A failure of governmentality: why Transparency International underestimated corruption in Ben Ali’s Tunisia

Baumann, Hannes

doi:10.1080/01436597.2016.1153417

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Flaws in system auditing. There are a number of relevant global auditing regimes in place, almost all operated by non government organisations (NGOs; some receive government agency funding) like Transparency International's corruption index -seen as valuable though subject to a number of criticisms (see, for example, Baumann, 2017;Madlovics and Magyar, 2019). Auditing regimes are confined to particular spheres but in practice they interact as in cases where corruption affects environmental impact assessments (Williams and Dupuy, 2016).…”

Section: Can We Draw Wider Lessons?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Five challenges to humanity: Learning from pattern/repeat failures in past disasters?

Quinlan

2020

The Economic and Labour Relations Review

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Human civilisation faces a series of existential threats from the combination of five global and human-engineered challenges, namely climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation and rising social inequality. These challenges are arguably being manifested in both an increased likelihood and magnified impact of catastrophes like forest fires, prolonged droughts, pandemics and social dislocation/upheaval. This article argues that in understanding and addressing these challenges, important lessons can be drawn from what has repeatedly caused organisational failures. It applies the ‘Ten Pathways to Disaster’ model to a series of disasters/catastrophic events and then argues this model is salient to understanding inadequate responses to the five threats to civilisation. The article argues that because these challenges interact in mutually reinforcing ways, it is critical to address them simultaneously not in isolation. JEL Codes: H12, I14, I31, J11, Q01

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Section: Can We Draw Wider Lessons?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Five challenges to humanity: Learning from pattern/repeat failures in past disasters?

Quinlan

2020

The Economic and Labour Relations Review

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“…At the same time as benchmarking has become a core tool of domestic regulation, transnational actors have increasingly produced ratings and rankings to assess relative national performance at the global level. Benchmarks have become integral to the comparative evaluation of countries’ institutional design, policy agendas and behaviour across issue areas as diverse as global development goals ( Clegg, 2015 ), climate change action ( Kuzemko, 2015 ), corruption ( Baumann, 2017 ), human security ( Homolar, 2015 ), international human rights norms ( Harrison and Sekalala, 2015 ), national economic policies and institutions ( Sending and Lie, 2015 ), political freedom ( Bush, forthcoming ), and poverty reduction ( Freistein, 2016 ). Global benchmarks based on country rankings are deceptively easy to communicate and consume around the world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bad science: International organizations and the indirect power of global benchmarking

Broome

Homolar

Kranke

2017

European Journal of International Relations

116

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The production of transnational knowledge that is widely recognized as legitimate is a major source of influence for international organizations. To reinforce their expert status, international organizations increasingly produce global benchmarks that measure national performance across a range of issue areas. This article illustrates how international organization benchmarking is a significant source of indirect power in world politics by examining two prominent cases in which international organizations seek to shape the world through comparative metrics: (1) the World Bank–International Finance Corporation Ease of Doing Business ranking; and (2) the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index. We argue that the legitimacy attached to these benchmarks because of the expertise of the international organizations that produce them is highly problematic for two reasons. First, both benchmarks oversimplify the evaluation of relative national performance, misrepresenting contested political values drawn from a specific transnational paradigm as empirical facts. Second, they entrench an arbitrary division in the international arena between ‘ideal’ and ‘pathological’ types of national performance, which (re)produces social hierarchies among states. We argue that the ways in which international organizations use benchmarking to orient how political actors understand best practices, advocate policy changes and attribute political responsibility thus constitutes ‘bad science’. Extending research on processes of paradigm maintenance and the influence of international organizations as teachers of norms or judges of norm compliance, we show how the indirect power that international organizations exercise as evaluators of relative national performance through benchmarking can be highly consequential for the definition of states’ policy priorities.

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“…Within the broader literature, Foucault’s work and the concept of governmentality has been used before to analyse corruption, notably by Everett et al ( 2006 ) and Polzer ( 2001 ). There have also been authors like Baumann ( 2017 , p. 19) that have been critical of the way governmentality is used to assess the global movement against corruption. The argument is made that one needs to go further than just explaining totalised and large-scale forms of power and investigate how these governmental technologies are implemented in practice, and how this relates to the broader political economy (Baumann, 2017 , p. 19).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The contribution of this article lies in using Foucault’s work to build on the work of these previous authors, but also to highlight that there remains value in applying governmentality in an assessment of the global anti-corruption industry. As mentioned by Baumann ( 2017 ), many of the previous studies that made use of Foucault’s work focussed primarily on the international dimensions of the anti-corruption industry, while the way in which this global dimension relates to local situations remains largely unexplored. In this study, South Africa will be used as a case study to assess the relation between the global anti-corruption movement and local contextual and historical factors and thereby unpack some of the reasons why international efforts combat corruption may continue to fall short.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Games of Truth in the Age of Transparency: International Organisations and the Construction of Corruption

Snyman

2021

J Bus Ethics

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Corruption is one of the most intractable problems that the world is faced with and its reported impact is widespread and pervasive. Since the mid-1990s, international efforts to combat this problem expanded significantly, driven by the involvement governments, international financial institutions and non-governmental organisations. The objective of this article is to use Michel Foucault’s work in a critical analysis of the international fight against corruption. This analysis is centred on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, as well as his notions of knowledge, power and ethics. The primary focus is on the role played by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Transparency International in the proliferation of international anti-corruption discourse and practices. Furthermore, South Africa will be used as a case study to unpack the historical and contextual factors that play a role in the legitimisation of corruption. As will be shown in this assessment, without adequately understanding the local factors that stimulate corruption and the other societal characteristics that serve to compound its pervasiveness, internationally driven anti-corruption initiatives have limited scope for success. Corruption will persist where there is a lack of resonance between international anti-corruption ideals and local norms, values and ideologies.

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A failure of governmentality: why Transparency International underestimated corruption in Ben Ali’s Tunisia

Cited by 23 publications

References 27 publications

Five challenges to humanity: Learning from pattern/repeat failures in past disasters?

Five challenges to humanity: Learning from pattern/repeat failures in past disasters?

Bad science: International organizations and the indirect power of global benchmarking

Games of Truth in the Age of Transparency: International Organisations and the Construction of Corruption

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