Peruvians protest Chile's decision last week not to extradite former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori on corruption charges. (Karel Navarro/Associated Press)
In Depth
World Bank
World Bank corruption index
Who's the shadiest country of them all?
Last Updated July 13, 2007
CBC News
The world's most corrupt nations
- 1. North Korea
- 2. Somalia
- 3. Myanmar, formerly known as Burma
- 4. Afghanistan
- 5. Congo
- 6. Iraq
- 7. Zimbabwe
- 8. Bangladesh
- 9. Nigeria
- 10. Turkmenistan
- 11. Cambodia
- 12. Chad
- 13. Ivory Coast
- 14. Angola
- 15. Papua New Guinea
- 16. Sierra Leone
Source: World Bank
Government corruption is a difficult thing to pin down. That's because it's usually conducted in a backroom somewhere by crooked politicians or well-connected organizations that can easily elude authorities.
But according to the authors of a new World Bank report, corruption is much easier to measure these days. For that, we can thank an increasing number of global monitoring agencies, which share information on suspicious banking manoeuvres, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The authors of the recently released study collected input from at least 31 agencies, including Afrobarometer, a non-partisan research project responsible for taking the social, political and economic pulse of African states. "They have provided particular insights on the private sector role in corruption," the authors said.
The report titled Worldwide Governance Indicators looked at 212 world countries over a 10-year period.
Since the mid-1990s, the World Bank has increasingly tried to assess corruption on an empirical level in order to help justify its funding programs. Sensibly evaluating an elusive concept like corruption has become an ever-growing field of research, it said. Though the authors did allow there is still an element of subjectivity to their report.
Evaluating budgetary habits
The study also drew from NGOs, investment rating agencies and think tanks, while tracking the important procurement and budgetary habits of those countries under scrutiny.
The impact of the study was evident almost from the beginning when audits of international financial institutions were first performed. Countries with questionable practices were put on notice and some began to mend their ways.
Two years into the evaluation, certain countries with a reputation for political and human rights abuses, such as Rwanda, Indonesia and Tajikistan, started finding ways of improving governance, according to the study. (The World Bank defines governance as a set of traditions and institutions countries use to exercise authority.)
At the same time, the authors noted, some of the most developed nations became noticeably more corrupt, according to the measurements being applied to everyone. This challenged the accepted wisdom that the world's richest countries have managed to attain a high level of governmental integrity.
Since 1998, over a dozen countries with emerging economies and problematic histories — nations such as Chile, Costa Rica, Lithuania and Uruguay — were demonstrating greater corruption control, less violence and more rule-abiding enforcement agents than such storied democracies as Greece and the United States, the authors said.
At the top of the class, to no one's real surprise, was Finland. It can be said to run the squeaky-cleanest government in the world.
The brightest news, however, was that Africa, which was often considered a continent bathed in dictators and shady practices, has shown remarkable improvement over the 10 years that these evaluations have been underway.
In particular, the World Bank praises Tanzania, Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone, though in the case of Liberia and Sierra Leone the changes have been very recent and date from the ouster of Charles Taylor in 2003, an event that eventually led to war crimes charges against the former Liberian president.
Corruption tied to limited freedom of expression
The World Bank's governance study is only one element in a broad anti-corruption plan that it is trying to implement to gain greater support for national institutions outside the executive branch, including parliaments, civil organizations, the business sector and journalists.
When a country's citizens demand more accountability through the ballot box, or where the media is allowed free expression, governments become less corrupt, the authors said.
Canada, Chile and Botswana were found to be countries where freedom of expression is strong.
Contrastingly, governments that didn't let their citizens have a say, for example China, the Russian Federation and Zimbabwe, were measured as some of the most corrupt. Zimbabwe ranked in the fourth lowest percentile when measuring for control of corruption.
These negative rankings led to sharply worded letters to new World Bank President Robert Zoellick from China, Russia and Argentina among others, complaining about the methodology of the study and other alleged biases in the research. One unusual case in the study was Singapore.
It has one of the best rankings in the world when it came to control of dishonest practices, but strangely had only an average score for freedom of expression.
