corruption perceptions index

corruption perceptions index (CPI), measure that rates countries on the basis of their perceived level of corruption, on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (clean). The CPI was created and used by Transparency International, an international nongovernmental organization established in 1993 with the aim of bringing together business, civil society, and government structures to combat corruption. The index was first used in 1995, and it covers a growing number of countries in annual surveys.

The CPI is based on surveys of domestic and international business executives, financial journalists, and risk analysts. Therefore, it reflects the perceptions of experts and business elites, not of the general public. It represents average scores from several polls and surveys for each respective country from the two years prior to its release and the year of release (e.g., CPI 2004 was based on sources from 2002, 2003, and 2004). The minimum number of surveys used for each country is three, while some countries are evaluated with the use of as many as 14 to 15 surveys.

The CPI focuses on the public sector and evaluates the degree of corruption among public officials and politicians. Corruption is defined as an abuse of public position for private gain, which in practice usually means bribe taking. Because in corrupt countries the quality and independence of the judiciary and media are usually low, official statistics on corruption exposure and prosecution underestimate the level of corruption in more-corrupt countries. The CPI, being based on evaluations, is a valuable alternative source of information about the degree of illegal practices among civil servants and politicians in a given country.

There are some methodological problems related to CPI data reliability and comparability. While the information about the cross-national levels of corruption is compiled annually using a number of reliable and established sources—such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)–World Bank Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey, The Economist’s Country Risk Service and Country Forecast, or Freedom House’s Nations in Transit—the exact set of sources used for a country’s evaluation and the wording of the questions put to experts vary from year to year, making an actual net change in the level of perception of corruption difficult to precisely estimate. Second, large differences in values given to a country by different sources (which are reflected by a high standard deviation of a CPI score), especially combined with a low number of surveys used for a country, signal a low reliability of an estimate. However, great care is taken to ensure the highest possible quality of sources and methodology used. Therefore, CPI is a reputable index widely used by academics, economists, journalists, and business executives.

The results consistently show that the countries with the highest scores (9 or higher) are predominantly rich countries, while the countries with the lowest scores are the poorest ones. This relationship between a country’s level of economic development and its level of corruption led Transparency International to conclude that corruption is one of the key obstacles to sustainable development.