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Reply to Stapenhurst

Our interest in writing the article was two-fold. First, parliamentarian work on anti-corruption to date has been ineffective. According to data by Stevens and Russo the adoption of anti-corruption legislation has no statistical correlation with measured decreases in perceived corruption. Second, donor-financed anti-corruption support to parliamentarians to date has ‘depoliticised’ – in Ferguson’s terms – international development projects like these. In brief, donors treat reforms as ‘institutional changes’ which are extremely politicised (and should involve democratic politics!). The ‘depoliticisation’ critique of international donor assistance has been extremely popular in the last five years (a simple Internet search shows over 1,000 papers referencing this critique), and thus we do not repeat these issues in our reply. While Stapenhurst argues that we fail to see the structuralist side of the debate, we would argue that we wrote the article exactly to bring to his attention – and the attention of his peers and partners – the problem with this approach. Current donor support to parliamentarians in the area of anti-corruption assumes (though Stapenhurst will certainly disagree) that parliamentarians are unable to audit public accounts and draft bills which provide effective dissuasion from participating in corruption. In short, they lack ‘human capital’. The remedy for such a lack of human capital – as evidenced by his Figure 3 showing a strategy for remedying this situation – consists of training, group meetings (‘action planning’) and (presumably) assistance with legislative drafting. Yet, comparing both the formal education and the rules in place of OECD Member State parliaments and many parliaments in developing countries, we fail to see significant differences. Simply put, parliamentarians in high corruption developing economies are no more ignorant than their peers. Instead, parliamentarians in OECD Member States and parliamentarians in high corruption developing economies face different personal and political incentives.