Format

  • Open debate / thematic panel: Short provocations and interactive discussion around methodological borrowing and emerging tools for improving corruption research.

 

Roundtable Agenda

1. Welcome & Framing Luís de Sousa (10 min)

  • Opening remarks and contextualization.
  • Overview of corruption research’s current methodological crossroads.
  • Objectives: identify key challenges, learn from other fields, and co-create a roadmap for methodological innovation.

 

2. Part I: Panel Presentations: Methodological Challenges & Solutions (circa 50 min)
Framing themes for discussion (5–6 core challenges):

  • Conceptual ambiguities (what counts as corruption, whose definition?).
  • Data availability, accessibility, and reliability.
  • Measurement problems (bias, validity, reliability).
  • Comparability challenges (across countries, sectors, and datasets).
  • Impact challenges (evaluating interventions in complex, confounded contexts).
  • Ethical considerations (confidentiality, participant risk, algorithmic misuse).

Speaker 1: Paulina Alvarado Goldman is founder of Capacity Building and Policy Experts, Paulina Alvarado Goldman works to strengthen ethical and resilient institutions by bridging strategy, governance, and data-driven insights. She holds advanced degrees in Policy Studies (Johns Hopkins) and Data Science (UC Berkeley) and advises organizations navigating complexity and reform.

Speaker 2: Agnes Batory is Pro-Rector for Research and Faculty and Professor at CEU’s Department of Public Policy. She holds a PhD from Cambridge University. Her research interests include corruption and corruption control, party politics, and policy implementation and compliance problems in EU governance. She serves on the editorial boards of Governance; East European Politics; and the Journal of Common Market Studies as well as the international advisory board of TI EU.

Speaker 3: Markus Pohlmann is professor of Organizational Sociology at the Max-Weber-Institute, University of Heidelberg. Markus Pohlmann’s research focuses on white-collar crime, transnational elites, and the organizational foundations of corruption and compliance. He leads the Heidelberg Research Group for Organization Studies.

Speaker 4: Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez is a Peruvian political scientist specialized in anti-corruption and public integrity, founder of the Japan Network of Anti-Corruption Researchers (JANAR), and Steering Committee member of the Standing Group on (Anti-)Corruption and Integrity of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR). His core research interest has pushed him to become familiar with fields of science beyond politics, such as social psychology, organizational studies, and machine learning, and he often participates in research projects that combine them.

Moderator: Giovanna Rodríguez Garcia is a Research Fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, where she teaches measurement and data analysis. Her work focuses on measuring corruption and institutional integrity in Latin America, including the development of corruption-risk indices for political parties and SDG 16.5 monitoring tools. 

 

Expected Outcomes

  • Shared understanding of key methodological bottlenecks.
  • Cross-disciplinary inspiration and potential methodological partnerships.
  • Draft roadmap for advancing corruption research through improved data practices, measurement standards, and ethical frameworks.