The injustice created by corruption undermines the state's political legitimacy and generates additional cost in economic activities thereby increasing inefficiency and contracting investment. Corruption also came to have negative influence on interna...
The injustice created by corruption undermines the state's political legitimacy and generates additional cost in economic activities thereby increasing inefficiency and contracting investment. Corruption also came to have negative influence on international trade due to the enforcement of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and the UN Convention Against Corruption. Without eradicating corruption a nation will never enter the group of developed countries. Therefore addressing it is no longer a matter of choice but a national agenda linked with its very survival.
Despite the importance of the corruption issue, there are only few research done in this field in Korea. Most researches focus on either the acquiring of administrative accountability in a regulatory perspective or the corruption control policies of past governments in a historical perspective. In short, not much studies have been done that can actually contribute to formulating anti-corruption policies.
This research focuses on identifying success factors of a corruption prevention policy. To that end, it has reviewed the academic theories on the logic of a corruption prevention policy and the success factors of its implementation. These factors have been empirically analyzed through questionnaires and the results of the analysis have verified the hypothesis on the success factors of corruption prevention policy and therefore produced policy implications.
The research model is composed of independent variable, dependent variable and parameter. Independent variables are: policy content, relationship between superior and executive organs, target group of the policy and policy environment. Dependent variable is the policy effectiveness as a result of executing the corruption prevention policy. The executing organs have become the parameter because most of the corruption prevention policy will be implemented through these organs.
The conclusion focuses on the verification of the hypothesis. The hypothesis was that all independent variables influence policy effectiveness, however, policy environment alone was shown to have no statistically relevance. One of the reasons presumed why the policy environment does not have significant influence can be attributed to the nature of policy implementation. Policy implementation will be less affected by the changes in the social and political environment because it has a stronger tendency to implement the given objective compared to the policy making or decision stage.
The hypothesis was that the policy content, the relationship between superior and executive organs, the executive organs, the target group of the policy and the policy environment will have a positive influence on policy effectiveness. However, it turned out that the target group of the policy had a negative influence.
Generally speaking, it might seem likely that the more the need to explain the policy to and to change the behavior of the target group, the more likely there to be a negative influence. However, in case of corruption prevention policy it was the opposite. The more the need to explain the policy and to change the behavior, the more positive effect it has on the policy implementation. This indicates that respondents think that to enhance the effectiveness of corruption prevention policy, it is better to raise the awareness of the policy among the target group and to make efforts to change its behavior.
This research has implemented a path analysis in order to analyze not only the direct effect of the executive factors on the policy outcome but also the indirect effect of the executing organs which are the parameters.
The overall effect of the executive factors i.e. policy content, relationship between superior and executive organs, target group of the policy and policy environment differed according to the indirect effect through executing organs as presumed by the hypothesis. Among the variables policy content, relationship between superior and executive organs, target group of the policy and policy environment, it was thought that the relationship between superior and executive organs has the largest overall effect on the policy result. However, in case of this variable, the indirect effect on policy effectiveness was greatest but even that included, it was the policy content that maintained a great influence. But the total effect of the two did not differ significantly.
For a more comprehensive analysis, this research has compared the difference between high-policy-performance organs with that of poor ones. The result was that in case of the well-performed organ, the relationship between superior and executive organs has the largest effect and in case of the poor-performed organ, the policy content has the largest.
As for the executive variables that influence the policy effectiveness, in low-performance organ the "policy content" had greater influence than in case of the high-performance organ. In high-performance organs, "policy target group" had relatively larger influence.
This means that in high-performance organs, corruption prevention policies are implemented taking into consideration the target group more than the low-performance organs. It can be inferred that, as shown in the result of the questionnaires, the more you explain the corruption prevention policy to the target group and make efforts to change their behavior, the higher the possibility of success. In case of the low-performance organs, the reason why "policy content" has the largest influence can be presumed to be because these organs make less efforts in executing policies compared to high-performance organs. This is because "policy content" is made by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission of Korea which is the superior organ in executing corruption prevention policies therefore the executing agencies have little influence in policy content and they just implement the directives provided by the Commission.
The research provides three implications on corruption prevention policy. First, for a successful corruption prevention policy, the content of the policy must be realistic. Second, since the "relationship between the superior organ and the implementing organ" was shown to have as much importance as the policy content, it would be useful to increase advice, consultation, motivation in implementing the policy. Third, awareness on corruption prevention policy must be raised and policy efforts sustained aimed at changing the target group's behavior.