Topic and Main Arguments
This book investigates the impact of organisational factors and leadership on the enforcement patterns of five anticorruption agencies (ACAs) from three Southeast European countries â Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia.1 The analysis covers the first decade of their transition reforms (from 2001 to 2012), which unfolded under EU oversight.
ACAs play an important role in advancing horizontal accountability (Schedler 1999), but they often struggle to sustain autonomous conduct because it contravenes office-holdersâ interests. This is particularly problematic in the new, post-communist European democracies, where the widespread patronage and informal networks (Mungiu-Pippidi 2005; Volintiru 2015) give politicians strong clout over the civil service. One key concern in such settings therefore is how to empower ACAs, as well as other oversight bodies, for autonomous conduct.
The recipe that international donors and reform assisters across the post-communist world promoted was the conventional one: to grant the newly created ACAs structural insulation from government. The lesser the statutory power of a government to shape an agencyâs personnel, budget and policy, the less reluctant will the agency be to confront the government, the thinking goes. Post-communist democracies have widely embraced this maxim, placing their newly created ACAs outside the governmental hierarchy.
The logic of structural insulation has its roots in neo-institutional theory and the principal-agent framework (Williamson 1975; Jensen and Meckling 1976; Moe 1984, 1990; Shepsle and Weingast 1987; McCubbins et al. 1987; Horn 1995). This paradigm stresses the hierarchical nature of the relationship between politicians and bureaucratic appointees. Its key concern is how a political principal will counter a bureaucratic agentâs âdriftâ from the preferred course of action during the implementation of the delegated policy. Principals control their agents through statutory means, including ex-ante instruments such as budgeting, nomination, and appointment powers, and as ex-post instruments such as removal of agency staff, review of agentâs reports, and others (McCubbins and Schwartz 1984; McCubbins 1985; McCubbins et al. 1987, 1989; Balla 1998). Thus, an agentâs autonomy is seen as inversely proportional to the principalâs statutory powers.
This book, however, argues that in transitional settings, structural insulation from government will hardly determine agenciesâ de facto autonomy. The book makes two points in this regard. First, even when lacking a âsafe structural distanceâ from the political principal, agencies might achieve autonomy through their leadersâ reputational management. As the reputational school argues (Carpenter 2001, 2014; Maor 2014; Waeraas and Maor 2014; Busuioc and Lodge 2016, 2017), crafty reputational management that enhances an agencyâs legitimacy can help pre-empt governmental statutory reprisals. In transitional democracies, possibilities for anticorruption actors to exploit reputational symbols are significant, both among domestic audiences and international overseers. For instance, anticorruption actors can cultivate support by pursuing combative appearances, which will likely resonate with the electorate, due to the strong resentment towards corruption. Also, foreign overseers, who often value combative watchdogs as domestic agents of change, can draw on the conditionality power to pre-empt governmental intervention against such watchdogs. Therefore, the presence of these two contextual factors in transitional countries â strong resentment towards corruption and the presence of foreign âwatchersâ â provides a conducive environment for ACAs to conduct âreputational politicsâ and thus achieve levels of de facto autonomy than are greater than the insulation theory predicts.
The second point made here in challenging the âstructural paradigmâ is that those agency leaders that enjoy organisational insulation from government are nonetheless unprotected from non-institutional pressures. In the East-European post-communist landscape, opportunities for non-institutional pressure are rife, given the strong role of informal networks (Böröcz 2000; Grzymala-Busse 2010; Giordano and Hayoz 2013; Volintiru 2015; Mendelski 2015). The result of interventions into agenciesâ enforcement choices, which politicians make through these channels is â reduced agenciesâ de facto autonomy.
The book will show that neither low structural insulation from government necessarily prevents high de facto autonomy of agencies, nor is high organisational distance from government a sufficient factor for autonomous agency conduct. Instead of organisational distance, the book will show that it is the role of agency leaders, particularly their reputational management, that crucially shapes the de facto autonomy of ACAs.
The fact that the book demonstrates a weakness in the insulation thesis does not mean that it dismisses the importance of institutional design. The study will show that another aspect of agency design â the organisational model â is an important factor that influences how agency leaders ponder over their accountability, and, consequently, how they develop autonomy. The book demonstrates that the organisational model shapes what reputational gains and losses an ACA will face when undertaking harsh enforcement. The organisational model, which defines the formal ACA mission and powers, shapes the audiencesâ expectations on how responsible an ACA is for the outcome of undertaken anticorruption actions.
The book will show that so called preventative ACAs â those that are in charge of integrity tasks and that command non-prosecutorial powers (KlemenÄiÄ and Stusek 2008; OECD 2013) â can undertake harsh forms of enforcement even when their organisational factors such as structural insulation, powers and resources, are weak. Preventative ACAs can enhance their reputation regardless of whether their harsh enforcement actions accomplish a successful outcome or not. For those actions that end as a policy success, preventative ACAs can claim credit as the initiators, but also those actions that end as a policy failure give preventative ACAs an opportunity to pin the blame to the political and/or judicial establishment as the most responsible and powerful actors in the field of anticorruption. Thus, in both scenarios â positive as well as negative epilogues of its initiatives â a preventative ACA can reinforce its image of a zealous watchdog, without bearing the responsibility.
Unlike preventative ACAs, so called suppressive ACAs â those with investigative mandates and prosecutorial powers (KlemenÄiÄ and Stusek 2008; OECD 2013) â need strong organisational factors to sustain a pattern of harsh enforcement. Their suppressive mandate positions them as the responsible actor for the policy outcomes, tying their reputation to the success of their actions and to the wider state of corruption in the society. Weak organisational factors, such as poor resources or weak powers within the criminal procedure, will diminish their chances of a policy success, and as such will deter their leaders from undertaking harsh enforcement, because potential failures would increase the reputational cost. Suppressive ACAs, the book argues, will therefore need strong organisational factors to advance a pattern of harsh enforcement.
The findings about the role of structural insulation and organisational model in fostering agency autonomy are relevant for re-thinking the process of institution-building across transitional countries. So far, institution-building across transition countries has relied on the conventional recipe of structural insulation, but the enforcement patterns of the established regulators and watchdogs have not always lived up to the expectations of autonomous conduct. The bookâs findings suggest that, instead of trying to âhardwireâ agency conduct through structural insulation, policy practitioners need to prioritise recruiting âreputation-savvyâ leaders, with a view of what reputational strategies are suitable for the given organisational model.
These considerations are of no lesser relevance today than they were in the early transitional days. In todayâs era of democratic backsliding across new democracies, both within the EU (Ăgh 2013; Sedelmeier 2014; Iusmen 2015) and outside the EU (GĂŒnay and DĆŸihiÄ 2016; Esen and Gumuscu 2016), challenges to horizontal accountability abound. This makes the question of how to foster autonomous conduct of public sector âwatchersâ well-timed. In that regard, the findings that the book offers are relevant for considerations of institutional re-design. As such, the book might appeal to two groups of audiences: policy practitioners across transitional countries (international donors, reform assisters, domestic policy-makers) and delegation scholars.
It is worth underlining that although it explores the logic of ACAsâ enforcement, the book d...