Dr Ingrida Kerušauskaitė, a senior research fellow at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (LCSS), participated in the 50th Annual Conference of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), which took place on 26-29 August in Glasgow, United Kingdom. The plenary sessions and discussions of the conference were devoted to the theme “EGPA at 50: Prospects for Public Administration across Europe”.

Dr Kerušauskaitė delivered a presentation on her working paper titled “Beyond the Black Box of Political Will: The Octopus Framework to Deconstruct the Drivers and Blockers of Effective Action against Corruption”. In her presentation, the researcher emphasized that political will is often cited as a core impediment to action against corruption – such as policy and legislative framework strengthening, regulation, investigation, prosecution and asset recovery. The concept is, however, loosely defined and poorly understood both in policy-making and academic literature.

Dr Kerušauskaitė’s paper argues that the concept of “political will” itself is unhelpful in identifying and addressing the causes for lack of appropriate legislative frameworks and their implementation. The concept is often used as a “catch-all” reason for lack of effective action. The working paper proposes to move away from the catch-all phrase of “political will” and determine the drivers and blockers of reform at a more granular and useful level. Instead, the paper introduces the Octopus framework to identify such drivers and blockers, that are often grouped under the generic term “political will”. This in turn can help craft more targeted interventions and direct more effective action against corruption.

The proposed Octopus framework delves into eight categories of drivers of policy reforms (or lack thereof): (1) personal interests and preferences; (2) political ideology and motivations; (3) issue prioritisation; (4) capacity and resources; (5) authority for action; (6) social contract; (7) social norms; and (8) (mis)communication.

Participation in the international conference gave the researcher an opportunity to discuss the significant yet under-researched aspect of corruption and anti-corruption work with leading global scholars on public administration, ethics and integrity. It also served to establish new partnerships for future projects and research areas.