Finding the Money

Finding the Money focuses on those areas of government that are most exposed to grand or petty corruption: budgeting, tax administration, public procurement, and management of government assets. The eight chapters are based on the assumption that corruption has systemic causes. By improving social accountability mechanisms and by increasing the institutional and human capacities of government, malfunctioning states and municipalities can be transformed. The anti-corruption techniques presented here go well beyond the introduction of political control mechanisms, expanding transparency, or revising the compact between the state and private service organizations to recommend the steps needed for fiscal transparency and good governance. Public sector integrity also depends on governments' capacity to introduce these measures, the incentives to comply set by intergovernmental fiscal relations, the use of audit and the shortest route of accountability, i.e., its direct influence by customers on service providers.