Coalition 2000 is one of the most prominent examples of a "private-public partnership" in the area of anti-corruption. It is an all-inclusive platform combining the input and efforts of various stakeholders irrespective of their political or institutional affiliations.

The institutional structure of Coalition 2000 builds on three main elements:

• Policy Forum of leading public and private institutions and prominent personalities;
• Steering Committee as the means for coordination;
• Secretariat to provide operational management to the process.

Policy Forum

The Policy Forum convenes once a year to review the results of the preceding period, and to provide guidelines for the work over the next year. The Forum consists of forty to fifty Members invited to participate by the Steering Committee. Members are prominent public personalities with established integrity and reputation as well as representatives of public and private institutions. The following groups of institutions are represented at the Forum:

Institutions of the state: executive government agencies, ministries, committees, the National Assembly, the judiciary, including courts at all levels, local government representatives, as well as the National Audit Office and Commission for the Protection of Competition; NGOs: Bulgarian foundations and associations, policy institutes, business associations, regional development agencies, civic group representatives and European and US foundations (through their local offices);

International organizations: the Council of Europe, USAID, World Bank, Commission of the European Union, United Nations Development Program, International Monetary Fund, etc.

The mandate of the Forum is based primarily on its role as a representative public body overseeing the process, reviewing the progress and adopting the agenda for future work. The effort receives increased public credibility and legitimacy through the endorsement of a forum of leading personalities and institutions.

Its meetings ensure that the work carried out under the Coalition 2000 process by various institutions reflects a consensus of the concerned public and private institutions.

Steering Committee

While the Policy Forum is intended to foster a general political and social consensus on the implementation of the initiative, the Steering Committee (SC) provides the coordination of the activities and outputs of the Coalition.

The group of NGOs which took the initiative -- Access Association, Applied Research and Communications Fund (ARC Fund), Association of Judges in Bulgaria, CSD, Center for Economic Development, Center for Social Practices, Economic Policy Institute and the Information Centre on the Council of Europe, Sofia -- invested a particular effort into ensuring the representative nature of the SC. Thus the set-up of the SC reflects both the history of the initiative as well as the consultations and the publicity effort.

The Steering Committee meets regularly, approximately every four-to-six weeks. The SC has a major role in the run-up to the Policy Forum meetings. The Steering Committee prepares the meeting agenda through advance consultations with the Forum members and reports to the Forum on the activities and outputs during the preceding year. The structure of the Steering Committee is intended to ensure two main objectives:

• efficient management covering all aspects: political/institutional, economic, legal, information, and interface with international institutions;
• public-private dialogue and partnership as a key prerequisite for a substantial impact.

Secretariat

For the purpose of providing permanent support to the work of the Steering Committee, a Secretariat was set up at CSD to provide the day-to-day operational management, logistical support and reporting.

This Coalition 2000 "model" has a number of advantages, namely:

• the process is open in that it provides a mechanism through which the major stakeholders — governmental and non-governmental organizations, business associations and international organizations — could provide input and participate in project design and implementation in a way which makes best use of their respective experience and expertise;
• it establishes a public-private dialogue and partnership in a process of concern to the whole society;
• the process is transparent by means of regular dissemination of information among concerned institutions and media outreach;
• the structure is flexible as it incorporates both public and private institutions as well as prominent individuals.

The innovative approach to combating corruption, introduced by Coalition 2000, has been acknowledged internationally. A recent World Bank Report "The Road To Stability And Prosperity In South Eastern Europe: A Regional Strategy Paper" notes that in the field of anti-corruption/good governance in SEE "there are some groundbreaking attempts by civil society groups, such as Coalition 2000 in Bulgaria, which has developed a common program of practical actions, with active participation of government and national NGOs".

Corruption Monitoring System

Corruption Monitoring System (CMS) is a special tool developed by Coalition 2000 experts. It is both a measuring and pressure tool. CMS provides regular comprehensive summaries of public attitudes and behavior, related to corruption, implementing a set of corruption indexes [1]. The methodology of corruption indexes is based on a relatively simple model of corrupt behaviour, as a type of interaction between actors. It includes the decomposition of corrupt behaviour into four main elements: preconditions, practical interaction, action results and future expectations. Respectively corruption indexes are grouped in the following categories: attitudes towards corruption, corrupt practices, assessment of the spread of corruption and corruption expectations.

^{[1] Each corruption index summarizes the values of several variables and is presented in a statistically normalized form: values of CI range from 0 to 10. The "0" symbolizes proximity to the "corruption free" society while values close to "10" present the negative side of the continuum (society predominated by corruption). The corruption indexes are developed by Vitosha Research (www.online.bg/vr).}