Case Study: Reducing Corruption in Bangladesh’s Climate Adaptation Projects

Bangladesh, plagued by poor governance and rampant corruption, presents a challenging environment for anti-corruption efforts. This case study delves into the country’s political settlement and sectoral dynamics to identify opportunities for reducing corruption in climate adaptation investments. It shows how a strategy of enhancing horizontal checks can strengthen rule-following at the local level.

This case study was produced in early 2024, based on our research between 2018 and 2020. Although the situation in this sector has changed to a certain degree following the Bangladesh uprising in July 2024, the opportunities for anti-corruption identified through the analysis, particularly at the village level, remain valid.

The SOAS-ACE approach offers an innovative framework for tackling policy-distorting corruption. It focuses on politically feasible reforms, uses a systemic perspective, and acknowledges that the behaviours and relationships of actors are significantly influenced by their relative powers, capabilities, and interests. Ultimately, the approach aims to not only combat corruption but also enhance development outcomes.

Bangladesh’s development trajectory, once hailed as the “Bangladesh paradox” for its economic and social progress amidst high corruption, was underpinned by a competitive clientelistic political settlement. This settlement ensured political stability but at the cost of entrenched corruption.

The failure to institutionalise credible electoral rules in 2006 led to a two-year Emergency, culminating in the Awami League government’s ascent in 2008. The subsequent shift towards “vulnerable authoritarianism” exacerbated impunity and politicisation, complicating national-level anti-corruption endeavours.

Three key factors rendered formal vertical accountability systems ineffective in Bangladesh’s context:

1. Efforts like the anti-corruption commission and the Emergency government’s “Big Bang” initiative (2006-2008) failed to yield significant results, with few convictions of rule breakers due to lack of evidence and judicial inaction.
2. The evolution into a single-party regime post-2008 diminished checks on the ruling party, leading to increased politicisation of the administration.
3. The regime’s likely use of power to appoint, promote, and award contracts to supporters further entrenched corruption.

In such a context, attempts to address systemic anti-corruption using formal vertical accountability systems were likely to be futile and could even be dangerous as they would provoke a strong reaction from a vulnerable government.

Given the challenges in vertical enforcement, SOAS-ACE research focused on identifying sectoral “pockets of effectiveness” where rule-following could be encouraged. Climate investment funds came up as a possible area for consideration.

Analysis suggested opportunities at the local level, particularly in the implementation of climate adaptation projects. The research found that low-corruption climate adaptation projects were ones in which significantly larger numbers of more influential individuals (small landholders and petty traders, rather than landless peasants) were involved. These individuals were involved because these projects had dual-uses, for example embankments serving as roads and cyclone shelters serving as community centers.

Because of these dual-use characteristics, influential individuals had an immediate self-interest in the projects. They therefore monitored their implementation. This horizontal checking, in turn, made formal vertical accountability mechanisms more effective and enabled less powerful community members to get involved in monitoring as well.

Research suggested a feasible and relatively simple policy change with potentially significant impact: adjusting existing policy to require climate adaptation projects to have a dual-use character, with contractors providing multiple location options to ensure strong local support.

This policy change would be unlikely to trigger strong opposition from powerful interests. Adoption would likely be politically feasible with a campaigning coalition of development partners, civil society, politicians, and others. Some politicians could also support this policy tweak as a low-cost way to access constrained development funds.

The proposed change could lead to local-level changes that would: a) amount to significant change if implemented across the whole country; b) be more effective than transparency-centred approaches that had failed to stop corruption because they did not engage actors with sufficient power or economic potential; and c) be more effective than, while also strengthening, vertical enforcement mechanisms and therefore overall accountability within the system.

Read the full case study here

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