Measuring the impact of corruption

Phone hacking, sleaze and cash for questions — corruption in our systems of governance and public bodies has eroded faith in politicians and other senior public figures over recent years. The UK sees its political class as untrustworthy, to the detriment of our economic prosperity, life satisfaction and levels of political engagement. New research taking place at The University of Nottingham is set to tackle this perception of poor governance, as part of a European Commission research programme into the factors which promote or hinder the development of effective anti-corruption policies. The €7.9m Anticorruption Policies Revisited: Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenges of Corruption project will investigate the causes of corruption; how corruption can be measured; and the impact of corruption on different aspects of human wellbeing. The project spans 21 research partners across 16 EU countries, and is led by the Quality of Government Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden. Paul Heywood , Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Sir Francis Hill Professor of European Politics at The University of Nottingham, will lead one of the UK-based partners. With colleagues from the University of Birmingham, he will focus on: corruption and good governance from both a global and continental perspective accountability and transparency in both civil society and administrative responses, as well as accountability mechanisms within policy performance translating the research into evidence-based policy.