Comparative Perspective of British Anti-Corruption Policy - Coursework Example

Comparative perspective of British anti-corruption policy in recent years In most of the developed or less developed countries public and private sector corruption has been the major problem for political, economic, social and cultural aspects of these nations. Corruption hampers equitable distribution of goods and services to residents. Corruption can be seen in many forms. It can be seen as citizens providing bureaucrats bribes to perform certain tasks or to provide certain services to the citizens, employees of government hospitals stealing medicines which were allocated for the poor people of the society, or it can be seen as bureaucrats receiving salaries for tasks which those corrupted bureaucrats do not complete. Many researchers have argued that corruption can hamper economic growth of the country and lowers the pace of economic and social development of these nations. Hence, anti-corruption policies are so much essential for the purpose of increasing the growth path of the national economy and also to develop social and cultural aspects of the country (Hanna et al., 2011, p.2). This paper is aimed at describing the comparative perspective of anti-corruption policies which have been implemented by Britain government in recent years. The policymaking environment: The twenty-first century has marked significant changes in the structure of British institutional models and the evolution of models of democratic institutions have been developed during this century. With the introduction of these new structural developments the British government is now starting form a developed government. With the introduction of these new policies and institutional structures the British government is now aiming at developing an independent institutional structure of government away from the traditional centralist structure of the British government. The concept of devolution has been described as the process where the power of governance has been transferred from central government to lower level government authorities. This process of devolution has been used by the British government in the twenty-first century. But extensive use of devolution policy has been made by the British government between 1994 and 2004. There are various advantages of introducing this new institutional structure. For Southern Ireland and Wales this devolution has brought in various new opportunities and encourages regional governments in these areas to operate at more efficient levels. This devolution process acknowledges a distinct identity for these regional governments which helps in better evaluation of political and economic policies implemented in these regions. This transition allows for fairer and better political and voting system in these regions. With this transition these regions have gained greater importance in the European Union and they have gained greater reliance in terms of their strategic planning and evaluation of these policies and strategies. And the most important advantage of this policy of transformation of political power is that, it reduces the burden of the Westminster in terms of setting strategies and policies and also to evaluate them (Deacon and Sandry, 2007, pp.2-3). This process of transition has been described as the recipe for tackling corruption in the country. With the help of the transition of political and economic policymaking power these regional governments are expected to implement policies which will raise the level of awareness among citizens of these regions and will reduce the intensity of citizens to engage in corrupted activities. It will also give regional governments the power to reduce the level of corruption at regional political and bureaucratic level (Richard and Smith, 2003, p.57). The policymaking machinery: Policymaking machineries are very mush important for any political or economic structure of a country. In respect to Britain these policymaking machineries have played significant roles in developing policies which have been aimed at reducing the intensity of corruption within the political, economic and social structure of the country. A policy has been defined as the course of actions which are implemented by government in order to adopt some deliberate decisions. It is completely distinct from government’s philosophy. A policy can be a beneficial in the short period of time or its benefits can be acquired only after a long period of time (James, 1997, pp.2-3). The government first sets the policy and agenda which is to be implemented. The concerned departments of the governing authority then collects the facts and views related to the agenda. This process of gathering information and views includes discussions and consultations at extensive levels and with different groups and organisations which are involved in the topic of discussion. Sometime these policies are discussed and consulted in secret, like the policy of social security review of 1985, but sometimes these policies are consulted at aggregate levels, like the London’s parking problem. Since these policies are aimed at implemented as incremental policies, therefore the public employees are sometimes involved into these issues in order to mark a notable contribution in the context of comparing with past policy decisions. In the second stage, after gather the necessary data and information related to the topic of discussion, the government officials categorise the options, write down those options and submit the paper as a ‘submission’ to the concerned authority of the British government – to the ministers. In this phase of policymaking outsiders are not allowed to enter into the decision making process. But in the presence of disagreements among the members of the decision-taking body or in the context of the fact that the issue under consideration is inherently controversial, the issue will be sent to the cabinet committee or directly to the cabinet. In these cases the Prime Minister is most likely to get involved into the decision-making process. The third stage of policymaking involves the legislation and legitimisation. In this stage the Ministers of respective departments use their legislative power to take decisions regarding the issue. Sometimes the government uses the majority of votes acquired from the House of Commons and other Parliamentary authorities and implements the policies. In case of legitimisation the government again relies on the majority of votes and implements policies, but in this case the government does not require any formal approval from the Parliament. In the final stage the policy gets implemented and reviewed. The department which is responsible for setting up the policy, implements it. If any problem occurs related to the fact that the policy is not working, then the concerned department or the government or both involve in investigating and identifying the reasons behind the failure of these policies. These are the main policymaking machineries which are used by the British government while implementing policies (James, 1997, pp. 3-5). In case of implementing policies to reduce the level of corruption in the country, the British government uses these steps to implement stricter policies for the betterment of the economic and political structure of the country (Savage and Atkinson, 2009, p.15). Following this mechanism the Bribery Act has been implemented in 2010 as the major anti-corruption policy (Anti-Corruption Policy And Compliance Handbook, 2011, p.3). Public policies and big society in UK: The existence of big society in Britain has made it very innovative for public policies to get implemented in the country. The Big Society project of 2010 has been the most influential project which was aimed at taking away the power of politicians or political leaders and giving it to the people of Great Britain. This project has been developed in order to create domestic public policies more efficient in respect to their implementation and also to acquisition of benefits from those policies. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair viewed the project as a way “to fight for it every day, because the Big Society is here to stay”. Under this project people of all major religions and societies are involved and they are given the chance to play important roles in implementing policies for themselves as well as for government. The project has been developed in three basic areas. Firstly, it has been viewed as the most important policy of transferring the empowerment away from the government to communities with the help of decentralisation and localism, by providing local and regional councils more power in respect to decision-taking and to shape their areas. Secondly, the role of government has been changed to encourage more and more people to voluntarily take part into social activities and to donate in favour of successful implementation of public policies. Thirdly, general public of the Great Britain have been allowed to take more control on the services, both public and private, which they use. The British authorities have argued that this policy will help people to increase the quality of services they use (The Big Society, 2011, pp.1-8). The issue of group mobilisation has been used in this case by the British government, where different interest groups have been invited to take part into the decision-making process. The notion of issue expansion has also been used in this project, where different new issues have been raised at the time of discussions with different communities and interest groups (Birkland, 1998, p.55). The British government has argued that the level of corruption can be reduced in the country with the application of this project where people can understand the need for appropriate policies and take appropriate steps to successfully implement these policies (The Big Society, 2011, p.15). Immigration and policies: According to many researchers the level of corruption is high in the country because of high level of immigration of people of other countries and high existence of refugees. These refugees and citizens of other countries enter into the United Kingdom (UK) illegally and offer bribes and illegal ‘donations’ to different government authorities to get fraudulent work permits to work in the country (Harris and Conway, 2003, p.117). They sometimes engage into corruption for the purpose of obtaining false British citizenship certificates by giving bribes to concerned authorities. Researchers have found that Immigration Officers are engaged into highest level of corruption in the country. They have found that large number of people have been immigrating into the country from different countries like Pakistan, China, South American countries, African countries and Scandinavian countries. These illegal immigrants are encouraging these officials to involving into corruption and negatively affecting the social dimension of the country. Due to this correlation between migration and corruption it has been the most hated aspect in Britain. This illegal immigration has raised the level of corruption both at the local level and at the central level. In 2011, a British immigration has been suspended for providing visas illegally to Nigerian immigrants by taking bribes and has forced the government to implement stricter policies in order to reduce the level of immigration in the country and hence to reduce the level of corruption (King et al. 2011, p.79). Risk, Regulation and Crisis Management: Risk, regulation and crisis management have been most important parts of policies implemented by British government and of the policies which have been implemented aiming at reducing the level of corruption in the country. Regulations are needed to be set in regard to the inclusion of risk associated with corruption in the assessment structure of companies. In Britain regulations have been set to include this corruption risk assessment into each stage of company’s projects. Important benefit of such risk assessment is that it will help companies and the government to understand the volume of corruption risk at each stage of production. This assessment includes company’s interactions with the government, different government officials, bureaucrats and private-sector agents. With the help of this assessment companies can implement restrictive practices to protect itself and its employees from engaging in corrupted activities in effective and consistent ways. In this regards the British government and companies have agreed to implement various anti-corruption policies and various trainings to its employees to deal with political and business officials (Risk Assessment: Assessing Corruption Risk, 2011, p.2). According to Ulrich Beck (1992), modern societies can be described as risk societies. The most important feature of this risk society is that no one can be accountable for any kind of risks or hazards in this society. And the most important problem that arises with this risk society is that it is very difficult to compensate those who have been negatively affected by those hazards as the degree of hazards is very difficult to calculate. In this respect the notion of corruption can be described as the hazard that negatively affect those people who are getting marginalised from acquiring benefits from public policies. Risk has been describes as the major threat for the growth of modernity and development of industrial societies. Corruption has been described as the major reason which has been helping risks to dominate policies which have been used aiming at reducing the level of risk through proper controls on corruption. In this context the need for proper regulations has been felt by the British government. In this modern society, business houses and organisations are more concerned about making profits at the cost of making societies corrupted at an increasing rate (Beck, 1992, pp.1-4). Hence, various regulations inside the government including all government officials like army officers, auditors, bureaucrats etc. These regulations include different bodies of selected persons who are responsible for critical analysis of tasks and steps which are implemented by those government officials and report directly to the concerned ministry or to the Prime Minister. In this process the courts, legislatures and other higher governmental authorities are given greater focus on implementing policies which are aimed at reducing the level of corruption in the country (Hood, 1999, p.1). The notion of crisis management has been used extensively in successfully dealing with risks and regulations which are aimed at reducing the level of corruption in the country. Different types of crises have influenced Britain over the years. The notion of corruption is related to the ‘creeping’ crisis which does not affect the nation and people suddenly, rather create negative effects in the long-run. In this context proper management and regulations are highly needed to deal with these aspects and most importantly to tackle corrupted bureaucrats and government officials (McConnell, 2003, p. 187). Britain’s International Relations: Britain’s international relations are mostly affecting the level of corruption in the country and are responsible for implementation of anti-corruption policies in the country. Britain has been following a progressing foreign policy. A progressive foreign policy implies that the British government is focused more on implementing policies which are sustainable, and ‘committed to social justice, human rights, democracy, international rule of law and multilateralism’. This type of policy gives higher weights to universal values. With the help of this policy every person in the world has began to be treated ‘as a single moral realm’, irrespective of class, race, gender and nationality. This foreign policy development have gained huge momentum in the country in for people who came from different countries and have helped the national interests to grow in different political, social, cultural and economical areas of the country. But the major problem that came into effect was related to the increased level of corruption in the country which has raised the need for anti-corruption policies (Held and Mepham, 2007, p.3). In the era of globalisation the distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy has been eroded. In this context the most important implication of this foreign policy implemented by the British government is that more resources are now need to be allocated at local and global levels, bureaucrats are now need to be more concerned about favouring ‘capacity building’ and hence more corruption is now expected to be practicised at global levels as well as at already existing local levels (Held and Mepham, 2007, p.51). But inspite of these speculations the British government has been successful in efficiently implementing anti-corruption policies in the poverty alleviation programmes. Several anti-corruption policies have been implemented by the British government in order to control the level of corruption in the country in view of the fact that in the presence of foreign policies bureaucrats are keener to be engaged in corruption. Evidences suggest that bureaucrats have been criticised for engaging in corruption Kenya, Nigeria and other Sub Saharan African countries (Held and Mepham, 2007, pp.88-89). In this context the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (2010) has been implemented to tackle the level of corruptions which are done bureaucrats in respect to foreign policies (Anti-Corruption Policy And Compliance Handbook, 2011, p.3). Inclusive Educational Policies: Inclusive educational policies of the British government are also related to the level of corruption in the country. Inclusive educational policies in Britain maintain consistencies in the country in regard to providing equal educational opportunities to students irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity and social and political groups. These policies also avoid discriminations against disability and exclude discriminations against issues like pregnancy and maternity, specific religion beliefs etc (Rix, 2005, p.96). These polices have been developed in October 1, 2010 with the introduction of the Equality Act and have been highly effective in reducing the intensity of corruption in the country. Before the introduction of inclusive educational policies different educational institutes and government officials have been alleged regarding taking bribes to provide admissions to educational institutes and to provide other favourable facilities to those students who had the capacity to give money illegally to those educational institutes and particularly to those bureaucrats (Legislation and guidance for inclusive education, 2011, p.1). Anti-corruption policies have been implemented in order to reduce discriminations against students belonging to families of migrated workers (Rix, 2005, p.191). The Equality Act has been viewed as the most important act in regard to the policy of reducing the level of corruption in the country (Legislation and guidance for inclusive education, 2011, p.1). Social exclusion and anti-corruption policies: Social exclusion has been blamed as the most influential factor causing the level of corruption to increase in Britain. The notion of social exclusion is related to the fact that selected individuals or communities are discriminate or excluded from social, economic, cultural and economic rights and opportunities and they do not possess any right (or they possess limited rights) to access different resources and facilities (Piachaud, 2002, p.1). People are excluded in several grounds like poverty, belonging to different minority societies, having involved in illegal activities in past times and also in grounds like having a weak political structure in the society (Pantazis et al, 2006, p.66). Among these aspects the most important reason behind increasing level of social exclusion in the country has been poverty. Poverty has caused many people to get excluded from social recognition, from attaining education etc. Therefore these people have been literally forced by the government policies to get involved into several illegal activities which have raised the level of corruption in the country. In this respect several policies have been implemented in Britain to reduce the level of social exclusion (Chitty and Elam, 1999, p.5). In this respect the Equality Act has played a major role in reducing the level of social exclusion by providing equal opportunities to everybody living in the society (Pantazis et al, 2006, pp.69-71). Counter-Terrorism policies: Terrorism has raised the level of corruption in Britain to some great extent as large number of terrorists has been engaged in terrorist activities in recent years. Due to this increase in intensity o terrorist activities, corruption has been increased in regard to illegal purchase of arms, military machineries and even military and police plans regarding execution of military campaign to be conducted in other countries. Various military authorities, bureaucrats and even ministers have been alleged to be engaged in these corruptions and they are severely punished by the legal system of the country (Slike, 2009, p.12). In this context several anti-terror laws have been implemented along with the purpose of reducing the intensity of terrorist activities in the country and also to reduce the level of corruption in the country. The Terrorism Act of 2000 has been the starting point of this anti-terrorism movement and it was followed by The Terrorism Act of 2006 which created huge impacts on reducing the level of terrorism and hence, the level of corruption in the country (The Impact of UK Anti-Terror Laws on Freedom of Expression, 2006, p.4-7). Economic policies: Economic policies have most important relevance with anti-corruption policies. This is because the incidence of corruption is most likely to happen in case of the fact that the economic agents get involved in different economic activities. These economic activities encourage these agents to be involved in corruption to obtain greater profits and welfare and also to lower the cost of fulfilling those economic activities. Different economic policies have been implemented by the British government and they have raised the level of corruption in the country (Chittenden et al., 2010, pp.15-16). Economic policies related to income-tax rates, financial and monetary structures of public and mainly private organisations, policies related to globalisation and liberalisation of national economy, policies related to financial and capitalist crisis of domestic and international economies have been responsible for raising the level of corruption in the country. Among these aspects the most important aspect has been tax policies. Imposition of high tax rates has caused many individuals and organisations to offer bribes to officers. To get the permission to open a new production unit or to acquire existing firm(s), large corporations provided bribes to officials and bureaucrats. Due to all these facts in 2010 the government reduced the level of income tax to reduce corruption and this policy has been indirectly been used as a anti-corruption policy in the country. In the context of financial crisis of 2007-08 and of 2010-11, the British government has introduced several new economic policies to indirectly reduce corruption in the country. These financial crises have negatively affected the financial structure of the British economy and therefore large number of organisations has been engaged in corruption during this time to get most cost-effective access to economic resources (Taylor, 2009, 7-9). In the context of implementation of economic policies during global financial crisis, the British government relied more on public policies, including stricter monetary and fiscal policies. These policies have been implemented in such ways which are consistent with anti-corruption policies. For instance, the monetary policy implemented by the British government during this time of reducing the interest rates were consistent with the inclusion of anti-corruption policies of recent times of controlling corruption rates in the investment sectors the economy (which have been prevailing due to the prevalence of high interest rates for investment projects). The fiscal policy of reducing the volume of government expenditure in the domestic economy has also been consistent with the anti-corruption policies, because in past times high public expenditures caused many government officials, bureaucrats and even ministers to become corrupted and use those public expenditures for their personal purposes. In recent years the British government has become more concerned about implementing economic policies which are consistent with anti-corruption policies already implemented or going to be implemented in near future in the country (Taylor, 2009, pp.15-17). Conclusion: Anti-corruption policies have been used extensively in almost every sector of activities (economic, social, cultural, educational and political). These policies have been made comparatively stronger and effective than anti-corruption policies implemented in recent past. People have been judged according to their works and they have been motivated by the government to some great extent not to involve in corruption and not to tolerate corruption at all. The Bribery Act, The Equality Act and many other anti-corruption acts not only helped the country to reduce the level of corruption but also to make a new society for the nation and its citizens to live. Poverty, which has been one of the most influential causes for corruption, has been alleviated to some significant extent from the country. All these aspects have helped the country to achieve greater economic growth and also to develop social, cultural, political aspects and notions. These developments have further helped in increasing the pace of economic growth in the country. But successfulness of these anti-corruption policies depend largely the nature and behaviour of people living in the country or involving into various economic, political, social and cultural activities of the country. If people change their attitude towards making a new British society where there will be no place for corruption, then these policies will be more effective. References: 1. Anti-Corruption Policy And Compliance Handbook, (2011), GIA, available at: http://www.gia.edu/nav/footer/gia-ethics-helpline/GIA-Anti-Corruption-Policy-and-Compliance-Handbook.pdf (accessed on January 25, 2012) 2. Beck, U. (1992), Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage Publications 3. Chittenden, F. et al. (2010), Taxation and red tape: the cost to British business of complying with the UK tax system, UK: Institute of Economic Affairs 4. Chitty, C. and Elam, G. 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