KickBack - The Global Anticorruption Podcast

Leading academics from the Centre for the Study of Corruption sit down to discuss what we learnt from Episode 100. The anniversary episode featured insights on the state of anti-corruption practice from some of the leading global thinkers in the field. Here, Robert Barrington, Liz Dávid-Barrett, Dan Hough and Sam Power debate some of the key questions raised, including: To what extent we should be...

For this special anniversary episode, Kickback invited leading thinkers from around the globe to comment on the state of practice in the corruption field. We asked each individual to respond to one of two questions: a) ​'what is one thing about corruption that you've changed your thinking on in the past 10 years?' b) 'what is the most significant development - positive or negative - in relation to...

Huma Yusuf speaks to Tom Shipley about the links between business integrity and environmental, social and governance (ESG). Huma is Director of Business Integrity at British International Investment, an impact investor, and a key public commentator on climate change in Pakistan. In this podcast, Huma describes how anti-corruption and business integrity fit into the global business agenda on ESG, b...

This is the second episode of the 'Introduction to' series in which experts provide an overview of some of the key issues in the corruption field. In this episode Liz Dávid-Barrett, Dan Hough and Sam Power (all Centre for the Study of Corruption) discuss the leading theories for corruption analysis, including rational choice, collective action and social norms approaches. This is a valuable overvi...

Michela Wrong, journalist and author of It's Our Turn to Eat, speaks to Dr. Sam Power, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the Centre for the Study of Corruption. Named as the top book on corruption by The Guardian in 2023, It's Our Turn to Eat tells the story of John Githongo, the Kenyan activist and whistleblower interviewed in Episode 96. Michela talks to Sam about the issues raised in the book as w...

The Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner and activist, John Githongo, speaks to Liz Dávid-Barrett (Centre for the Study of Corruption). The episode covers key moments in John's career including his involvement in the formation of Transparency International and time spent as Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics in the Kenyan government in the early 2000s. John and Liz further discuss what les...

Dr. Magnus Öhman, senior political finance adviser at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, speaks to the Kickback team. Magnus discusses the challenges of corruption and political trust against the wider global context of increased democratic backsliding. There is specific focus on approaches to tackling the problem of illicit finance in politics, including the potential of artifici...

Grant Walton, Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy (Australian National University, speaks to Dan Hough about his research on corruption in Papua New Guinea (PNG). A key focus for Grant has been to explore what people understand by corruption in PNG and how this compares to Western understandings of the term. The disconnection between the two has implications for how we appr...

Professor Dan Hough (University of Sussex), Professor Elizabeth Dávid-Barrett (University of Sussex/ International Anti-Corruption Academy) and Dr. Roxana Bratu (King's College London) provide an introduction to corruption measurement debates. They explore questions like: How has measurement of corruption changed over the three decades? What are the best tools currently available for measuring cor...

Andrew Wedeman, Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, speaks to Professor Dan Hough about the politics of anti-corruption campaigns in China. Andrew analyses the anti-corruption campaign instigated by President Xi Jinping and also puts this into historical perspective. Andrew and Dan discuss the effects this campaign has had on Chinese society at all levels and whether there...

Cheri-Leigh Erasmus, Global Director of Learning at the Accountability Lab, speaks to Dan Hough, Professor of Politics at the Centre for the Study of Corruption. She describes Accountability Lab's distinctive approach to building integrity in the civil service with examples from across the globe. She shares some lessons from this work and offers plenty of ideas for how to engage new audiences in a...

Claudia Baez Camargo, Head of Public Governance at the Basel Institute, talks to Liz Dávid-Barrett about her work on applying social norms theory to analysing corruption issues. The episode takes in examples of applied research in East Africa and Ukraine, while Claudia's thinking on corruption is also influenced by her upbringing in Mexico. Claudia describes some successes in altering social norms...

This episode features Cecilia Müller Torbrand, CEO of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN). She speaks to Liz Dávid-Barrett about the work of MACN, a network of shipping businesses which has been making some real headway in reducing corruption risks in this sector. The MACN story offers lots of valuable lessons for researchers and practitioners. Cecilia talks about how MACN has succeeded in...

Luís de Sousa, deputy director and research fellow at ICS-ULisboa, speaks to Robert Barrington, professor of anti-corruption practice at the Centre for the Study of Corruption, on a range of topics. Luís is well-known for his research on anti-corruption agencies and in the episode he discusses country cases and conditions for success. This is also the first Kickback episode to discuss Portugal in...

In this episode recorded on the margins of the International Anti-Corruption Conference, Paul Massaro, senior policy advisor for the U.S. Helsinki Commission, speaks to Liz Dávid-Barrett. Paul discusses the drivers behind the Enablers Act and the role of the US in countering kleptocracy. The conversation also covers the effectiveness of international sanctions on corruption and the importance of c...

Kicking off 2023 we were delighted to have Dame Margaret Hodge join us to talk about integrity issues in the UK. She speaks to Dr. Sam Power, Senior Lecturer at the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption, to talk about her fascinating route into politics and how this naturally led her to focus on integrity. The episode covers corruption issues in the UK including the UK's role in wider internat...

This episode from the margins of the International Anti-Corruption Conference in Washington DC features Shannon Green, Executive Director of USAID's Anti-Corruption Task Force. Shannon talks to Liz Dávid-Barrett about the agency's new anti-corruption strategy. They also focus on the challenge of fighting kleptocracies and USAID's new dekleptification guide. Here are links to the resources discusse...

We are delighted to announce that the Centre for the Study of Corruption (CSC) at the University of Sussex is the new home of Kickback. The centre will be hosting the podcast over the next three years. We look forward to continuing the great work of the original Kickback team and welcoming an interesting range of guests from across the anti-corruption community. Robert Barrington talks more about...

Ahead of the Qatar World Cup, we welcome Maggie Murphy, CEO of Lewes Football Club and a former Senior Global Advocacy Manager at Transparency International. She speaks to Dan Hough, self-professed football obsessive and Professor of Politics at Sussex University. Maggie takes us through her journey from anti-corruption campaigning to football management. She and Dan discuss the ethical problems a...

In the first of a series of episodes hosted by the Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex, we welcome Daniel Kaufmann. Daniel is a senior fellow at Results for Development (R4D) and President Emeritus at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI). He is also a former Director of the World Bank where he headed programmes related to corruption and governance. He is well...

We welcome Andrii Borovyk (@Borovyk_UA), Executive Director of Transparency International Ukraine, and Gretta Fenner (@gretweets), the managing director of the Basel Institute for Governance. Andrii and Gretta describe their background and how they ended up in their current positions. How the invasion changed anti-corruption work within Ukraine, how reconstruction efforts have already begun, and w...

We welcome Mihaly Fazekas, assistant professor at the Central European University, Department of Public Policy, who works on a range of topics related to corruption. The interview covers how how his own personal experience with bad public infrastructure inspired him to conduct corruption research, why he believes that corruption research would benefit from a better understanding of what are actual...

Michel Sapin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Sapin) served as a Minister of Finance in France from 1992 to 1993 and 2014 to 2017 and now works as a Senior Advisor for Franklin Lawyers with a specialization in anti-corruption laws. Valentina Lana is a Lecturer at the Sciences Po law school in Paris. Matthew Stephenson interviews the two to discuss the French anti-corruption law known as the l...

We are thrilled to welcome Ray Fisman (@RFisman), Professor of Economics at Boston University, long-standing corruption expert and author of Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691144696/economic-gangsters) (with Ed Miguel) and Corruption: What everybody needs to know (https://books.google.de/books/about/Corruption.h...

Today, we welcome investigative journalist Frederik Obermaier (@f_obermaier). In the interview, we cover the Suisse Secrets (https://www.occrp.org/en/suisse-secrets/). Frederik also mentions the China Cables uncovering surveillance and mass internment without charge or trial of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, China (https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/). We also discu...