Corruption is getting worse in many poor countries

Most of the world scores poorly in Transparency International’s annual corruption index. Using the assessments of business pundits and analysts, including figures from the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, the NGO scores countries from 0 to 100 based on perceptions of corruption in the public sector, with 100 indicating a squeaky clean record. In the latest ranking, released on January 25th, almost 70% of countries score below 50. Poor countries tend to do worse than rich ones, partly because poverty makes corruption worse and partly because corruption makes poverty worse. The average score in sub-Saharan Africa is 33, the lowest for any region. In western Europe it is 66.

Some high-scoring democracies showed “significant deterioration” over the past year too—so much so that America dropped out of the 25 least corrupt countries for the first time. Blame Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn election results in 2020, and the fact that conspiracy theories including QAnon are going mainstream. But the biggest drops were in countries whose governments muffled the press and suppressed civil liberties under the cover of covid-19 prevention. Belarus has dropped by six points since 2020, when a rigged election saw Alexander Lukashenko become president. The killing of human-rights defenders under Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and the strangling of the free press in Nicaragua and Venezuela, contributed to low scores.

Improvements in the index are normally slow. Countries usually move by only a point or two from one year to the next, if at all. But regime change can prompt faster improvement: Armenia’s score has risen by 14 points since 2017. Mass protests in 2018 swept away the political elite in favour of a government that has pressed charges against former high-ranking officials. More recently, though, Armenia’s government has lost steam. On January 23rd the president resigned out of frustration over a lack of decision-making power. Angola’s ten-point leap up the index over the same period belies similar complexities. Though reforms since 2017 have pleased the IMF, most Angolans have yet to see much benefit.

Poor countries, especially those in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, are singled out for the bad behaviour of their governments. Yet companies based in rich countries often facilitate corruption abroad. Transparency International publishes a separate report on countries whose companies bribe foreign officials—and the top scorers on that list are the same ones lauded as least corrupt by the organisation's main index. Some countries at least enforce anti-bribery laws. Britain and Switzerland are among the “active” enforcers while Germany, Norway and Sweden are “moderate” ones, according to Transparency International.

Rich countries are not immune to influence-peddling. Owen Paterson, a former British MP who resigned after becoming embroiled in a lobbying scandal in November 2021, accepted at least £500,000 on top of his salary for consulting work and for lobbying on behalf of two companies. But he declared these payments in the register of MPs’ financial interests, so media outlets were able to expose them through freedom of information requests. Politicians who demand bribes, buy votes or rig elections in poor countries are not so readily held to account. ■

For a look behind the scenes of our data journalism, sign up to Off the Charts, our weekly newsletter.