partnerships within countries, the World Bank Group, and other international or regional institutions
• Moving beyond conventional training to knowledge dissemination, policy advice based on the latest research and operational findings, and participatory and consensus-building activities
• Scaling up the impact of our activities, utilizing new tools for knowledge dissemination, innovating, and taking managed risks

What is our approach to governance?

We define governance as the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised for the common good.

This includes:

1. the process by which those in authority are selected, monitored and replaced;
2. the capacity of the government to effectively manage its resources and implement sound policies; and 
3. the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them.

What is our approach to anti-corruption?

GI & AC = F ( KI, LE, CA )

This formula summarizes our approach: Successful Governance Improvement (GI) and Anti-Corruption programs (AC) are dependent on the public availability of Knowledge and information (KI) plus political Leadership (LE) plus Collective Action (CA).

Through this integrative logic, our program is able to respond to client-country demand for anti-corruption assistance and to provide innovative, action-oriented, non-lending activities illustrating a new way of doing business in which the client is in the driver’s seat.

Do we respond to all requests for assistance?

We are a demand driven organization. However, our response to a request from a client country hinges on the fulfillment of a number of pre-conditions:

• We emphasize a demand-driven approach to ensure there is a strong commitment from the top leaders in the country to a transparent, open, and participatory reform process.
• We request the formation of a "steering committee" including the top leadership as well as representatives from civil society and the private sector. This top-level committee is charged with designing a strategy and an action program, as well as monitoring their implementation through ‘task forces’ or ‘technical committees’.
• To ensure there is a good understanding of the fundamental governance and anti-corruption problems, we generally propose conducting empirical diagnostic work as an entry point.  Triangulated survey of households, public officials and business enterprises, and a rigorous analysis of the data gathered, helps us to suggest programs that will begin to address the governance problems in the country.
• We discourage "one-off" activities, emphasizing a long-term commitment to an integrated program that addresses not only anti-corruption, but an overall governance program as well.

How do we deliver our products?

Increasingly, we are using the latest technology, such as Distance Learning (video conferencing, interactive television, Internet), for delivery of some of our activities. We also work in situ with local partner centers to scale up the impact of our learning and policy advice programs.

How do we evaluate our impact?