Institutional cooperation

The project is already having a small but significant impact in terms of institutional responsiveness and feelings of accountability. Unfortunately, the evidence for this remains largely anecdotal as when faced with complaints from citizens, institutions tend to deny the problem, but fix it nevertheless. For example, in a certain case customs' will deny that it is delaying a clearance while waiting for a bribe, but nevertheless processes the clearance after receiving the complaint. This is not ideal, as it does not admit to institutional culpability, but, in the Azeri context, even this level of responsiveness to outside scrutiny is an important step forward. This increased level of responsiveness has not only occurred at the lower levels. In some cases, high level officials who have been refusing for months requests for appointments to discuss corruption have started to contact TI-Az themselves. This is directly as a result of specific complaints which have been forwarded and of media coverage on ALAC cases. It needs to be repeated that much of this increased responsiveness is at an individual rather than institutional level, however Ministry of Education is regularly and duly attending to problems raised by TIAz. However, while not ideal, this, in itself, is important, as it demonstrates that the culture of the lack of impunity and accountability can be slowly changed by ordinary people complaining. This is clearly part of a long term process, but it must be re-emphasized that the project has only been functioning for several months in what is an incredibly complex area where corruption is deep-seated.


This project is implemented by Transparency International under support of USAID and OSCE office in Baku