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CORDIS

Bridging the Gaps in Evidence, Regulation and Impact of Anticorruption Policies

Project description

Mapping corruption, empowering citizens

Corruption quietly undermines trust in governments, distorts economies, and leaves citizens feeling powerless. It often crosses borders, taking advantage of gaps in laws and technology. Despite years of research, the scale and methods of corruption remain hard to grasp, and the data are scattered and hard to access. Without clear information, accountability suffers. In this context, the EU-funded BRIDGEGAP project aims to change that. Bringing together experts, researchers, and tech innovators, it connects data across countries to map corruption networks and track hidden assets. Tools such as algorithms allow both researchers and the public to explore and understand corruption. With its open Data Hub, tutorials, and crowd-sourcing features, BRIDGEGAP empowers everyone to hold power to account.

Objective

BRIDGEGAP is a multidisciplinary research project reuniting former members of the ANTICORRP consortium (Transparency International, ERCAS/SAR, CSD, University of PISA, University of Perugia) who have continued to invest in the development of data commons allowing corruption understanding and monitoring on the basis of objective data (e.g. Integrity Watch, Index for Public Integrity, T-Index, Russian Economic Footprint), with new academic partners who published novel methods to measure money-laundering (Utrecht University) anthropologists and criminologists who pioneered corruption studies in liberal democracies (IFFS), and new IT groups like the Ukrainian organisation YouControl, the first to interconnect data to enable searches of the assets of sanctioned individuals through its algorithm Follow the Money. BRIDGEGAP fills the knowledge gaps regarding both the extent to and the mechanisms by which corruption infiltrates open societies even across borders and it produces measurements of corruption across countries and time by its innovative models, as well as social network maps. It also assesses and offers solutions to the digital transparency gaps, ranging from the tools of transparency, the use and abuse of technology in corruption and anticorruption to the state of it. Finally, it assesses public accountability and anticorruption regulation across EUMS and candidate states to identify regulatory and impact gaps, thus addressing the academia–policy gap in corruption studies. The research will result in academic publications as well as in interactive analytical and research commons like comparative law repositories EU Compass, European Transparency Index, Follow the Money search engines across newly interconnected databases. All its pooled data will be displayed transparently on the website as a Data Hub and will offer end users the same investigation and analytical tools as the project researchers, inviting crowd-sourcing and offering online tutorials.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01

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Coordinator

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF DEMOCRACY
Net EU contribution
€ 649 332,50
Address
ALEXANDER ZHENDOV STREET 5
1113 Sofia
Bulgaria
Region
Югозападна и Южна централна България Югозападен София (столица)
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 649 332,50

Participants (28)

Partners (1)