Perception Vs Reality

I admire Transparency International, the leading global non-governmental organisation devoted to combating corruption. But please TI, enough with the perceptions and let’s get down to the true picture.My perception from researching the corruption issue is that the wealthy countries tend to use the language of spin to temper the hard edges of corruption reporting. Those countries actually trying to confront the issue tend to call a spade a spade.
In the USA, for example, it is far more common to refer to a scandal as opposed to outright corruption. A scandal can cover any number of socially suspect activities, many of which have no hint of actual corruption.
A congressman can publicly squeeze someone’s bum and cause a scandal. It might reveal rank stupidity but it isn’t corruption. Why then should it be assigned the same term as outright corrupt behaviour, such as vote rigging, influence peddling or similar?
The answer is easy for any savvy politician; soft words reduce the negative perceptions of a charge.
Growing up in Australia, it was easy to believe the country was a world leader in corruption. The country was after all a dumping ground for convicts. The public service descends from military administrators who spurred the ‘Rum Rebellion’ in an effort to maintain their corrupt perks of office.
The real facts, however, are that Australia has been very active in the fight against public sector corruption. A string investigating commissions, into conduct of the public sector, including police, generated seemingly non stop headlines through much of the last half of the 20th century.
It was ‘in your face’ in language and visual images. That is not to say that Australia has beaten corruption. When it comes to perception I expect most of the population is heartily sick of hearing about real corruption, preferring the entertainment value of a good old scandal.
To their credit, many of the Australian jurisdictions created independent commissions to investigate corrupt activities. Some states even have separate bodies to oversee police misbehaviour. This is vital for two reasons:
The first is that even if the public and the politicians are tired of corruption issues, the charters of these organizations oblige them to keep fighting this evil.The second point is that in the sport of politics, corruption allegations are handy way of attacking and bringing down foes. Independent commissions are not, or should not be, answerable to the body politic. They, like Caesar's wife, must be above suspicion, even if the elected politicians can’t seem to manage transparent honesty.
Even in that rigorous climate slip ups occur and are dealt with swiftly. “A West Australian anti-corruption commissioner who resigned after tipping off a suspect in an investigation may still face criminal charges, following the release of an official misconduct report.” August 26, 2005 The AUSTRALIAN http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16394204%5E29277,00.html
Back to TI and the reality plea. No doubt many, if not most, developing economies are a rich mine for corruption. It seems a glaring cop out to focus on those countries in a ‘perceptions’ index when developed countries are, perhaps, merely more sophisticated in executing and hiding corrupt activities.
I hazard that identifying and quantifying corruption is about as difficult as identifying the ‘black economy’. People will offer their perceptions and postulations, but no one is going to put up their hand with hard data.
Even so statistical modeling, particularly computer assisted, is a highly sophisticated art now. Surely, even given the spin and other language difference, a fairly clear picture of ‘real’ corruption can be drawn.
A casual Google news search, using a range of different corruption related search terms shows that the wealthy countries are not really so low on the reality index.