Perhaps nations with high levels of corruption are lacking basic legal institutions that tend to allow open market economies to function effectively. That is, corruption is simply a side-effect of institutional deficiency.
Chris Blattman (http://chrisblattman.com/2012/11/05/corruption-and-developme...) says: "Most of us fail to imagine that corruption can also grease the wheels of prosperity. Yet in places where bureaucracies and organizations are inefficient (meaning entrepreneurs and big firms struggle to transport or export or comply with regulation), corruption could improve efficiency and growth. Bribes can act like a piece rate or price discrimination, and give faster or better service to the firms with highest opportunity cost of waiting."
Likewise John Wallis (http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9977.pdf) wrote an informative economic history paper about American corruption in 2006. The conclusion? "No society with a systematically corrupt political system has limited government. The economic system is always at risk, entry is limited, competition is fettered, and economic policies are shaped by politicians to maintain their political control of the government. Crony capitalism is not a manifestation of venal corruption—it is a symptom of systematic corruption."
What causes the US to be (or at the very least, be considered) so corrupt? My main theory is lack of political parties. Just like how companies take advantage of the consumer the most when they're a monopoly, the government can take advantage of its people when the party's worst chance of getting elected is close to 48%. However, I'm sure there are many other factors that play into governmental corruption.
Since this is a perception index, I think isolation has a lot to do with it. Americans don't travel much, our news generally ignores countries we're not bombing, etc, and so Americans have very little frame of reference for this sort of judgment.
I personally marvel at what an upstanding and civil government we have, but then again my family is from Bangladesh and we left because my dad was sick of having to do things like pay a bribe to get a phone line installed (we went months without phone service in our house because of his intransigence).
I think you're exactly right. We have a strong, visceral reaction to corruption, and we detect it in everything.
Living in New Mexico can be a bit of an absurd illustration that this isn't a universal view because we tend to have scandals involving these ancient political family dynasties. Whenever one of them is caught handing over a bunch of state contracts to their nephew (nepotism in its truest sense) we get a few great sound bites like "What's the big deal? He's just my nephew!"
In other countries this kind of corruption is seen as simply taking care of one's own or the cost of doing business. I'm glad we overreact to it.
I think it's a good thing too. One of the things I love about Americans is that we're culturally very intolerant of corruption and scandel. I just find it amusing sometimes how people don't know how good they have it.
US politicians at all levels spend an amazing amount of money on pet projects that are ultimately little more than kickbacks to the donors who helped them get elected. These projects are commonly called "Pork Barrel" projects and widely known about by US citizens and the media. In the meantime the US government runs huge deficits to fund such projects, and the end result is that we now have entire states looking for ways to avoid bankruptcy. Incidentally, several large cities in California have already filed for bankruptcy protection including Stockton and San Bernardino. The hall of government waste, fraud and abuse in the US goes on and on; I was surprised it didn't tend further toward the corrupt side of the map.
In some cases we might wonder if we are viewing sheer incompetence or wanton political corruption, but just as the end results are the same in either case, so are the perceptions.
I suspect that when people encounter government corruption in the US, it’s usually at the city or state level, in jurisdictions where a political machine controls important purchasing decisions and opponents of that machine face odds much lower than 48%.
Given that this is perceived corruption, it would be everything people think they see from top to bottom.
So instances like you suggest or; local businessman gets caught 15 times for DUI and never charged because he funded the mayors election campaign. (this happened in my area, he finally got charged after the federal government here in Canada blocked the Carter defence) Whether or not the mayor played any role its the whole guilt by association.
I personally wonder why Canada ranks so low in comparison to the US and UK when we have moronic "canada first" laws in industry that protects monopolies, but then again this is "perceived" corruption and the layperson won't be as likely to perceive vastly overpaying for a service as corruption.
The infographic is not very informative because you can't tell if 100 is bad or good at a glance. Sure, "red" usually means negative. But yellow means?
Also in this case since 100 is "good" it's confusing because again, on the initial read people will think, "This country has a score of 65, does that means 65% corrupt?" (whatever 65% corrupt means, maybe 65% more corrupt than other countries)
It helps to have some context. Being moderately aware of global politics, I know that Russia is considerably more corrupt than the United States. Russia is reddish; the USA is yellow-ish. The rest I can figure out, and the numbers and labels make it all a bit more quantitative.
To be fair, the infographic could be better, but I think all the information is there and relatively easy to parse, so calling it "not very informative" is a bit extreme.
There's a hilarious scene in Travels in Siberia where the author takes a trip to the Russian far east with a retired couple from California with extremely exacting dietary restrictions. At one point the old man is complaining loudly about all the money he spent on food and lodging—what did it go to? The author replies calmly: bribes. When they finally pass through Russian customs at the end of the trip, he complains to the Russian customs agent, saying the author told him most of the money for their trip went to bribes. The customs agent replies calmly: yes, probably.
The entire thing is solved by bothering to look at the caption on top of the info-graphic. Even if you don't read the associated article, it's reasonable to expect that a viewer is going to atleast look at the caption that describes what they are actually looking at
"The entire thing is solved by bothering to look at the caption on top of the info-graphic."
Which I am sure he did, as did I. At the top of the infographic it reads "Corruption Perceptions Index 2012", suggesting this is an index of corruption perceptions as of 2012. Higher numbers clearly mean more corruption is perceived, and lower numbers clearly mean less corruption is perceived. Assuming that one is going by the caption at the top of the infographic.
I did not know that Venezuela was perceived as being so corrupt. I certainly would not have ever thought it to be perceived lower than many african countries. Is it really that much crazier there then other south/central american countries?
Well... yes. I mean don't you really know that Chavez has been stealing businesses and companies and giving them to accomplices? The Chavez "nomenklatura" has taken hold of the country and been pillaging it for quite some time. The crime rate is exploding, there have been shortages of food and energy. It is a collapsing country.
At the low end, I'd guess it's probably more about measurement techniques than reality. Venezuela is not the most stable, prosperous, or wealthy society, but it's also not "hyperinflation and broad property seizure", and it's certainly not "armed gangs wandering the country raping and murdering indiscriminately."
This says nothing of where the respondents were from. Did they survey people in every country about their own country, or about others? It's a pretty worthless info graphic without knowing that.
Because perception is reality and if people believe the system is corrupt, they will act accordingly. Also, those types of questions are sometimes very predictive[1].
[1] "we probe the value of questions probing
voters’ expectations, which typically ask: “Regardless of who you plan to vote for, who do you think will
win the upcoming election?” We demonstrate that polls of voter expectations consistently yield more
accurate forecasts than polls of voter intentions."
Perhaps nations with high levels of corruption are lacking basic legal institutions that tend to allow open market economies to function effectively. That is, corruption is simply a side-effect of institutional deficiency.
Chris Blattman (http://chrisblattman.com/2012/11/05/corruption-and-developme...) says: "Most of us fail to imagine that corruption can also grease the wheels of prosperity. Yet in places where bureaucracies and organizations are inefficient (meaning entrepreneurs and big firms struggle to transport or export or comply with regulation), corruption could improve efficiency and growth. Bribes can act like a piece rate or price discrimination, and give faster or better service to the firms with highest opportunity cost of waiting."
Likewise John Wallis (http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9977.pdf) wrote an informative economic history paper about American corruption in 2006. The conclusion? "No society with a systematically corrupt political system has limited government. The economic system is always at risk, entry is limited, competition is fettered, and economic policies are shaped by politicians to maintain their political control of the government. Crony capitalism is not a manifestation of venal corruption—it is a symptom of systematic corruption."