Peter Platzgummer

Because of a lack of transparency and the high complexity of administrative processes, arms acquisition is an area with a high risk of corruption. The aim of this paper is: 1) to provide a typology of cases of corruption in compensatory trade agreements, so called arms trade offsets, that have become integral parts of most arms trades; and 2) to analyze tools possessed by government agencies concerned to prevent or detect corruption. Based on an analysis of all major English-speaking newspaper articles between 1980 and mid-2012, the results show that only a few different types of corruption typically exist in arms trade offsets. Also, the lack of transparency leads to an unusually high amount of questionable allegations. Contrary to most other scholarly articles on corruption, this paper argues that there may be no need for new and stricter anti-corruption policies in this area, but that the usage of basic performance management and already existing due diligence tools could be helpful.

This paper argues that public organizations with a legitimacy problem use their performance management system mainly to explain their effectiveness; while organizations in areas where the organizational legitimacy is not questioned in the same way instead focus on measures of efficiency. The paper approaches the question of how a public organization selects indicators to measure its performance. Opposite to common academic trends towards the usage of very complex models, this paper uses an abstract model based on rational-choice-institutionalism with boundedly-rational actors. These will present potential ideas on how large-n-studies of different performance management systems could be conducted successfully. Volltext: http://www.ipmn.net/index.php/archives/ipmj-free-archive/doc_download/196-platzgummer-2013

According to a recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 40 percent of all corruption in international transactions occur in the arms trade (SIPRI Yearbook 2010, p. 1), moreover the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee of the US Department of Commerce claimed in a March 2000 report that the defense sector was responsible for more than 50 percent of all bribery allegations between 1994 and 1999 (Magahy et al. 2010, p. 14). Key reasons for this concentration in arms trade corruption include the high value and therefore the importance of single trades for individual countries and defense suppliers. Especially considering the increasing complexity of these security relevant transactions, that make it harder and harder for public managers to control and communicate information to superior authorities and the public.

This paper addresses the question whether small member states of the European Defence Agency use protectionist tactics such as arms trade offsets in different ways than large member states. It argues that the differentiation between small and large states cannot be used to explain industrial compensation in Europe. While offsets can be seen as a way to strengthen the domestic defense industrial base, other objectives such as regional distribution or employment seem to play at least the same role and need to be considered as well in future discussions towards a European Defense Technological and Industrial Base.

This chapter discusses the efforts of the European Defence Agency (EDA) to decrease the fragmentation of the European Defence Technological and Industrial base by coordinating offset practices of its member states. It first looks at the increasing use of offsets after the end of the Cold War. Second, it discusses the activities of the I&M Directorate of the EDA that led to the adoption of the Code of Conduct on Offsets by almost all member states and increased the transparency of offset practices in Europe. The third section discusses the introduction of the Defence Procurement Directive by the European Commission (EC), and the EDA's role as a catalyst in the change process that followed. While the EDA was able to increase awareness of offsets' effects on a common defence industrial base, implementation of the Defence Procurement Directive greatly marginalised these efforts. The current situation, which will eventually forbid the use of indirect civil offsets, provides an opportunity for the EDA to better coordinate still-existing defence offsets of member states in the future. But, the EDA has to define for itself a new and preferably stronger position on offsets, one that is not as driven by decisions made within the EC.

Georgetown University Press, Oktober 2011