ABSTRACT
In recent years the extent of mismanagement and corruption in post-conflict countries has been identified as a serious challenge to the efficiency and effectiveness of peacebuilding programmes. Perhaps more worryingly, sometimes the cure has been more damaging than the disease. Judicial prosecution has rarely resulted in visible and lasting results, mostly because of low capacity and corruption in the judiciary – typical of post-conflict states. Likewise, the establishment of anti-corruption agencies, probably the most common executive anti-corruption approach in peace-building contexts, has obtained only meagre results (see John Heilbrunn's contribution to this volume). In Afghanistan, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, not a single ‘big fish’ has been convicted by an anti-corruption agency. In some extreme cases, anti-corruption agencies are nothing more than another layer of corrupt bureaucracy (de Sousa 2009). It is in this context that policy makers and analysts have turned to civil society hoping to deal more effectively with fighting corruption than current executive-driven strategies (Bolongaita 2005: 13).
