Launched in April 2022, Hertie School offers courses and training elements leading to a Certificate in Anti-Corruption and Public Accountability. This certified programme addresses the various challenges that corruption poses in state and non-state organisations and how to effectively address them, both from a policy and practitioner's perspective.
Anti-corruption strategies will be discussed not just as a repressive tool, but as a society's capacity to formulate, impose and sustain policies that promote merit and fairness versus an allocation of joint resources based on patronage, clientelism and corruption. In other words, we discuss corruption as a social practice and perverter of development, the market and democracy. By drawing from state-of-the-art research, generated by EU-funded top corruption research projects, the courses use an evidence-based approach that enables participants to identify various forms of corruption in their local context and to effectively formulate anti-corruption strategies for their institutions.
What’s the Advanced Certificate about?
The Professional Certificate is targeted at public sector employees or consultants who design and implement anti-corruption policies, as well as private sector and civil society groups individuals who devote efforts and resources towards combating corruption in any capacity. It equips them with the diagnostic and policy skills they need to fight graft in their home countries as a defining struggle of our era.
The Certificate covers multiple dimensions of corruption including its causes and mechanisms, measuring and diagnosing corruption, the role of human agency in sustaining and fighting corruption, as well as combating corruption through Information and Communication Technology (ITC) mechanisms. Experts in the field will lead this training through interactive workshops, lectures and best practice case studies, using the resource webpages created by the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building (ERCAS) like www.corruptionrisk.org, www.europam.eu, or www.opentender.eu. The workshop aims at fostering innovation, creating learning and networking amongst peers. Participants will be awarded with a recognised Professional Certificate.
How is the curriculum structured?
To earn the Professional Certificate in Anti-Corruption and Public Accountability, participants must complete six days of courses and training elements from among the three segments offered. Segment 2 (Days 7 and 8) as well as segment 3 (Days 9 and 10) have to be booked together. Apart from this requirement, participants can design their own training plan and reconcile this investment in their professional career with other requirements that come with working and learning from home.
How is the course delivered?
The seminar is convened by Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, who chairs Hertie’s European Centre for Anti-corruption and State-building (ERCAS) and consults for United Nations’ UNODC on corruption measurement. As part of the Certificate programme, courses and training elements will be delivered both by Hertie’s renowned faculty and international experts with specific professional background in their respective field, in three segments over a period of 10 days spread over two weeks. The training will be delivered online. Throughout the course, a focus will be put on collaborative processes and learning. Methodologically, emphasis will be laid on self-guided and peer-to-peer learning and reflection, less on frontal teaching.
The first segment of the training provides an overview of current theories and strategies in identifying and evaluating corruption, as well as anti-corruption strategies in Europe and beyond. The second block looks more specifically at two case studies drawn from recent examples in state and non-state corruption. The last part of the training is dedicated to a two-day workshop, in which participants will be encouraged to apply the acquired knowledge towards an actionable anti-corruption strategy in their organisations.
Do I qualify?
We will be recruiting participants with:
- the ability to understand, speak and write in fluent English
- over five years of investigative or policy work in the anti-corruption field
We encourage organisations to enable entire teams to earn the Professional Certificate.
How do I sign up?
Interested particpants and organisations should contact our Executive Education team at executive[at]hertie-school[dot]org. Individual courses are being set up on a rolling basis, based on participant interest.
Courses will be delivered in English.
How does the programme look like in more detail?
Modules available in 2022
Day 1 provides participants with definitions and classifications of corruption. They should be able to understand what corruption means in various contexts and why it is worth studying. Participants will also be introduced to the difference between corruption as an exception and corruption as a norm to be able to identify the relevant context and level for successfully diagnosing corruption problems. They will also learn the causal mechanisms resulting in a variety of forms of corruption, but also what these phenomena have in common.
Instructor: Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD and Michael Johnston (Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science (Emeritus) at Colgate University)
On Day 2 participants will work on identifying challenges in the measurement and diagnosis of corruption and look at advantages and disadvantages of different established (like Corruption Perception Index) and innovative measurement techniques. The distinction between norm and practice is introduced, for instance de jure transparency and de facto transparency. Participants will learn how to use the integrity and transparency indexes developed by ERCAS instead of the World Bank Doing Business, which has been discontinued, and adjust them to their needs. They will in particular learn how to define, map and measure in order to assess effectiveness of their anticorruption intervention (before and after) by means of objective indicators, for which ERCAS is internationally renowned.
Instructor: Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD and Roberto Martinez Kukutschka from Transparency International Secretariate.
Having gained an overall understanding of what corruption means and how it can be measured and classified, participants will look more closely at a specific and most encountered type of corruption, government failure and its effects on economies and the free market. Corruption as government or policy failure is systematic because it is the government action or inaction which generates corruption. Participants will study the relationship between business and government resulting in “crony capitalism” around the world and what mixed role regulation plays to control corruption (or in fact create it). The examples discussed range from public health to public infrastructure. Successful strategies against such situations require major reforms to eliminate the government harmful action and should not be limited to anti-corruption acts directed against individuals. By working on a prominent case study, participants will be able to assess regulatory quality and its impact in creating, versus dissuading, rent-seeking. They will also learn best practices by studying the countries which have managed in recent times to improve regulation to prevent corruption.
Instructor: Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD and Prof. Sergei Guriev, PhD (Sciences Po), Former Chief Economist EBRD
Corruption as market failure refers to the situation when the markets cannot control abusive behaviour, resulting in massive fraud and corruption. This happens in particular in cross-border unregulated economic activities (such as international finance) or areas of large discretion in public funds spending and fierce competitive industries (such as pharmaceutics), which invest in legislative lobby to prevent regulation. Participants will discuss why globalization, despite multiplying trade opportunities, seems to bring more corruption, not less and how to break the vicious circle of influence peddling, favouritism in regulation and corruption. Correspondingly, the existing range of policies to address this type of corruption will be reviewed at international, national and organization level (compliance)
Instructor: Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD with Sarah Steingrüber (WHO) and Juanita Olaya (UNCAC coalition)
On Day 5 participants will analyse anti-corruption tools and public accountability mechanisms in Europe and beyond. To work, each tool needs a specific context: the course will review the evidence on the enabling context of anti-corruption regulation. Participants will analyze conflicts of interest and financial disclosure and other public-private separation strategies as one of the main pillars in combating corruption in modern societies. Another important aspect will be transparency and freedom of information in regulation as well as practice, and how technology helps good governance. Lastly, the access to and fairness of public procurement will be evaluated via new tools such as the European Public Procurement Scoreboard, the Ukrainian pro-Zorro or the 47 million public contracts' repository Opentender.eu. In an open panel, participants will have the opportunity to discuss tools to fight corruption in Germany, Europe and beyond with a number of renowned experts in the field.
Instructor: Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD with Mihaly Fazekas (Central European University) and Prof. Nikos Passas (Northeastern University)
Day 6 is devoted to the international anti-corruption regime and its effectiveness. Participants will discuss the role of global regulation like UNCAC, FCPA or OECD Anti-Bribery Convention as well as of the aid industry. Can successful anti-corruption be driven from abroad or should it be handled in a local context? What can be done and is being done presently to step up implementation of global instruments? How do main donors (EU, US, Bretton Woods institutions) address the problem of corruption? How can international organizations deal with corruption in their own ranks to maintain their effectiveness and credibility?
Instructor: Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD with Arntraud Hartmann (World Bank)
Since corruption has become a popular topic, several books and articles appeared offering prescriptions on how to ‘nudge’ people towards integrity. But despite donor agencies commissioning many such reports and projects based on them, success stories are still missing. The few positive evolutions of contemporary times (covered in Mungiu-Pippidi and Johnston 2017 Transitions to Good Governance) are not cases of ‘nudging’, but shorter- or longer-term stories of build up of critical mass and successful domestic leadership. On Days 7 and 8 participants will work on two case studies of corruption drawn from recent examples of market and government failure corruption. They will discuss the prevalence of corruption in the given context, identify relevant stakeholders and review solutions for corruption as social trap. How can collective action problems, which lead to the reproduction of corrupt outcomes and the resilience of corruption and inequality of opportunity, be solved? How to build successful coalitions for change?
Instructor: Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD
In the last segment of the Professional Certificate, Hertie experts will be leading an interactive workshop, guiding participants as they develop and draft an anti-corruption action plan drawing from the conclusions and tools acquired throughout the course.
Instructor: Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD and Katherine Wilkins, doctoral candidate.
