Anti-corruption interventions in Georgia

Global Crime

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 220-236

  Di Puppo, Lili ^a  

^a EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY VIADRINA   (Germany)

Author keywords

Anthropology and development; Anti corruption; External interventions; Georgia

Indexed keywords

EID: 77951712282     PISSN: 17440572     EISSN: 17440580     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17440571003669233     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. See David Lewis and David Mosse, 'Encountering Order and Disjuncture: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives on the Organisation of Development', Oxford Development Studies 34, no. 1 (2006): 1-13
2. Benedetta Rossi, 'Revisiting Foucauldian Approaches: Power Dynamics in Development Projects', Journal of Development Studies 40, no. 6 (2004): 1-29
3. Norman Long, 'An ActorOriented Approach to Development Intervention' (background paper prepared for APO meeting, Tokyo, April 22-26, 2002)
4. Barbara Orlandini, 'Consuming Good Governance in Thailand', The European Journal of Development Research 15, no. 2 (2003): 16-43(28).
5. See Lewis and Mosse, 'Encountering Order and Disjuncture'; Rossi, 'Revisiting Foucauldian Approaches'
6. See A. Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
7. J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine. 'Development', Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994 [1990]).
8. Orlandini, 'Consuming Good Governance in Thailand'; M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984).
9. My analysis of the anti-corruption field in Georgia is based on about 100 interviews conducted in Georgia in 2007-2008. For reasons of confidentiality, the references to the interviews are anonymous. I use Tisne and Smilov's classification of anti-corruption programmes in the Balkans to study anti-corruption interventions in Georgia: (1) omnibus programmes or national anti-corruption strategies, (2) civil society anti-corruption projects, (3) institutional reform programmes. Martin Tisne and Daniel Smilov, 'From the Ground Up - Assessing the Record of Anticorruption Assistance in Eastern Europe' (Policy Studies series, Central European University Center for Policy Studies, 2004).
10. See, for example, Ed Brown and Jonathan Cloke, 'Neoliberal Reform, Governance and Corrup- tion in the South: Assessing the International Anti-Corruption Crusade', Antipode 36, no. 2 (2004): 272-94.
11. The inauguration speech of Mikheil Saakashvili on January 25, 2004, http://www.eurasianet.org/ resource/georgia/hypermail/200401/0061.shtml (accessed May 2007) (Source: Georgian State Television Channel 1, Tbilisi, in Georgian 1115 gmt January 25, 2004 and BBC Mon FS1 FsuPol ws/ab).
12. Citation in Don Hill, 'Georgia: Saakashvili Raising Hopes That Corruption May Be Tackled In Earnest', RFE/RL, January 9, 2004, http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/1/0A0316B9- F4A4-495B-8C45-E27E30FB8282.html (accessed May 2007)
13. Molly Corso, 'Georgian President Saakashvili's Campaign Against Corruption', Power and Interest News Report, December 20, 2004.
14. An NGO representative describes the government's vision, 'The government says that there is no corruption at the top level, there is still corruption at the lower level because the lower level is more difficult to control... They think that top level people are people with integrity, they are motivated and there is much less corruption'. Interview with NGO head, Tbilisi, February 2008.
15. For example, the control of cars and the hygienic food agency were abolished after the Rose Revolution. Interview with NGO leader, Tbilisi, June 2008.
16. Steven Sampson, 'Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Southeast Europe: Landscapes and Sites', in Governments, NGOs and Anti Corruption: The New Integrity Warriors, ed. L. de Sousa, P. Larmour, and B. Hindess (London: Routledge, 2008), 4.
17. Tisne and Smilov, 'From the Ground Up', 39. Tisne and Smilov further define the attributes of an omnibus programme, 'Omnibus anti-corruption programmes generally contain all or a selection of the following attributes: an anticorruption law; a national anticorruption strategy or programme, a ministerial commission; specialized unit or dedicated agency; an action plan to implement the programme; and/or a monitoring mechanism', 40.
18. Tisne and Smilov, 'From the Ground Up', 40.
19. Interview with a senior official of the Saakashvili administration, Tbilisi, November 2008. A representative of a donor organisation explains, 'Although they [the Georgian government] have taken all the GRECO recommendations by heart, I have sometimes the feeling that they just do it because these are Council of Europe kind of conditions. They feel they have to do it to be on the good side with the international community'. Interview with representative of donor organisation, Tbilisi, July 2007.
20. Interview with representative of donor organisation, Tbilisi, November 2008.
21. Interview with representative of donor organisation, Tbilisi, October 2008. A U4 report mentions, 'It is not easily understandable why development partners in the case of Georgia would urge the government to call its de facto good governance strategy an anti-corruption strategy when the goals clearly go beyond corruption'.
22. Karen Hussmann, ed., 'Anti-corruption policy making in practice', U4 report 1:2007, Christian Michelsen Institute, p. 34.
23. Georgia was named the first 'world reformer' by the World Bank in 2007.
24. Interview with representative of donor organisation, Tbilisi, November 2008.
25. Tisne and Smilov, 'From the Ground Up', 52.
26. Interview with representative of donor organisation, Tbilisi, October 2008.
27. The global anti-corruption field can be understood as a market, where different organisations compete to position themselves.
28. In the case of the project funded by the Dutch embassy, the accent is put on the 'ownership' of the programme and national experts receive salaries, but international consultants are also hired and trainings organised.
29. Tisne and Smilov use this analogy, 'the risk is that donors should continue to market a seemingly successful product, while its added value and tangible effects have yet to be determined'. They add, 'it is a disturbing trend that national anticorruption strategies should be applied from country to country with little regard as to whether the solution matches the problem'.
30. Tisne and Smilov, 'From the Ground Up', 51.
31. Interview with representative of a donor organisation, Tbilisi, November 2008.
32. Interview with senior official in the Saakashvili administration and representative of donor organisation, Tbilisi, October-November 2008.
33. Interview with senior official of the Saakashvili administration, Tbilisi, November 2008.
34. Interview with former head of international organisation in Georgia, Tbilisi, November 2008.
35. The former head of an international organisation further explains, 'What they [the donors] could do is write a case study of Georgia which is not perfect and sell it to all the countries that are worried about corruption. That's all, that would cost 1000 dollars'. Writing this case study would mean accepting that the anti-corruption knowledge stems from the recipient country itself. For example, the deregulation of the economy.
36. He was one of the few public officials of the Shevardnadze administration to be imprisoned after the Rose Revolution and not allowed to avoid incarceration by paying back sums of money to the state.
37. The so-called 'Liberty institute group' includes former members of the NGO 'Liberty Institute' occupying influential positions in the current government.
38. Interview with former employee of the Ministry of Education, Tbilisi, November 2008.
39. A World Bank employee explains that it was more a case of poor filing than a case of mismanagement. Interview with World Bank employee, Tbilisi, November 2008.
40. Interviews with former employees of the Ministry of Education, Tbilisi, November/December 2008.
41. A Civil Georgia article writes, 'The Education Minister criticized the state audit agency for being staffed by many "non-professionals" who have been engaged in "corrupt deals"', Civil Georgia, 'MPs Angered over Minister's Assertive Speech', Civil.ge, June 29, 2007, http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=15356 (accessed January 2009).
42. Interview with NGO leader, Tbilisi, November 2008.
43. Interview with opposition leader, Tbilisi, November 2008.
44. The group of actors supporting the Chamber of Control is composed of opposition parties such as the Conservative Party and the Republican Party. Nino Burdjanadze, at the time Parliament Speaker, is alleged to have provided a certain support in the coulisses 'allowing' the CCG to do this report. Interview with leaders of opposition parties, Tbilisi, November/December 2008.
45. CCG employees deny a link between the MoE scandal and this vague of resignation or see the link as very tenuous. Interview with CCG employees, Tbilisi, November/December 2008.
46. Interview with a representative of an opposition party, former MP, Tbilisi, November 2008. A former employee of the CCG, who had to resign during the restructuring, explains that people asked on the streets whether the CCG still existed. Interview with former employee of the CCG, Tbilisi, December 2008.
47. Interview with leaders of opposition parties, Tbilisi, November/December 2008.
48. As Sampson remarks, 'even the most localized rule-of-law conflicts are integrally tied to global forces. At the local level, these global discourses and resources are utilized in the local power strug- gles as they play themselves out in democracy promotion projects'. Steven Sampson, 'From Forms to Norms: Global Projects and Local Practices in the Balkan NGO Scene', Journal of Human Rights 2, no. 3 (2003): 329-37.
49. Interview with former employees of the Ministry of Education, NGO head close to the government, former head of international organisation close to the government, Tbilisi, November/ December 2008.
50. Interview with head of opposition party, Tbilisi, December 2008.
51. Tisne and Smilov remark, 'Institutional reform projects could hardly be seen as separate from the underlying political forces that shape a country's political climate and a public administration's working climate'. Tisne and Smilov, 'From the Ground Up', 60.
52. The same device was used during the Shevardnadze period.
53. Interviews with project managers, Tbilisi, December 2008.
54. Interview with project staff, Tbilisi, December 2008.
55. Interview with project staff and CCG employees, Tbilisi, November/December 2008.
56. Interview with EU delegation representative, Tbilisi, December 2008.
57. For reasons of confidentiality, I will not name the two NGOs and the donor organisation.
58. Interview with project participant, Tbilisi, March 12, 2008.
59. Interview with project manager, Tbilisi, February 1, 2008.
60. Project evaluation.
61. Interviews with project managers, Tbilisi, February 2008.
62. Interview with project manager, Tbilisi, February 1, 2008.
63. Interview with project participant, Tbilisi, March 12, 2008.