TI Corruption Report

Transparency International’s 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index holds no real surprises. Bearing in mind that perception is the keyword in all of this.
TI says “The TI Corruption Perceptions Index is a composite survey, reflecting the perceptions of business people and country analysts, both resident and non-resident.”
Canadian can beat themselves up over their newfound status, but their increase in perception reflects events which occurred over a previous decade. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
I don’t really know the methodology of this survey, but there are two factors which make me wary of taking the TI list at face value:
First, this is just perception. The list must reflect, in part, expectations for a given country’s behaviour, or conversely an acceptance of some forms of corruption as ‘normal’.
The second issue is ‘what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve’. Canada is now responding to what is essentially old activity. Although having rooted that out there seems to be skeletons in every other closet.
On the expectations issue, you have to wonder if some of the poorer countries feature badly on the list because they can’t really defend themselves through sophisticated PR. No doubt there is more visible corruption in these countries (perceptions?), but the difficulty for them is still one of recourses. That includes the ability to gloss over.
The invisibility issue, which must skew perceptions, seems to be built into some of the more sophisticated economies. I would have thought, from real reports, Australia was at least equal with Canada.
Australia has been dealing with corruption, in a highly visible way, since the 1980s. Perhaps some areas of corruption really do lose their bite with familiarity.
Having said all of that, I applaud TI for making this effort to expose public and corporate corruption and encourage transparency. Pricking the balloons of some of the rich, complacent countries is never a bad thing.