Corruption Perceptions Index
The CPI scores and ranks countries based on how corrupt a country's public sector is perceived to be by experts and business executives. The CPI is the most widely used indicator of corruption worldwide. The CPI is a composite index published annually by Transparency International since 1995. The CPI generally defines corruption as the misuse of public power for private benefit.
CPI
score
by country
Drawing on 13 surveys of business-people and experts assessments, the index scores on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
The index takes a number of factors into account, such as nepotism, prosecution of corrupt officials, and bribery.
The chart on the right demonstrates the countries with the most and the least amounts of corruption.
There exists a correlation between the CPI and the countries' economy. Researchers found that a higher CPI generally results in a higher long-term economic growth. Although, the index has been criticized on the basis of its methodology, mainly because corruption is too complex to be captured by a single score, the CPI is widely credited with putting the issue of corruption on the international policy agenda.
CPI
and
HDI
Human Development Index is a composite index, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. The HDI is also used as an alternative indicator of human welfare. The index takes into account three major factors: lifespan, education and GNI.
The chart on the left demonstrates the preferably existing connection between a higher CPI and higher HDI.
It is worth mentioning that the HDI is criticized generally on the same basis as the CPI. Welfare and human development is too complex to be captured by a single indicator, the underlying statistics may be faulty, and yet it is used by the United Nations to measure a country's development.
The HDI uses a scale of 0 to 1, where a higher number means a higher development.
System
Of
Government
The connection between CPI and the state of democracy is unquestionable. Frankly, the Democracy Index is an index that intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries. The index categorises each country into one of four regime types: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime and authoritarian regime.
As we can see on the chart on the right, with a few exceptions countries with a high Democracy Index also have a high CPI score. This obviously means that countries with lower perceivable corrupcy also tend to respect democratic values, such as free and fair elections, and the security and anonymity of voters.
The index scales from 0 to 100. For a country to be denoted as a full democracy, it has to achieve at least a score of 80, from there every 20 scores decline means a new category.
Schooling
and
corruption
It is really objectionable that in less educated third-world, or less prosperous countries ordinary people can perceive the true level of corruption. Less years in schools in reality result in citizens less aware of outside political affairs. It is worth to mention and underline the connection between the average total years of schooling for adult population and the CPI.
Also, we can expect a similar correlation between education and CPI, as we saw in the second chart, on the world map, when we examined the connection between a higher HDI and a higher CPI. Education, generally the average years of schooling, is one of the main factors of HDI.
Arguably, one can say that it is forced to see a connection between an education mean and CPI, because CPI is measured the corruption perceived by experts and business executives. However, it is not rare or more precisely unseen for ordinary people to end up in those positions, this means that it is definitely worth a look.