Saturday, December 03, 2011

World Corruption Perception Index Charts

The following charts from Transparency International

clip_image002[4]Of the 183 countries surveyed, two thirds have been seen as “corrupt”.

clip_image004

Meanwhile the Philippines has been ranked 129th with a score of 2.6, an ‘improvement’ from last year’s score of 2.4 and from the 134th spot. Although I have yet to ascertain on the aspects where the Philippines have made ‘improvements’ on.

One more observation: Given that Somalia’s transitional government has just been a little over 1 year old, it would signify an oddity to include her in the index.

At the end of the day, Transparency International corruption perception index represents merely ‘perception’ or estimates from surveys, which could likely be off from the reality.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 2011 CPI score of a given country can only be compared to other countries in the 2011 data. This is just a one off assessment across countries and cannot be used in a time series comparison.

This may be useful in following or adapting the best anti-corruption practices of other countries ranked ahead of us.

benson_te said...

Thanks. This observation is partly true. That's because according to wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_International

"data cannot be compared from year to year because Transparency International uses different methodologies and samples every year. This makes it difficult to evaluate the result of new policies.] The Corruption Perceptions Index authors replied to these criticisms by reminding that the Corruption Perceptions Index is meant to measure perception and not "reality". They argue that "perceptions matter in their own right, since... firms and individuals take actions based on perceptions"

If the methodologies and samples changes from year to year, then this would translate to subjectivity of TI’s general methodology which would render any relative assessment even premised on an intra-year timeframe to be tenuous.

Further by the admission of the authors that “perceptions matter in their own right, since... firms and individuals take actions based on perceptions” deepens the credibility problem for it reveals that perception can diverge from actions.

So the TI’s index will be mainly useful for media and political consumption. In short, form over substance.

Anonymous said...

Why partly true? And why use Wikipedia when you can log on to cpidottransparencydotorg for answers?

http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/in_detail/

...or in the blogosphere:

http://blog.transparency.org/2011/11/30/corruption-perceptions-index-2011-what’s-in-a-number/

Thanks.

Baycas

benson_te said...

Hi Baycas

Thanks again, especially for the link.

Examining the latter link I find TI’s measures on corruption as subjectively determined.

In particular this phrase:

“It is thus difficult to assess absolute levels of corruption in countries or territories on the basis of hard empirical data. Possible attempts to do so such as by comparing bribes reported, the number of prosecutions brought or court cases directly linked to corruption cannot be taken as definitive indicators of corruption levels. *Rather they show how effective prosecutors, the courts or the media are in investigating and exposing corruption. One reliable method of compiling comparable country data is to capture perceptions of those in a position to offer assessments of public sector corruption in a given country*.

*my emphasis

Again perceptions are not actions. How people see things and how people act can be vastly different. And the link does not diminish the Wikipedia quote I showed earlier.

Best,

Benson