Constructing and Maintaining the Boundaries of Corruption

This international criminal law project examines the relationship between transnational anti-corruption standards and domestic criminal law and procedure. During the past three decades, a number of multilateral anti-corruption agreements have been negotiated by international organizations, including the United Nations, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Council of Europe, which have almost exclusively relied upon com­pliance enforcement by peer monitoring. Despite the anti-corruption movement’s reliance on peer review, scholar­ship on this accountability mechanism is limited. Concentrating on the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), this project analyzes the role that peer review plays in constructing and maintaining transna­tional anti-corruption legal frameworks. Taking a multi-method approach that includes content analysis of GRECO Working Group Documents, a survey of GRECO participants, and in-depth interviews to further explore survey find­ings, this project addresses several research questions: First, what is the effect of peer pressure during peer re­view monitoring on agreement compliance and how can this be maximized? Second, how has peer review evolved as it has become institutionalized over its twenty-year history? Third, how do the perceptions of GRECO partici­pants reflect the mechanism’s objective successes and failures? This project’s goal is to take insights about GRECO participants’ perceptions and use these to craft recommendations for procedural changes. For example, a major concern is perceptions of fair treatment and these will be evaluated against consistency of working group recommendations to study points of disjuncture. The planned scientific output from this project will encompass peer-reviewed articles and a book.