Measuring what wants to remain hidden
Are we paying attention to the right things in corruption?
Corruption is present in every country and industry. Yes. In all of them. It is also one of the most elusive things to measure. To begin with, there is no international consensus on what corruption means. Transparency International defines corruption “as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. Although, this has transformed into the most widely adopted definition, several critics such as the United Nations Development Program have expressed that such a definition is not only too narrow, but also culturally biased.
You might be wondering why is it important to have a definition of corruption? Well, we all seem to agree that corruption has a negative impact on our planet and communities. In 2004, Kofi A. Annan, who at the time was UN’s Secretary General, wrote in the foreword of the UN’s Convention Against Corruption that corruption is “an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human society.”¹ All sorts of nocive actions seem to fall under the umbrella of corruption: bribes, kickbacks in public procurement, embezzlement, and a long etcetera. These activities divert resources which were supposed to be allocated towards guaranteeing sustainable development across the globe. Funds that were to ensure people access to healthcare, education, food security, and that our planet is protected from loss of biodiversity and climate change, to name a few. However, regardless of how much these resources are increased and given to the “right organizations”, we are yet to see a third world country become a developed nation by the effectiveness of aid, and clearly the environment has not been restored to its former glory yet.
To reduce the effects of corruption, global key players have started measuring it by creating indexes that are targeted towards helping donors and rich countries across the globe choose where to send their money. However, funds continue to be lost every year. Why? One of the questions I had in my mind when starting this article is if we are measuring the right things to begin with.
Here is what I found out
Currently, there are two broadly accepted indicators of corruption: Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). “The CPI scores and ranks countries/territories based on how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be by experts and business executives. It is a composite index, a combination of 13 surveys and assessments of corruption, collected by a variety of reputable institutions. The CPI is the most widely used indicator of corruption worldwide.”² The CPI evaluates 180 countries giving them a score from 0 to 100, being 100 very clean and 0 highly corrupt. In its most recent report, two thirds of the countries scored below 50, with a total average of 43.
The WGI, on the other hand, measures six indicators: (1) voice and accountability, (2) political stability and absence of violence, (3) government effectiveness, (4) regulatory quality, (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption³. This, in the hope of “capturing perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as ‘capture’ of the state by elites and private interests”⁴. You may have already noticed that both systems use the concept of — perception — and — expert knowledge -. This basically means that they ask the opinion of several elite individuals across countries to understand if they think certain things have happened. For example, “one of the questions in the World Bank Enterprise Survey asks how large the “informal payments” needed to win a government contract are”⁵. Obviously, a company answering such a question may not be inclined to reveal the full truth of the matter in fear of risking their reputation. As I reviewed methodologies I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of a proper explanation of what would make someone a reliable “expert”, a full list of questions asked to these experts and who they are.
The CPI “aggregates data from a number of different sources that provide perceptions by business people and country experts in the level of corruption in the the public sector”⁶. The report goes on and explaining the data must be “based on a reliable and valid methodology”⁷. However, the methodology is not explained. Furthermore, ir states that “the CPI 2019 is calculated using 13 data sources from 12 different institutions that capture perceptions of corruption within the past two years.”⁸
In his book — Results not Receipts. Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption — Charles Kenny challenged the validity of both measuring frameworks. He questioned the perpetuation of the use of “expert opinion”. In his research he discovered that “experts are terrible at predicting the percentage of people victimized by corruption”⁹. Kenny compared how high the percentage of the population of a country say they have been a victim of corruption with how high the “experts” estimated it had been in the same period. In Benin, for example, 8.7 percent of the population declared they were victims of corruption in 2006, while the experts estimated it was 53.7 for the same year. This means the “experts” thought the problem of corruption for that country was 6.2 times bigger than what it had actually been. This has devastating consequences in the allocation of resources for countries like Benin, reducing investment in the country and leaving its people and environment in a more vulnerable position than before.
We are (poorly) measuring what is already lost
As I see it, one of the challenges of both methodologies is not only that there seems to be a lack of validity of a data set. Since it is not truly taking into consideration real communities on the ground. But also, that we are focusing on measuring what has already been lost instead of strengthening tools of prevention. A recent study looked into the 22 most aid-dependant countries in the world, in terms of World Bank Aid¹⁰. In their research, Andersen, Johannesen and Rijkers documented “that disbursements of aid coincide, in the same quarter, with significant increases in the value of bank deposit in (tax) heavens”¹¹, suggesting aid diversion to private accounts in tax havens.
As scores in the globally accepted corruption indexes worsen and funds from aid continue to disappear we seem to keep obsessing with what has been lost instead of creating workflows in which streams of funds and activities are shown to the public. We continue to try to control corruption with “an undelineated and unmeasured set of actions around loosely defined concept”¹². Furthermore, we seem to be missing a strong stance against lack of transparency. If there is openness with how decisions are made, funds are spent, actions are taken then we would probably see increased accountability by all of the parties involved. Wouldn’t that be better to end corruption?
There is one paragraph from the latest CPI that stuck with me as I write these lines: “from fraud that occurs at the highest levels of government to petty bribery that blocks access to basic public services like health care and education, citizens are fed up with corrupt leaders and institutions. This frustration guls a growing lack of trust in government and erodes public confidence in political leaders, elected officials and democracy”¹³. I profoundly agree with this statement, but I think something is missing. I think it is about time for these reports to start mentioning transparency. Isn’t it time to stop those resources from getting lost in the first place?
[1] United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UN, 2004)
[2] Corruption Perception Index (Transparency International)
[3] Worldwide Governance Indicators (World Bank, 2020)
[4] [5] Results not receipts. Counting the right things in aid and corruption (Charles Kenny, 2017)
[6] [7] [8] Corruption perception Index 2019 (Transparency International)
[9] Results not receipts. Counting the right things in aid and corruption (Charles Kenny, 2017)
[10] [11] Elite Capture of Foreign Aid (Jørgen Juel Andersen, Niels Johannesen, Bob Rijkers, 2020)
[12] Results not receipts. Counting the right things in aid and corruption (Charles Kenny, 2017)
[13] Corruption Perception Index (Transparency International)
