Methodological approach

To conduct a comprehensive analysis of major (global and national) anti-corruption laws, policies and programmes and to assess how they are applied, perceived and reshaped in everyday life situations, the MOCCA team will develop a new framework for the study of corruption, the multilevel orders of corruption. This framework will allow the MOCCA team to understand corruption from an interdisciplinary perspective as well as to understand the mutually transforming interactions between (a) global, transnational anti-corruption laws, initiatives, discourses and institutions, (b) national/central level institutions, initiatives, policies and laws, and (c) local, meso- and micro-level actors, social norms and practices.

In line with the aforesaid approach, MOCCA’s research will be conducted within four Research Streams (RS 1-4),which will be implemented in the context of five Central Asian countries.

RS1: Global anti-corruption laws, institutions, indicators, and discourses

RS2: Domestic (macro/central level) institutions, anti-corruption laws, policies and initiatives

RS3: Meso-level norms, practices and actors

RS4: Micro-level (everyday) social norms and practices

In the frame of these four Research Streams, the MOCCA team will collect (both EU-based and Central Asia-based research teams) the primary and secondary data in Central Asian countries through:

Legal, Institutional and Historical Context Analysis and Theoretical Framework:

A systematic review of international norms, nation-state laws and regulations, and policy measures and initiatives adopted to combat corruption from the early 1990s up to the present time.
A systematic review of the corruption literature, main theories and frameworks on corruption, law and society scholarship, state-corporate crime literature, governance literature
An institutional and historical context analysis focusing on the history, politics, cultures and societies of the Central Asian region
A review of national law bulletins, speeches and declarations from presidents and key policymakers, strategic documents (e.g. the EU strategy on Central Asia), reports and briefs from think tanks and analysts, and official documents and statistics on the anti-corruption situation and corruption cases (produced by international organisations, national governments and civil society actors).

Ethnography of the “anti-corruption world”, expert and elite interviews, and discourse analysis

Observations and informal interviews in state institutions, expert and elite interviews, semi-structured interviews and exploratory case studies

Qualitative studies focusing on the role and strategies of non-state actors (e.g., civil society institutions, business actors) vis-à-vis central level state institutions and how these processes and strategies mould the (anti-) corruption environment.

Ethnographic studies focusing on morality, community life and local perceptions of corruption in rural Central Asia

Nationally representative surveys in Central Asia exploring the nexus between corruption and legal cultures