News and Events

*** POSTPONED*** ONLINE EXPERTS WORKSHOP: “State Capture and Crony Capitalism in Anti-Corruption"

27 Jan 2021

Apologies, this event has been postponed. We will announce a revised date shortly.

The term “state capture” describes how public bureaucracies had become dominated by strong and powerful interest groups, while “crony capitalism” describes an economic system in which family members and friends of government officials and business leaders are given unfair advantages in the form of jobs, loans, etc. Thus, despite certain differences, both terms relate to acts of abuse of power for private gain, or in other words both are forms of corruption that must be prevented.

Considering these topics, an online experts workshop titled “State Capture and Crony Capitalism in Anti-Corruption” will be co-hosted on Tue. and Wed. 30th and 31st March 2021 by:

  • School of Law, University College Cork (Ireland)
  • School of Law, University of Sussex (UK)
  • School of Law, Vietnam National University, Hanoi (Vietnam)
  • Towards Transparency (Vietnam)

The themes of the online conference will include:

  • Concepts, Characteristics, Manifestations, Causes and Consequences of State Capture and Crony Capitalism.
  • Relations between State Capture and Crony Capitalism and Corruption.
  • International Standards and Mechanism related to Prevention of State Capture and Crony Capitalism in Anti-corruption
  • Effective National Standards, Policies and Procedures to Address the Risks of Corruption, State Capture and Crony Capitalism.
  • Country/Region Experiences in Preventing State Capture and Crony Capitalism.

Venue and Online Platform

  • Venue: Room 307, VNU School of Law, E1, 144 Xuan Thuy, Cau Giay, Hanoi
  • Online platform: Zoom Meetings: 914 1541 4408

Registration

Conference attendance is free; however, registration is essential (for both authors and participants without papers). Guidelines for conference attendance will be sent to you via email and provided on the conference website.

Please register your participation by 28 March 2021 via this link: https://forms.gle/j1BuVLDQYEUGpN999 

Successful registration will be confirmed shortly thereafter. If you have any technical difficulties when submitting this form, please email to buitiendat2001@yahoo.com

Submission of Papers

Please submit your draft papers (if available) to Dr. Bui Tien Dat at buitiendat2001@yahoo.com (cc to Dr. Fiona Donson at f.donson@ucc.ie) by 25 March 2021 to be included on the website prior to the conference.   

Full papers are not required prior to the conference, although it would be very useful for participants if draft papers are made available. Submitted draft papers will be uploaded to this webpage when collated.

Publication

Papers will be published in the conference proceedings book by the School of Law, Vietnam National University Hanoi, with agreement from authors. The conference proceedings book will not be published for commercial purposes.

To be included in the conference proceedings book, finalized full papers are to be submitted by 10 April 2021 to Dr. Bui Tien Dat at buitiendat2001@yahoo.com (cc to A/Prof. Vu Cong Giao at giaovc@vnu.edu.vn).

To facilitate the editing process, we would appreciate it if you could adhere to the submission deadline and follow the specifications below in preparing your conference paper.

  • Paper Title, Author's Title and Name, University/Organisation, and Email Address
  • Font: Times New Roman, size 12
  • Microsoft Word Document Format (.doc or .docx)
  • Length: shoule be under 10,000 words, inclusive of footnotes (4,000 to 8,000-word papers are preferred)
  • Referencing standard: Any of footnote citation systems. The Oxford Standard for the Citation Of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) is preferred. (See https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxlaw/oscola_4th_edn_hart_2012quickreferenceguide.pdf

Conference papers

State capture and implications for Vietnam [paper to follow]

by Mr. James Anderson 

World Bank, DC, USA

Biography:

James Anderson (Jim) is the World Bank’s Global Lead for Anticorruption. Jim started his career as a development economist in Mongolia where he lived from 1993 through 1997, researching institutional reform, the informal sector, and the impacts of large-scale privatization. In 1997, Jim took his interest in institutions and empirical tools and began to apply them to governance challenges, notably anticorruption and judicial reform, in the transition countries of central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He moved to Vietnam in 2008 and focused his attention on access to information, transparency, anticorruption, and human rights. From 2014 to 2018, Most recently, he served as the Country Manager for Mongolia supporting the World Bank’s program in all fields. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland and did his undergraduate studies at UMBC.

 

China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay [paper to follow]

by Prof. Minxin Pei
Claremont McKenna College

Biography: https://www.cmc.edu/academic/faculty/profile/minxin-pei 

 

State capture situation in Western Balkans and Turkey- Key messages for Vietnam? [paper to follow]

by Dragan Mihajlovic
TI-S Berlin, Germany
State capture in Western Balkans and Turkey project 

 

Preventing State Capture: An Overview of Policy Approaches

by Jorge Valladares
Research and Policy Expert on Political Integrity at the Transparency Inter-national Secretariat (TI-S)

Biography:

Jorge has worked on a range of issues of democracy reform, such as political finance, elec-tions, parliaments, political dialogue, media, and civic engagement since 1995. Jorge has supported political party, civil society, and government leaders carry out democratic re-forms, in countries from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. He has authored or co-authored several works, including Politics Meets Policies and Democratic Accountability in Service Delivery, “The changing nature of political parties and representation”.

Prior to TI-S, Head of the Global Programme on Political Participation at International IDEA (2016-2018), Head of Mission in Myanmar (2014-2016), and the Panama country pro-gramme (2019). Back in Peru, he served as Coordinator for Political Reform at AC Trans-parencia (2002-2005), and as member of the Technical Secretariat of the National Accord (2001-2002). His undergraduate studies are in Law at the Universidad Catolica del Peru, and postgraduate studies in Government at the Institute of Social Studies (The Netherlands) and the University of Essex (United Kingdom).

 

State Capture: Characteristics, Manifestations and Enablers

Rethinking State Capture: Characteristics, Manifestations and Enablers

by Dr. Nieves Zúñiga
Independent Consultant/Senior Researcher
Main author of report: "Examining State Capture: Undue Influence on Law-Making and the Judiciary in the Western Balkans and Turkey"

Biography:

Dr. Nieves Zúñiga received her MA and PhD in Political Science from the University of Essex in the UK. After her PhD she was Research Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham working on anti-corruption on the EU’s ANTICORRP project.

Nieves has extensive experience as a researcher and public speaker on socio-political issues developed in the UK and in Spain, and she is specialized in qualitative research methods with fieldwork experience in Latin America and Africa. From 2017 to 2020 she worked as Research and Knowledge Coordinator at Transparency International Secretariat, where she was responsible for the research part of a EU project on state capture in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

Currently she works as a consultant supporting international organizations, civil society actors and governments in producing sound research to inform public policy and advocacy strategies. Her key areas of expertise are anti-corruption, rule of law, governance, accountability, transparency, political and business integrity, social and political innovation, and development.

 

Crony Capitalism: the case of Malaysia [paper to follow]

by Mrs. Cynthia Gabriel
Executive Director
Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4), Malaysia

Biography:

Cynthia Gabriel, is easily recognized as a key advocate of human rights and good governance in Malaysia. She has spent most of her professional life in the field of advancing democratic freedoms, reforms and policy change in the country and region.

Cynthia has been honored with a seat on the prestigious Global Future Councils of the World Economic Forum (WEF), on economic and anticorruption issues.

Academically well rounded, she has degrees in both the science and legal fraternities. She has spent brief stints in the private sector, worked as a contractual lecturer in Monash University, and served and collaborated with several United Nations initiatives on research work in the field of democracy & human rights (OHCHR), governance, organized crime and anticorruption, (UNODC).

She served on the international board as Vice President of the global human rights advocacy group, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), co -founded the Asia Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM ASIA) human rights network, and is currently an elected board member of the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) coalition, comprising about 400 organisations worldwide.


She serves as the Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4), Executive Director. Cynthia was also appointed as City Councilor, under the professional/NGO categories from 2008- 2015. She has led important committees on sustainable development, traffic and infrastructure and green city development, thus giving her tremendous experience and knowledge in planning, land and local government policy and administration.
 

State capture in Georgia [paper to follow]

by Eka Gigauri
Executive Director, Transparency International Georgia

Biography:

Eka Gigauri is the Executive Director at Transparency International Georgia.

Previously, she was working in Governmental, Non-governmental and Private sectors, mainly in the fields of Foreign Relations (including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs) and Marketing and Communications Consultancy (Marriott International, Institute for Polling and Marketing). Ms. Gigauri is a former Deputy Head of the Border Police of Georgia. Since 2010 Eka is the Executive Director at Transparency International Georgia. During November 2019-November 2020 Eka Gigauri was serving as a member of the board of directors at Transparency International global movement.

Eka holds LLM in International Law from VU University Amsterdam, Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Caucasus School of Business and the Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Tbilisi State University. Eka Gigauri is a Stanford University Democracy and Development Programme fellow.

Political Integrity Country Case: Capture of State Resource Allocation – Nigeria

Political Integrity Country Case: Capture of State Resource Allocation–Nigeria [PPT]

by Mr. Vaclav Prusa – Integrated Expert
Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)
TI Nigeria

Varieties of State Capture and Manifestations of Cronyism - The Case of Hungary in Central and Eastern European Perspective [paper to follow]

by Mr. József Péter Martin
Executive Director, TI Hungary

Biography:

József Péter Martin PhD is an economist and sociologist, currently working as executive director of Transparency International (TI) Hungary and external senior lecturer in the Institute of Economic and Public Policy at Corvinus University of Budapest. In 2019, he was seconded at TI UK as director of research. Prior to joining to TI in 2013, he served six years as editor-in-chief of a Hungarian economic weekly ’Figyelő’ (‘Observer’). He is author of more than two dozen academic publications and one book. He has been regular contributor on domestic and international media for many years.

 

“Chủ nghĩa tư bản thân hữu ở Việt nam và vấn đề phòng, chống tham nhũng” (tentative)

by Prof. Nguyen Dang Dung
VNU-LS

 

Vấn đề lũng đoạn nhà nước và sự cần thiết hoàn thiện pháp luật về phòng, chống tham nhũng ở Việt Nam hiện nay (tentative)

by A/Prof. Vu Cong Giao
VNU-LS

 

 

Paper/presentation tbc

by Dr. Bui Hai Thiem
Institute of Legislative Research

Biography:


Dr. Bui Hai Thiem is a senior researcher and director of research project management unit at the Institute for Legislative Studies, National Assembly Standing Committee of Vietnam.  He is also a member of the Research Council on Philosophy, Sociology and Political Science at the Vietnam National Foundation for Technology and Science Development. His research and publications focus on civil society, constitutional politics, human rights, and electoral governance in Vietnam.

 

 

Group interest, policy corruption and building a mechanism to prevent and fight against group interest, policy corruption in Vietnam [paper to follow]

by Dr. Pham The Luc, Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and A/Prof Dang Minh Tuan, VNU-LS

Biography of Dr. Pham The Luc:

Mr Pham The Luc is working as lecturer and researcher at Political Science Institution in Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics. He had graduated from School of Law in Hanoi National University  in 2000 and gained his Doctoral qualification in Political Science in 2011. His main researches and lectures focus on Vietnamese politics, Comparative politics and Public policy. He is author and co-author of several publications related to Vietnam political system renovation, Political Science Review, Democracy institutions, and Anti-Corruption institutions in Vietnam.

Biography of A/Prof Dang Minh Tuan:

Mr. Minh Tuan Dang is Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Constitutional and Administrative Law Department under Vietnam National University Hanoi School of Law. He received his Doctor in Public Law from University of Montesquieu Bordeaux IV of France in 2010. He had remarkable academic contributions for the development of the 2013 Vietnamese Current Constitution. He was the Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy – Boston College Law School and the Research Visiting Scholar at the U.S-Asia Law Institute - New York University School of Law. His research focus on Vietnamese and Comparative Constitutional law. He is author and co-author of several publications related to constitutional review, separation of power, human rights, and comparative constitutional law. He can be reached at tuandangvnu@gmail.com.

Chủ nghĩa tư bản thân hữu và quy luật “Hòn tuyết lăn” (tentative)

by Prof. Tran Ngoc Tho
University of Economics Ho Chi Minh city

 

Paper/presentation tbc

by Dr. Nguyen Si Dung
Former Vice Director of the National Assembly Office of Vietnam

 

Paper/presentation tbc

by Dr. Nguyen Duc Thanh
Chief advisor, Institute for Economic and Policy Research, VEPR

 

Vấn đề lũng đoạn nhà nước: từ thực tiễn về phòng, chống tham nhũng ở Việt Nam hiện nay  (tentative)

by Dr. Nguyen Quoc Van
Director, Institute of Strategy and Scientific Inspectorate of Vietnam

 

Conflict of interests: An observation from the case of AVG

by Dr. Vu Van Tinh
National Academy of Public Administration

 

Wildlife Trafficking, Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement: Analysis from Grand Corruption Perspective

by Dr. Bui Tien Dat, VNU-LS

 

and A/Prof. Vu Cong Giao, VNU-LS 

 

Further information

Download the conference flyer here: “State Capture and Crony Capitalism in Anti-Corruption" Flyer

Please direct queries about the conference either to:

School of Law

Scoil an Dlí

Room 1.63, Aras na Laoi, T12 T656

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