Talk:Corruption Perceptions Index/Archive 1

As it stands, this is not a Wikipedia article
Wikipedia is not supposed to simply reprint a groups's FAC. Either this is a copyvio, or we have permission to quote from it, and should, but should write our own article. Or perhaps this is a POV fork of Index of perception of corruption? In any case, it is not OK in its present form. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Lacking response, I am reducing this to a stub. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this article is inherently POV.

If it needs to be modified, then add to the article; don't remove the chart of nations.


 * The chart of nations is fine; it's the text with which I had an issue. I believe it is now at least somewhat addressed. At the time I wrote, it was verbatim fromtheir website. - Jmabel | Talk 18:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

=Moved from Talk:Index of perception of corruption=

I think it's best to keep this on here
This will always remind of the bias point of view of countries that I will not mention. This corruption index is not a "perception," it is propaganda. I can almost flip this chart over and it will still be as accurate as it was before.

Jetsamjetsam December 09, 2008 9:24PM (EST)

I think you're missing the point: the perception of how corrupt country is or is not DOES NOT imply or indicate to what extant political corruption within a country actually exist i.e. just because a country is perceived as less politically corrupt doesn't mean it actually is less politically corrupt. Darqcyde (talk) 01:23, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Sudden fall-offs
I'm really mystified by the sudden fall-offs in many developing countries from excellent scores (e.g. 9.5) to scores in the range of 2.0 to 3.5. Did the questions in the survey change? Did the methodology change? Is the margin of error so large as to make these numbers meaningless? -- Jmabel 18:32, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
 * This is answered in the ICGG FAQ (see question 12) Dosai 4 July 2005 15:34 (UTC)


 * The methodology changes significantly from year to year. Source data and questions asked also change. TI caveats that in their supporting documentation, but no one in media pays attention to this, causing all sorts of confusion. This is a source of persistent criticism to their index.67.170.222.230 22:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Am I blind or do I not see these fall-offs. Which countries do you mean? --Spitzl 23:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Survey instrument
The recently added Survey instrument to measure disaggregated corruption indicators certainly belongs linked from Wikipedia someplace, but unless ICCG uses this tool (and I don't think they do), I'm not sure it should be linked from this article about a rather specific index. It should be linked from a more general article, maybe political corruption? We don't seem to have an article that is precisely about corruption (political and corporate), let alone one on the topic of measuring or analyzing corruption, where it would naturally go. I guess we should leave it in the article for now, but if it finds a more natural home, that would be better. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:18, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Again, a possible effort by TI to control Wikipedia's coverage of them
New article: Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). As it stands, this is not properly a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is not supposed to simply reprint a groups's FAC. Either this is a copyvio, or we have permission to quote from it, and should, but should write our own article. Or perhaps this should be viewed as a POV fork of Index of perception of corruption? In any case, it is not OK in its present form. I'm raising the issue here because this is a longstanding related article that people interested in the subject probably have watchlisted. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:17, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I've now cleaned that up and moved it to Corruption Perceptions Index. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:40, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposed merge
I believe this should be merged to Corruption Perceptions Index. That's its official English-language name. The present title came about because I was translating a Spanish-language article, and was unaware of the official English-language name. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:40, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Preparing for the future...
How about adding another column for the year 2006? --Bruin rrss23 10:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a bridge easier crossed when we come to it.&mdash;Kbolino 04:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

=Post-merger discussion=

Where is 2004?
This article references the 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2005 surveys. Is there any particular reason to exclude 2004? It makes it seem as though no survey was conducted that year.&mdash;Kbolino 04:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

File size
As of the date of my signature, the article reports as being 49 kilobytes in length. A good portion of this is the data table, which consumes around 46,200 bytes (about 45.1 KB). This is just FYI, in case anyone is confused where the size comes from.&mdash;Kbolino 04:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there any Alternative index?
I live in a country that would be considered notoriously corrupt had only the definition been:

"the abuse of public office for political gain"

Isn't there any index for that?

This country is within the top-10 on this CPI, which makes myself question the confidence in the index, as many times private gain and political gain go hand in hand.

82.209.134.134 10:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The index is certainly controversial. But I don't know another group who are trying to do anything comparable. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)


 * A World Bank report may be of interest to you, it has a section on corruption:

http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi2007/home.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.0.181.139 (talk) 06:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Hate to be stupid, but...
... is a higher score good or bad? Since I can't be bothered to do serious research into this topic (that's what Wikipedia's for, dammit) I think it might be a valuable addition. It might seem obvious, but then so does the first sentence of the The Matrix article...


 * A higher score means less (perceived) corruption. I've now added that to the article. - Jmabel | Talk 04:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Protestant, Germanic lingual bias
What's the deal? Look at the map. How very Nazi indeed. IP Address 14:01, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Or Scandanavia and New Zeland have good governments and tend to avoid corruption. 216.191.213.114 (talk) 15:23, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

What are contributing factors to avoid corruption?
Interesting that Argentina has such a low score while its neighbors Chile and Uruguay are the best in Latin America. Anyone have any ideas why such a disparity? What are the contributing factors in avoiding corruption? Why are Chile and Uruguay successful and Argentina not? Vivaldi4Stagioni 21:15, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Latest ranking (2006) published by Transparency Index
http://www.transparency.org/news_room/latest_news/press_releases/2006/en_2006_11_06_cpi_2006

http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/cpi_2006/cpi_table

Chanakyathegreat 05:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE NEW:Survey 2006
Transparency International(global coalition again coruption) []

please finish the page.

thank you —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.124.36.42 (talk • contribs) 15 November 2006.

Do you have any idea why the 2004 survey is omitted from the table?
I have seen it like this for a long time. Are there any particular reasons why it is excluded from the table, or just because no one filled it there? Being excluded from the table implies that there's something wrong with that year survey.  kinkku ananas (talk) 12:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem?
There are 3 countries listed for 1 in 2006, and while I can believe that there's very little corruption there, I suspect that only one of them got the number one spot. -20 December 2006, I don't have an account
 * They have identical scores. They were probably considered to be tied for first. - Jmabel | Talk 06:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore the figures in the table are WRONG. For example Slovakia's figures for 2005 and 2006 are those of Slovenia. I didn't check further but for the correct figures go to TI's page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.104.34.250 (talk) 20:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Merging articles
This article should be merged with List of countries by Corruption Perceptions Index, which contains no useful information not already available here. The sortability of the table there is, however, a useful feature. My proposal is to make the table here sortable, and delete the other article.-- Palaeovia talk 01:00, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there an economic law of corruption?
For purposes of discussion I graphed the Corruption Perceptions Index on the Y axis, versus the ratio of the List of countries by GDP (PPP) / List of countries by GDP (nominal) (normalized to 1 for the U.S.) on the X axis. So the countries where I'd think you could buy the most for a dollar are at right; the countries that are most honest are at top. Surprisingly, there appears to be a sharp upper boundary to how honest a nation can be. The one point lying some distance into the forbidden area (PPP/USD=3.3, CPI=6.0) is Bhutan - perhaps an exception that proves the rule. The relationship would seem to suggest that Gambia, India, Ghana, Tunisia, Mauritius, Botswana, Uruguay, and Hong Kong are all about as honest as their economies permit them to be - or as wealthy as their political apparatus allows.

There's no way that I can put this into the article (WP:NOR), but it makes me wonder if anyone has worked out an economic theory of corruption and local pricing of goods that would explain this observation. Mike Serfas 04:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Try Google Scholar, searching for "economic growth" and "corruption" gives thousands of studies.Ultramarine 08:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah, but that's the problem! But it is interesting that several comparisons I've seen are far less impressive.  For example, the correlations with child mortality and percentage of foreign investment look like "scatter plots" in the more unfortunate sense of the phrase.  Whereas this relationship looks like you could write a mathematical formula, (CPI - 0.5) * PPP / USD < 15 -- rather amazing when you consider the nature of the index. Mike Serfas 21:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)


 * There are many inputs that drive corruption. Economics, history, culture, and of course public policy all play a role. If you can successfully control for those, you'll win a Nobel. Many have tried. Thing is, the people running these regressions rarely bother to examine the (often shoddy) source data. Example: http://commons.globalintegrity.org/2009/02/hey-experts-stop-abusing-corruption.html

Removed unsourced POV
I removed this:

"Increasingly, the CPI is being criticized for deflecting attention from other important types of corruption in global financial centers such as New York and the City of London that deliberately attract and handle many hundreds of billions of dollars in corrupt flows of money each year from poor countries, involving capital flowing "uphill" from poor countries to rich countries, contrary to traditional economic theories."

It may be true, but I cant find a good source for it... regards 195.137.96.79 17:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Update
Hi there. The new 2007 report has been released by the TI. See here. Thanks, --KoberTalk 20:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

animated gif
anybody knows how to create an animated gif? That way we could present an image with data form all past indices. --Spitzl 14:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

India is listed twice
India is listed twice, once after china and then another time in the 140s somewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.120.101.214 (talk) 22:13, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * fixed by 65.93.42.167 on Nov. 4, 2007 --spitzl (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

wow, how come Singapore??...
I'm just wondering does crony capitlism has any influence on corruption index? It's obvious that Singapore government is heavily influenced by cronyism politic. For example, the former Prime Minister elect his own son to become the current Prime Minister, and the biggest government investment company is now run by the prime minister's wife...I guess, judging from the Singapore extremely high ranking, crony capitalism doesn't seem to affect corruption index at all.155.198.115.73 15:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Reply: This is a measure of perceived corruption, and outside observers, who seem to be what TI consults, do not perceive what actually goes on in Singapore. Also, such observers tend to make a distinction between what is illegal and what is legal, and they tend to focus on the kind of corruption that involves payment of bribes rather than other forms of "misuse of entrusted power for private gain". The kind of corruption in Singapore is mainly the non-illegal, non-bribery kind.

Reply 2: in short, no -- cronyism does not influence survey results which are based on public opinion polls. Additionally, Singapore's legendary clamp down on critical media certainly has an impact on the polls. In a more freewheeling country like Indonesia, corruption is frequently in the news. In Singapore, never. So which county has a better results when international businessmen are polled "Is corruption common in this country?". More on this in "A Users' Guide to Measuring Corruption" by UNDP, recently added to the citations for this entry.

Can someone explain the colour codes in the table?
What do the different colours mean? Sometimes a country will have tabel cells in one colour in some years and they change to a different colour in other years. What does this mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.0.181.139 (talk) 06:14, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't the colors in the table correspond with the colors in the map? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flogbishop (talk • contribs) 21:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Update
The data for the table for 2008 can be found at if anyone is interested in adding it. Ginty (talk) 02:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The Template:Corruption_Perceptions/Corruption_perceptions_index is now updated. I have no clue though why the new version doesn't show up on this page. --spitzl (talk) 17:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It should be working now. I've also updated the header and removed the "outdated" notice. —MarsJenkar (talk) 14:41, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

WTF ARGENTINA!?
Why is Argentina so low??? I lived there and is a good country ;) Better then other ranked high!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.117.120.204 (talk) 05:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Its not just Argentina thats been wrongly accused. I find this table complete nonsense. Comparing larger eceonomies, America, England and China are more corrupt then lets say India. I mean you've got the war in Iraq associated with America. You've got bias media and press in the UK as well as expenses scandals and lets not forget the Tiananmen Square incident in China but yet they have a higher Corruption Perception Index. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RRRAD (talk • contribs) 18:47, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * the Corruption Perceptions Index is produced by Transparency International, not Wikipedia (we're just reporting it). You don't like their methodology, take it up with them. Disembrangler (talk) 18:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

too lazy
could somebody please rearrange the countries according to 2009? i just added 2009 ranks but i'm too lazy to reorder all of them and also doesn't have time--7amada&#39;sback:) (talk) 07:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Arsonal (talk) 10:38, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Table needs attention
There are, I would suggest, two major issues with the table:
 * The article makes it clear that year to year comparisons are not a valid analysis. Why then, does each country have 8 annual scores, side by side, inviting such an invalid comparison?
 * The colouring of the scores needs a key, otherwise it is pointless uninformative decoration. If it is on the basis of an arbitrary cut-off score from one colour band to another, then I would suggest that the colour coding is of no real use. Kevin McE (talk) 17:13, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that the table is quite messy. I've been working on a way to make it sortable but am not sure how much different it will be. I am thinking of taking out the colors. I think those templates were created for the Press Freedom Index (which also needs attention) and somehow got used here. Do you have an idea for a better way to present the data that would not invite comparison? Arsonal (talk) 19:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Frankly, I'm not sure that a survey of perceptions, with their intrinsic variability, formed as they are by expectations and social mores, is ever something that admits of sufficiently accurate and equitable management for close mathematical measure. Others will think otherwise (if not, no-one would bother publishing the annual data), but I really doubt that the attempted precision can stand up to much scrutiny.
 * Which means I'm probably not the best person to ask: I only suggest that the table not invite what the text warns against. Kevin McE (talk) 22:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that to some degree the index could be used for year to year comparing. look at Finland and Israel for example; almost continuous decrease in the score since 2002. also observe the sudden drop in the score of both Greece and Lebanon in the last year. Although the index isn't reliable for year to year comparison I think strong changes like these can be significant enough that there is something going on in the country


 * by the way, if you checked original list (http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table) you'll notice the Confidence Range that can contribute to the accuracy of the index--7amada&#39;sback:) (talk) 16:16, 19 November 2009 (UTC)