Abstract
Many international organizations strive to maintain good governance within their organizations and in their country programming activities as a means to reduce corruption. When good governance is in place, corruption is less likely to happen given the higher levels of accountability and transparency that can expose corruption and inefficiency. Despite these efforts, the past two decades have witnessed a striking emergence of corruption on a global scale, raising concern across many international organizations. The main objective of this research was to probe inquiry on good governance, explore the current scope of strategies that are known to be most effective, and discern any best practices that can be used to combat the issue of corruption. A literature review was conducted to specifically explore the past and current dialogue on governance, accountability, and transparency (GAT) mechanisms within international organizations (IOs). This study involved a search of three databases (ProQuest, EBSCO, and Social Sciences Citation Index). Since 1971, there has been broad discussion and analysis of GAT strategies within IOs. While no ‘best practices’ for GAT were found, the selected papers predominantly discussed the gaps in GAT, the erosion of GAT as concepts, and the declining legitimacy and credibility of these efforts. Consequently, this paper documents the changes in conceptualizations and the current state of GAT mechanisms and strategies. This study further reveals the need for a new wave of scholarship and inquiry and introduces the practice of evaluation as a potential opportunity to strengthen good governance. These collated findings probe thinking on crucial next steps for IOs, and the importance of establishing a stronger understanding of what mechanisms work best in practice and where. As we seek to meet the anti-corruption objectives of Sustainable Development Goal #16, building our knowledge in this area is imperative.
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Notes
- 1.
Known as “Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions among Multilateral Development Banks”
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Hapuhennedige, S., Bernsen, E.C., Kohler, J.C. (2020). Exploring Accountability and Transparency Within International Organizations: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?. In: Çalıyurt, K. (eds) Integrity, Transparency and Corruption in Healthcare & Research on Health, Volume I. Accounting, Finance, Sustainability, Governance & Fraud: Theory and Application. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1424-1_7
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