Bottom-Up Anti-Corruption Approach

Abstract

Home-grown initiatives of preventing corruption; Localism in anti-corruption; Social accountability Defining Bottom-Up Anti-Corruption Approach The bottom-up approach of anti-corruption can be defined as a process of preventing corruption from the community level through active participation from the citizens while public officials or corrupt syndicate is involved in wrongdoing. The term often is also known as localism, community engagement, spontaneous participation, or home-grown initiatives in preventing corruption. Participatory budgeting in South and North America can be cited as a textbook example of the bottom-up approach of anti-corruption where local people involved in public policymaking to ensure proper use of public money in their locality. Early Development of the Bottom-Up Approach of Anti-Corruption The top-down approach of anti-corruption suggests that preventing corruption or anticorruption measures taken from the central authority. This is more like a principal-agent relationship where the principal will monitor his agents and punish while caught in wrongdoing (Klitgaard 1988). However, the traditional topdown approach does not have potential success as the principal cannot monitor them due to complex bureaucratic paradox (Berman 1978). Therefore, in top-down approach public officials or assign authority likely to involved in corrupt practice as there is a lack of obligatory accountability measures. Often, they all are involved in an organized syndicate to manipulate the system. Consequently, public officials demand a bribe, delaying service, harass citizens, nepotism, favouritism, and so on. However, in the 1970s and early 1980s, a quite different approach emerged in response to the apparent feebleness of the "top-down" perception. Driven by new public management (NPM), bottom-up approach rather focusing on problem issues avoiding various policy stages like formulation, implantation (Sabatier 1986). The concept further developed by novel laureate Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom arguing poor and marginalized people needs bottom-up solution to empower their rights. Ostrom (1990) in her theory of "commons" particularly focused on local solutions for local