The World's Most and Least Corrupt Countries

I just came from hearing a very interesting guest speaker from Colgate who came to Geneseo to talk about globalization and corruption. Before I discuss what he had to say I will give you your fix on what countries are most and least corrupt according to Transparency International
, the leading experts on the matter. I will warn you that their results are not the end all be all, as corruption is a difficult thing to define and measure.

Top Ten Most Corrupt Countries

1.Somalia
2.Afghanistan
3.Myanmar
4.Sudan
5.Iraq
6.Chad
7.Uzbekistan
8.Turkmenistan
9.Iran
10.Haiti (watch out for your relief donations)

Top Ten Least Corrupt Countries

1.New Zealand
2.Denmark
3.Singapore
3.Sweden
5.Switzerland
6.Finland
6.Netherlands
8.Australia
8.Canada
8.Iceland

The repeat numbers represent ties.

In case you were wondering the U.S. was ranked 19th least corrupt. I'm sure some of you were expecting it to be on the top ten and others on the bottom ten.
For the complete list click here

As I mentioned before these results are only relative because of how difficult measuring corruption is. Often times corruption can be mistakenly swept into one category or measured in one scale that produces skewed results. If you think about how variable cultures are around the world the specific ways in which each interprets and takes part in corruption can be very different. For instance economist Ray Fismin did a study on which UN diplomats do or do not pay their parking tickets. The results showed that diplomats coming from statistically more corrupt countries were much less likely to pay up. An interesting point our guest speaker brought up was that America has less corruption because of its lack of economic restrictions. This lack of restrictions creates less barriers for acquiring wealth and therefore makes corruption a less necessary part of pursuing it.

A country having a reputation of being more corrupt also tends to be a self fulfilling prophecy. Our guest speaker told us that in the past government officials going abroad were actually given bribery budgets for doing business. The most consistent indicator of corruption according to the TI index is poverty. As outside businesses view certain countries as being more corrupt they are far less likely to do business with them, therefore hurting that country's economy and contributing to their level of poverty (and in turn corruption). He also mentioned that a friend of his who held one of the highest ranking government finance positions in Sierra Leone only made enough money to buy one bag of rice a month...so he had access to immense amounts of money but did not make enough to feed his family. Such poor economic conditions as this cannot help but lend themselves to increased corruption. Studies have also shown corruption to hinder economic growth which stagnates the problem further. Even a country's attempts to pull itself out of corruption can also be counterproductive because by unearthing such problems they are drawing more international attention to how corrupt they are.