Corruption index.

Byline: Idrees Khawaja

CONSIDER a hypothetical case: there are no systems in a country to check corruption but there is still zero corruption in the country because all its citizens are honest for ethical or religious reasons. But this corruption-free country may well be ranked as 'significantly corrupt' on Transparency International's (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI).

TI's CPI poses questions that assess actual corruption and the potential of corruption in a country. The latter is inferred from the prevalence of systems to check corruption eg 'access of civil society to information on public affairs'. The lack of such systems means a poor rank on the CPI. In practice, all of us know many people who do not indulge in corruption, not because there are systems in place to check it but because they are honest. The CPI hardly accounts for honesty.

TI's recently published CPI shows that Pakistan has slipped three ranks. Some believe that the deterioration reflects an increase in the level of corruption. This piece looks at what goes into the computation of the TI's CPI and what kind of inferences are possible using the index.

The CPI is a perception index and seeks to gauge perceptions regarding the level of corruption in a country and how this level compares with that in other countries. The index is not directed at assessing the magnitude of the actual level of corruption.

The CPI raises several questions.

The general belief seems to be that Transparency International talks to the general public in a country to learn from their first-hand experience of corruption. In fact, it does not conduct any survey of its own - its CPI is based on scores assigned to corruption-specific questions in eight different cross-country indices computed by various international agencies, and not by the organisation itself.

Six out of the eight indices used by the TI are based on the 'expert opinion' of experts chosen by the managers of the respective indices - some indices use the opinion of a single expert. The names and profiles of experts for each country, if known, would help us assess their level of expertise regarding that country. However, neither the TI nor the management of the respective indices makes public the names and profiles of country experts. This is against the essence of transparency.

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Country Service Risk, is one of the six indices used by the TI. The EUI's websites list 88 country analysts. Since no...