Foreign Policy
Summer 1998

Bringing Corruption to Light . . .

The problem of corruption is tailor-made for regulation by revelation. For many—but not all—public servants, it is embarrassing to be caught taking bribes, a sign not only of venality but also of backwardness. And corruption is hot news—big, juicy scandals get front-page treatment. Transparency International (TI), the NGO community’s leading corruption fighter, makes brilliant use of the social unacceptability and media value of corruption. It publishes the annual Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks countries on how corrupt they are perceived to be according to surveys of business people, political analysts, and the public. Although TI also lobbies governments for anticorruption laws and treaties, and pressures international financial institutions to include corruption concerns in loan conditions and country strategies, the index is what gave corruption, and TI, greater international prominence. Now, the group is planning to supplement the demand-side index with a supply-side bribery index that will publicize which countries are home to international corporations with high incidences of graft.

—A.F.