WEEKEND COLUMNISTS “It’s very corrupt there, you know,” this friend just back from Sri Lanka was saying down the phone. “But Sri Lanka is the 94th most honest country in the world,” I protested. “It’s less corrupt than Argentina, way ahead of Pakistan and Bangladesh. It’s almost tied with Thailand!”
At least that’s what I would have said had my brain and internet connection moved faster. I love league tables. And this is perhaps the most beguiling of all: the Corruption Perceptions Index produced by Transparency International (TI).
A number of thoughts come to mind looking at this index. The first is that it is obviously spurious, because it purports to measure the immeasurable.
As yet, no system is in place whereby border guards and traffic cops in Somalia and Burma (equal 179th and bottom) phone the TI HQ in Berlin every time they take a backhander to let someone through a checkpoint.
The second thought is that the compilers are perfectly aware of this, but also aware that dim-witted columnists like this one are far more likely to take notice of a league table than a learned treatise.
The methodology behind the table is impressive: there are clear statements that it measures the population’s perceptions rather than the corruption itself; the data is well-sourced; and countries are excluded if there is insufficient evidence. The aim is to focus on corruption in order to expose and reduce it. And the index has certainly helped the first part of that objective, if not the second.
But corruption is not as simple as that. This table contains very few surprises. The usual suspects among the nations – the poor, the war-torn, the under-educated – are near the bottom. Joint top are New Zealand, Denmark and Finland.
In the 5th century BC the Athenians sent their leader Aristides the Just into exile, and one peasant gave approval with the words: “I’m sick of hearing him being called the Just.” Well, I’m sick of these goody-goody countries being praised all the time.
It’s a lot easier to be an honest cop in Copenhagen than in Kinshasa. I note with grim satisfaction that the Danes, having scored a perfect 10 in the first TI survey in 1998, are down to a measly 9.4 now.
There is a question of how you define corruption. TI is aware of this. Indeed, it has another – less publicised – measure, the Bribe Payers’ Index, which focuses on the givers rather than the takers. Switzerland and Sweden come out worst here.
The real corruption of the west, though, is incapable of being measured because it lies within each of us. Any half-decent corporation – any half-decent employee – wrestles with this. There is no clear red line that separates straight from bent.
It is especially difficult in what you might call the liberal professions. Will a doctor be influenced in his clinical judgment because one drug company has sucked up to him and a rival hasn’t? And it gets even harder in those jobs where the frontier between work and leisure is necessarily vague – a politician, for example, or a newspaper columnist.
For both, socialising is part of the job: you have to meet people. Do I write more kindly about someone who is nice to me than about someone who’s horrid? Of course I do, if only subconsciously. Will my judgment be affected if they offer me a drink? Or dinner? Or a wad of cash? It gets easy to know what’s wrong – it’s not always easy to know what’s right.
British members of parliament used to be directors of the companies they regulated. In mid-Victorian times at least 100 MPs were also directors of railway companies. The voters knew where their representatives stood, and why.
Their modern equivalents have minimal experience of business or much else before and during their time in politics. But the successful ones – and their senior civil servants – seem remarkably adept at picking up directorships and consultancies afterwards. Does this constitute corruption? Analyse and discuss.
What we can say is that, while the prevalence of baksheesh and backhanders may vary between continents, intellectual corruption is pretty much universal. All we can do, as individuals, is to try somehow to stay on the right side of a very wavy line.
Last year I had dealings with a PR man who was appalled by the FT’s policy of not accepting free trips. We wanted his help arranging a visit but insisted that we get the bill. He thought this was ridiculous, impossible, unheard of. Eventually, negotiations broke down completely. He was Danish, by the way.
