Enhancing Anti-Corruption Advocacy Through Evidence-Based Mapping

About The Project And Inspiration For This Guide

The Effective Combat Against Corruption (ECAC) and Implementing Anti-Corruption Treaties and Standards (IMPACTS) projects worked with local partner organizations in countries undergoing transitions to improve state compliance with existing regional and international anti-corruption standards and commitments.⁹ These projects spanned 10 countries over three continents and were implemented jointly by IFES and the CEELI Institute. ECAC and IMPACTS were funded by the U.S. Department of State’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau (DoS/INL). In the initial phases of the projects, local partners undertook extensive research, assisted by IFES and the CEELI Institute, to map anti-corruption mechanisms and shortcomings in their implementation. Identifying gaps between the standards to which a State agreed and their practical application formed the basis for successful advocacy in later stages of the projects. Fine-tuning advocacy efforts to align with current standards enabled ECAC and IMPACTS partners to secure institutional buy-in for reform more efficiently.

This guide is based on the projects’ successful approach to mapping international anti-corruption standards with high saliency for national governments, and leveraging these standards and related peer review mechanisms to develop strategies for advancing bottom-up advocacy and reform. It describes a replicable methodology for civil society actors, anti-corruption practitioners, and others to aid in their advocacy and project development activities. Moreover, it provides practical considerations and guidance for those interested in fine-tuning their approach to conducting anti-corruption advocacy.

Components of this Guide

This guide presents a framework for the often-complex process of finding meaningful entry points to engage in or advocate for reform. Each section covers a step in the research and mapping process.

• Stage 1: Gather knowledge
• Stage 2: Select priority issue areas for reform
• Stage 3: Develop power maps of allies and spoilers
• Stage 4: Evaluate donors and projects
• Stage 5: Develop action plans and mobilize resources

How to Use this Guide

Evaluating stakeholders and finding entry points for anti-corruption advocacy is not a simple brainstorming exercise to produce a shortlist of political actors with whom to engage in advocacy or discuss research. The process requires critical thinking, meaningful reflection, and extensive research. This guide seeks to break down such complexity and synthesize related information. Stakeholder mapping and identifying entry points is an ongoing process. As circumstances around a problem or issue shift--as they will during advocacy and research activities--it is important to reassess stakeholders continuously. Understanding how the positions, mandates, and influence of different political and legal institutions and actors can shift is critical to ensuring that advocacy and research can adapt as well. This is the foundation of thinking and working politically, which "ensure[s] interventions and activities are tailored and respond to political context and power dynamics."¹⁰

• While this guide presents a series of stages for how to undertake this research mapping process, it should by no means be viewed as a solely linear process. The contexts, power dynamics, and other aspects explored in this guide are continuously changing.
• While the action planning/resource mobilization processes are discussed separately from the knowledge gathering sections, it is often useful for CSOs to keep institutional feasibility in mind when conducting the knowledge gathering stage.
• Anti-corruption reform is extremely complex. While this guide attempts to provide a practical, replicable methodology for identifying entry points for anti-corruption advocacy, it is by no means exhaustive.

Abuse of state resources: “[T]he undue advantages obtained by certain parties or candidates, through use of their official positions or connections to governmental institutions, to influence the outcome of elections.”¹ Abuse of state resources can occur outside the electoral cycle and can erode the efficacy of and trust in governance.²

Advancing anti-corruption commitments: Particularly around transparency and accountability, this is accomplished by “[I]dentify[ing], prioritiz[ing] and execut[ing] concrete actions to advance implementation of international and regional anti-corruption commitments, for instance on management and control of political finance; prevention and documentation of abuse of state resources; asset recovery; public procurement and spending; public sector ethics; and judicial independence and integrity.”³

Judicial independence: The Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct explain that judicial independence exists in a context in which the judiciary “decide[s] matters before it impartially, on the basis of facts and in accordance with the law, without any restrictions, improper influences, inducements, pressures, threats or interferences, direct or indirect, from any quarter or for any reason.”⁴

Judicial integrity: As outlined in the Bangalore Principles, “[i]ntegrity is the attribute of rectitude and righteousness. The components of integrity are honesty and judicial morality. A judge should always, not only in the discharge of official duties, act honourably and in a manner befitting the judicial office; be free from fraud, deceit and falsehood; and be good and virtuous in behaviour and in character.”⁵

Legal and regulatory reform: “[T]he development of clear, consistent and accessible legal frameworks for effective governance, while also encouraging effective application and enforcement of the law,”⁶ including civil society monitoring and advocacy in these processes.⁷

Political finance: Political finance involves the way that political parties finance their regular activities; parties, candidates, and non-contestants raise and spend money for election campaigns; and how this funding and spending is regulated and disclosed.⁸

1 Handbook for the Observation of Campaign Finance. (2015). Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

2 Abuse of State Resources Research and Assessment Framework. (2018). | IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems.

3 Transparency & Accountability. (2023, December 15). | IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems.

4 Commentary on the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct. (n.d.). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

5 Ibid.

6 Legal & Regulatory Reform. (2022, November 23). | IFES – The International Foundation for Electoral Systems.

7 Ibid.

8 Political Finance. (n.d.). IFES –The International Foundation for Electoral Systems.

9 The ECAC project was implemented from 2018 to 2023 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Romania. The IMPACTS project was implemented from 2020 to -2023 in Armenia, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Malaysia, and Morocco.

10 Brinkerhoff, Derrrick, and Marc Cassidy. (2023). Reflections on Ten Years of USAID’s Experience with Political Economy Analysis and Thinking and Working Politically. Thinking and Working Community of Practice, p. 3.