Workshop on Corruption and Politics in the Baltics, Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia

.Pdf programme in English here
.Pdf programme in Lithuanian here

Lietuviškai

Interdisciplinary Workshop

Corruption 

and Politics

Understanding a problematic combination in the 

Baltics, Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

July 19^th, 2014, 08:30-17:00

Vilnius University, Aula Parva

Corruption is more than a crime or an economic dysfunction: it’s a practice that cripples state structures and ultimately has massive impact on the stability of entire countries. Legal and economic consequences are the most immediate downfalls of corruption, but things get even worse when corruption undermines regimes legitimacy and, as a result, the state itself. In the former Soviet space alone, at least five mass-scale revolutionary events are believed to have been caused largely by people’s exasperation about their leaders’ corrupt practices since the early 2000s. The consequences can be devastating: the 2014 Ukrainian uprising has resulted in an unprecedented degree of tension, near state collapse and destabilization of the international order; the 2010 Kyrgyz revolution precipitated social tensions leading to bloody ethnic massacres. Corruption and politics are therefore a crucial combination: understanding the cultural, political and economic roots of this phenomenon, as well as related ones such as the power of organized crime, is an all too urgent necessity to understand (and anticipate) the challenges faced by the Eurasian region.

  

Vilnius University’s Centre of Oriental Studies, in partnership with the Swedish International Liberal Centre and in collaboration with the European Humanities University's Centre for German Studies, Transparency International Lithuania and the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, has gathered a panel of high-profile academic and NGO experts on corruption in former Soviet countries and is delighted to invite you to a one-day interdisciplinary workshop on Corruption and Politics in the Baltics, Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia. 

The workshop will looks at several case-studies on corruption and its relationship with democratic, authoritarian and partly-democratic political systems across the Eurasian space, from a political, criminological and ethnographic perspective.

Place: Vilnius University, Aula Parva, Universiteto g. 5

Date: Saturday, July 19^th, 2014

Time: please see programme below

Working language: English

Participation in the workshop is free and includes coffee 

as well as lunch breaks. Registration is highly advised. 

To register, please send your name and surname via email to: corruption.workshop@gmail.com

Speakers and presentations topics

Asel Doolotkeldieva is PhD candidate at Science Po (Paris) and Exeter University in the UK. With a long experience working for NATO, OSCE, the Red Cross, the UN and the Interim President of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, she is an expert on social mobilization, democratisation, conflict mitigation, corporate social responsibility and state-building and Central Asian affairs. Her opinion appeared on numerous prestigious international media. In her presentation she will focus on corruption in an authoritarian context (Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s Kyrgyzstan), exploring the corrupt use of the mining sector for regime enrichment and the links connecting Kyrgyz mines to financial élites in the post-communist world, including the Baltics.

  

Dr. Alexander Wolters got his PhD from Viadrina European University and is now DAAD visiting professor at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He has published on political developments in Central Asia and works as a consultant on Central Asian political and economic affairs. His research specializes on corruption in Kyrgyzstan and explores whether regime change has effectively occurred in the country after the 2005 and 2010 revolutions. His presentation will focus on the “politics of discrediting” political opponents, popular in today’s Kyrgyz politics. These practices result in the development of means of informal bargaining and corruption in decision-making processes in a political system in transformation.

  

Dr. Gavin Slade completed his PhD at Oxford and is now Assistant Professor of Criminology at Toronto University in Canada. He is a specialist of crime-politics relations, organized crime in the former Soviet Union, crime eradication and penal reforms in Georgia. His broad interests lie in applying the insights of analytical sociology and criminology to problems of crime and transition in post-communist countries. He currently researches prison reform and prison violence in the region; and the linkages between penal practices and state-building. In his presentation he will focus on the political drives of anti-corruption campaigns in Georgia, looking at its evolution during the latest decade of political transformation in the country.

  

Dr. Alexander Kupatadze has world-leading scholarly experience studying organized crime and corruption in post-Soviet Eurasia. A former Fellow at the Georgia Office of the American University’s Transnational Crime and Corruption Centre (TraCCC), he got his PhD from St. Andrews University and held postdoctoral teaching and research positions at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, the OSCE Academy and George Washington University. He is now Oxford-Princeton postdoctoral fellow in Global Governance at Princeton University and advises various governments, commercial and non-governmental institutions on corruption and informal politics in the FSU. His presentation will focus on the connection and interaction of politics, organized crime and corruption, touching upon both the Georgian and the Central Asian cases. 

  

Uladzimir Kavalkin [Vladimir Kovalkin] is a researcher at the SYMPA/BIPART think-tank and an expert on Belarus public administration. He analysed the current system of employment to the public service and suggested solutions to reform the clannish, personal relations-based approach in hiring to the public service. He graduated from the Belarusian Public Administration Academy and specialized at EHU in Political Science. His presentation will focus on grand corruption in Belarus and relations between corruption and republic/local authorities, exploring topics such as the importance of anti-corruption fight for the Belarusian social contract and the political use of corruption to keep private business under control.

  

Sergejus Muravjovas has been Head of Transparency International (TI) Lithuania since 2008. In 2012, he was re-elected to TI's International Board of Directors. He is a board member of “Clear Wave” initiative for business transparency and a member of the Selection Commission of Candidates to Judicial Office in Lithuania. He also teaches Corporate Governance and Anticorruption at ISM. In the past he also served as a local correspondent for the first EU Commission Anti-Corruption report. His presentation will explore the relationship between politics and corruption in the Baltic region, with special reference to Lithuania, seeking to provide an insight on the political drive (or lack of it) towards anti-corruption reform.

  

Vytautas Žukauskas is a Policy Analyst at the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LLRI). He is an expert on competitiveness, monetary policies, employment regulation and finance, as well as the Lithuanian shadow economy and related political-economic dysfunctions. Since 2012 he has been in charge of the preparation of the LLRI’s research on shadow economy in Lithuania and the preparation of several assessment indexes about the country. His contribution will present his perspective on the role of market regulations and political choices in promoting shadow economy phenomena and corruption in Lithuania, and how the two influence each other creating economic distortions in the local market.

Programme

08:30-09:00: Registration

09:00-09:10: Introductory remarks

09:10-09:50: First presentation (Asel Doolotkeldieva)

09:50-10:30: Second presentation (Dr. Alexander Wolters)

10:30-10:50: Discussion

10:50-11:20: Coffee break

11:20-12:00: Third presentation (Dr. Gavin Slade)

12:00-12:40: Fourth presentation (Dr. Alexander Kupatadze)

12:40-13:00: Discussion

13:00-14:00: Networking buffet

14:00-14:40: Fifth presentation (Uladzimir Kavalkin)

14:40-14:50: Discussion

14:50-15:10: Tea break

15:10-15:50: Sixth presentation (Sergejus Muravjovas)

15:50-16:30: Seventh presentation (Vytautas Žukauskas)

16:30-16:50: Discussion

16:50-17:00: Conclusive remarks

For any question, feel free to contact: fabio.belafatti@oc.vu.lt or corruption.workshop@gmail.com

To register, please write to corruption.workshop@gmail.com