The Institutional Roots of Anti-Corruption Policies: Comparing the Three Baltic States

Administrative Processes as an Anti-Corruption Tool? A View from Public Employees in the Baltic States

“…Besides professionalism, meritocratic recruitment minimizes corruption because it disconnect the public employee from the political chain of command, thereby protecting him/her from undue political partake because s/he believes everybody else is doing so. 26 Hierarchy combined with corrupt top-level bureaucrats is thereby a factor feeding into systemic corruption where corrupt behavior becomes the organizational norm. 27 In sum, the effect of hierarchy can either be a control on lower level employees or part of the evil itself.…”

HOW TO COMBAT CORRUPTION — A CIVIL SERVANTS´ VIEW

“…Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania constitute a most similar systems design which reduces the effect of background variables such as late statehood, direct inclusion in the Soviet economic, political and administrative practice, and post-transitional choices of political institutions controlling for standard causes associated with corruption (Treisman 2000;Pedersen 2011b). Despite background similarities and external pressure from international organizations after occupation, changing administrative practices have been mediated by political interests (Sarapuu 2012, 818;Nakrošis and Budraitis 2012).…”

Comparative Politics and Government of the Baltic States

“…The three Baltic states have addressed corruption through different institutional choices and directions although the policies, despite different origins, have converged (Johannsen and Pedersen, 2011). Estonia and Lithuania, for example, created specialised parliamentary committees with greater powers than their Latvian equivalent to investigate cases of political and administrative wrong-doing.…”

“…As Figure 4.10 indicates, the Latvian and Lithuanian publics trust the two specialised anti-corruption agencies to deal with corruption more than they trust the national police. Johannsen and Pedersen (2011) argue that Latvia and Lithuania have created independent agencies to tackle the corruption issue at least partly because the perception among lawmakers is that corruption has greater salience in these two states. They found that a higher number of Latvian and Lithuanian ministers have personal experience of attempted bribery and these same ministers agree that the misuse of high office is more prevalent there than in Estonia.…”