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About Us

The Luiss Institute for European Analysis and Policy (LEAP) launched a new research cluster in 2024 dedicated to Home and Justice Affairs projects. At its core is the ERCAS Governance Indicators Lab (ERCAS-GIL), responsible for maintaining the governance indicators on Corruptionrisk.org, including:

  • The Index for Public Integrity (IPI, 115 countries)
  • The Transparency Index (T-Index, 143 countries)
  • The Corruption Risk Forecast (CFR, 120 countries)

These globally recognized indicators are used by the European Commission and international media. They were developed by the European Research Centre for Anticorruption and State-building (ERCAS), founded in 2012 at the Hertie School in Berlin by Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, now Professor of Comparative Politics at LUISS Guido Carli. ERCAS, a 21st-century research network with multi-location operations, employs crowdsourcing to produce governance indicators for 140 countries. Initially, it was a joint initiative between the Hertie School and the Romanian Academic Society (SAR).

Over the years, ERCAS has developed major FP7 and EU Horizon research projects like ANTICORRP, DIGIWHIST, and BRIDGEGAP and played a pivotal role in establishing the anticorruption education centre ACREC at the University of Kyiv Mohyla after the Revolution of Dignity. Today, ERCAS functions as a multi-site network with units in Bucharest, Berlin, Rome, and Kyiv, and it continues to advance fact-based corruption and transparency indicators.

ERCAS projects receive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy through the International Centre for Private Enterprise and the European Union Horizon projects, with BRIDGEGAP as its flagship initiative, designed and led by Prof. Mungiu-Pippidi.

Research Team

ERCAS-GIL is directed by Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, holder of the Comparative Policy professorship in LUISS Guido Carli’s Department of Political Science. Previously, she served as Professor of Democracy Studies at Hertie School (2007–2023).

As the founder of ERCAS, Prof. Mungiu-Pippidi leads this multi-location research hub operating in Berlin, Bucharest, Rome and Kyiv. She is also President of the Romanian Academic Society (SAR) and serves as a consultant for numerous governments and international organizations. She contributed to the World Bank Development Report, the International Monetary Fund, the European Parliament as principal investigator on ‘clean trade‘, the Swedish Government on the effectiveness of good governance assistance programs, the EU Dutch Presidency on trust and public integrity in EU-28, the European Commission DG Research on governance innovation, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on measuring corruption, among others.

Her main monographs include “Europe’s Burden: Promoting Good Governance across Borders” (Cambridge University Press 2020), “A Quest for Good Governance” (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and “A Tale of Two Villages” (Central European University Press, 2010) – the latter adapted into a BBC documentary. She also publishes in and Nature Behavior alongside other social science journals and is frequently cited in The Economist and mainstream media.

Prof. Mungiu-Pippid was the designer and co-principal investigator of various research projects, such as FP7 ANTICORRP (2012-2017), EU Horizon 2020 DIGIWHIST (2015-2018) and BRIDGEGAP (2024-2027), and others, which resulted in the creation of the public contracts repository Opentender.eu, the public accountability tools repository Europam.eu, and finally www.corruptionrisk.org. Before 2010, she created, led and inspired civil society anti-corruption coalitions in her native Romania, Western Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine.

Connect with us! Our representatives are here to help:

Elettra Latini

Postdoctoral Researcher within the BridgeGap project (LUISS Guido Carli)

elatini@luiss.it

Irene Rusconi

Contents Marketing Manager of the BridgeGap project

irusconi@luiss.it

Further team members can be found here.

Ongoing Research Projects

BridgeGap

BRIDGEGAP is a €6-million multidisciplinary research project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe scheme (Project Number:  101132483), bringing together a consortium of 15 partners. Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (LUISS Guido Carli) serves as the project’s Principal Investigator of the project.

BRIDGEGAP approaches corruption as a policy problem, focusing on understanding both domestic vulnerabilities and cross-border factors that undermine the control of corruption. From January 2024 to December 2027, BRIDGEGAP will aim to:

  • Fill the knowledge gaps regarding the extent to which corruption infiltrates open societies and threatens democratic order, as well as the mechanisms involved.
  • Assess, explain and find solutions to digital transparency gaps, ranging from the use of technology in corruption and anticorruption, to public accountability and integrity.
  • Identify solutions to regulatory and enforcement gaps by evaluating the comprehensiveness, consistency, and adequacy of public accountability and anticorruption regulations across EU member states and neighbouring countries.
  • Fill the academia–policy gap in corruption studies by evaluating the impact of anticorruption regulations and policies and identifying enabling contexts for effective anticorruption action.

The research will lead to academic publications and the creation of interactive analytical and research platforms, such as comparative law repositories, the EU Compass, the European Transparency Index, and “Follow the Money” search engines that span newly interconnected databases. All its pooled data will be displayed transparently on the website as a DataHub and end users will be offered the same investigation and analytical tools as the project researchers, inviting crowdsourcing and offering online tutorials. A Massive Open Online Corruption Course (MOOC) will also be developed.

More information on BRIDGEGAP can be found at  corruptiondata.eu, LinkedIn,  X and YouTube.

Governance Indicators

EuroPAM

EuroPAM is an extension of the Public Accountability Mechanisms Initiative (PAM) of the World Bank, which is a primary data collection exercise that produces assessments of in-law and in-practice efforts to enhance the transparency of public administration and the accountability of public officials. The EuroPAM database is based on PAM indicators for financial disclosure, conflict of interest restrictions, and freedom of information, while also adding a newly designed database on public procurement, and updating the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) database on political financing.

Transparency Index

The Transparency Index (T-index) is a unique assessment of government transparency based on different kinds of transparency services that countries offer to their citizens, encompassing both de jure and de facto aspects of transparency. This index can be used as an actionable tool for civil societies around the world and provides a guide through what needs to be advocated for. As such, the T-index offers information about the necessary changes in transparent services that should be offered by governments, which go further than the usual, but insufficient, adoption of freedom of information laws.

Index of Public Integrity The Index of Public Integrity (IPI) assesses a society’s capacity to control corruption and ensure that public resources are spent without corrupt practices. It is based on years of research and evaluation of the efforts in different societies to make advances in the control of corruption. Evidence from comparisons across countries shows that establishing effective control of corruption requires more than the adoption of specific tools and strict legal regulations. It relies on a balance between a state that is calibrated to reduce the possibility of the abuse of influence and a society’s capacity to hold its government accountable. The IPI highlights the most important dimensions of that mechanism.

Corruption Risk Forecast

The Corruption Risk Forecast (CRF) was built on top of a new generation of objective comparative indicators of corruption. It allows the forecasting of trends and unintended consequences at a country level, with the goal to select countries where interventions could have an impact and thus, be able to recommend timely and meaningful action to international donors and domestic actors of change. The forecast covers 12 years of observed determinants of control of corruption, including components of the IPI and recent political contingencies. Each country on the map displays its long-term trends and specific recommendations to tackle corruption.

The Corruption Risk Forecast (CRF), the Index of Public Integrity (IPI), and the Transparency Index (T-Index) have been developed with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).

OpenTender

OpenTender provides comprehensive public procurement information free of charge in an easy-to-use format to all interested parties. It is expected to increase market transparency, decrease transaction costs, and facilitate government accountability. Hence, it is designed as a well-functioning central public procurement platform that contributes to achieving value for money in public procurement, as well as increasing integrity throughout the public sector. The OpenTender platform allows users to search and analyse tender data from 33 jurisdictions (28 EU member states, Norway, the EU Institutions, Iceland, Switzerland, and Georgia), making public tenders more transparent.

Publications

Books
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2023). Rethinking Corruption. Edward Elgar Publishing.
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A. & Fazekas, M. (May 2020). How to Define and Measure Corruption, in A. Mungiu-Pippidi & P. Heywood (Eds.) A Research Agenda for Studies of Corruption. London: Edward Elgar.
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2019). Europe’s Burden: Promoting Good Governance Across Borders. Cambridge University Press.
● Johnston, M. & Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (Eds.) (2017). Transitions to Good Governance: Creating Virtuous Circles of Anti-corruption. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Journal Articles
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2023). Transparency and corruption: Measuring real transparency by a new index. Regulation & Governance, 17(4), 1094-1113.
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2020). The Quality of Government and Public Administration. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics – Encyclopedia of Public Administration. London: Oxford University Press.
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (Jul. 2018). Seven Steps to Control of Corruption: The Road Map. Daedalus 147(3): 20–34.

Working papers
● Oosthoek, K. (July 2022). Public Procurement in The European Union: Transparent and Fair? European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building, ERCAS Working Paper No. 65.
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (Mar. 2022). Private: Measuring real (de facto) transparency by a new index. European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building, ERCAS Working Paper No. 64.
● Mungiu-Pippidi, A., Kukutschka, R. M. B. (Sep. 2021). Curbing Business and Political Corruption: Major Task of German Elections Winners. European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building, ERCAS Working Paper No. 63.

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