Corruption in 2011: Citizens Cry Out

corruption-cpi2011-map Every year Transparency International tells us a bit about our countries. For some countries the news is good. For many, the news is usually not. And it can be depressing. No one likes to hear about corruption at home, how their politicians and bureaucrats steal from the public purse, how people get into the public sector only to enrich themselves, or how their country languishes near the bottom, year after year, like Pakistan.

On December 1, Transparency International (TI) released their “Corruption Perceptions Index” for 2011. Pakistan tied for 134th place out of 183 countries with a ranking of 2.5 (out of a possible 10, where 10 signifies very low levels of corruption). Eight other countries shared the unflattering position at number 134, deemed “less corrupt” than only 41 other countries in the survey (see some of the rankings below). So there Pakistan is again, considered to be highly corrupt. Of course, that is nothing new.

But there are a few things that are new.

And it has nothing to do with any change in position. We could tell you how Pakistan’s rank has changed, but we won’t. Because it is meaningless. The scores from year to year are not meant to be compared to previous years. “This is because the index draws on a country’s rank in the original data sources, rather than its score,” writes TI. “A rank will always deliver only relative information — and therefore a ranking is a one-off assessment.”

What has changed is what citizens of the world are saying (publicly and loudly) about corruption. From across the Arab world to India, and from Brazil to Europe, people have been protesting the graft and theft among their leaders and bureaucrats (see “Corruption in Brazil“).

Here is what TI writes in their report:

“The 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index shows that public frustration is well founded. No region or country in the world is immune to the damages of public-sector corruption, the vast majority of the 183 countries and territories assessed score below five on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean). New Zealand, Denmark and Finland top the list, while North Korea and Somalia are at the bottom.”

Another thing that has changed is what people are doing with the information provided by TI. A few days back, The Economist produced an infographic that charted the correlation between corruption and development. The magazine compared TI’s corruption index with the UN’s Human Development Index (a measure combining health, wealth and education). It confirms exactly what you would tend to believe: that developed countries (which often means stable and peaceful too) will generally be less corrupt.

The Economist‘s infographic is below. After that, take a look at the 10 least corrupt countries, the 10 most corrupt countries and the 10 countries that make up the company that Pakistan keeps on the list.