LExpressPlus.com

“For the third straight year, poor transparency around the financing of political parties and candidates was the weakest element of most countries’ anti-corruption frameworks,” said Global Integrity’s Managing Director, Nathaniel Heller. “If we’re serious about rolling back corruption and abuse of power in both the developed and developing worlds, more effective safeguards to curb the influence of money in politics are desperately needed.”  

The Global Integrity Report: 2008 covers developed countries such as Canada, Japan and Italy as well as dozens of the world’s emerging markets and developing nations, from Argentina and China to the West Bank and Iraq. Rather than measure perceptions of corruption, the report assesses the accountability mechanisms and transparency measures in place (or not) to prevent corruption through more than 300 “Integrity Indicators.”  Gaps in those safeguards suggest where corruption is more likely to occur.

Global Integrity’s new Grand Corruption Watch List, introduced as part of the 2008 report, includes Angola, Belarus, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Iraq, Montenegro, Morocco, Nicaragua, Serbia, Somalia, the West Bank, and Yemen, all countries viewed at serious risk for high-level corruption. The Watch List identifies countries where the lack of effective conflicts of interest regulations, unregulated flows of money into the political process, and poor oversight over large state-owned enterprises combine to pose a systemic risk of large-scale theft of public resources.  “Watch List countries are unfortunately characterized by a toxic mix of corruption risk factors that should be cause for alarm,” said Heller.

In Cameroon, Global Integrity reports how the country faces serious problems with its governance and anti-corruption framework. Elections (especially political financing regulations), government accountability (across the legislative and judicial branches, in particular), and oversight and regulation (including a weak to non-existent ombudsman office, audit agency, and poor business regulation) are all rated as Very Weak. While there is robust legislation in place that criminalizes corruption, the agency mandated to address corruption is ineffective. “Members of [the anti-corruption agency],” for example, “are close to the ruling party [...] and their neutrality is questionable.” Despite this bleak governance landscape, there are a few bright spots. Civil society organizations (CSOs) are active and regulations over taxes/customs and state-owned companies are reasonably effective.

Several key countries experienced gains or backsliding since 2007.  Important anti-corruption improvements were noted in Bangladesh and Nigeria; in China, a more positive assessment was linked to the introduction of a new regulation granting citizens access to government information.  Noticeable decliners included Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ecuador; Georgia also slipped for the second straight year and continues to struggle consolidating democratic gains since the 2003 Rose Revolution.  

“The country assessments that comprise the Report offer among the most detailed, evidence-based evaluations of anti-corruption mechanisms available anywhere in the world,” said Global Integrity’s International Director, Marianne Camerer. “They provide policymakers, investors, and citizens alike with the information to understand the governance challenges unique to each country and to take action.”

The report is the product of months of on-the-ground reporting and data gathering by a team of more than 260 in-country journalists and researchers who prepared more than a million words of text and 20,000 data points for their respective countries. The 2008 report covers the following diverse countries:  
 

Albania

Angola

Argentina

Azerbaijan

Bangladesh

Belarus

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bulgaria

Cambodia

Cameroon

Canada

Chile

China

Colombia

D.R. Congo

Ecuador

Egypt

Ethiopia

Fiji

Georgia

Ghana

Guatemala

Hungary

India

Indonesia

Iraq

Italy

Japan

Jordan

Kazakhstan

Kenya

Kuwait

Kyrgyz Republic

Lithuania

Macedonia (FYROM)

Moldova

Montenegro

Morocco

Nepal

Nicaragua

Nigeria

Pakistan

Philippines

Poland

Romania

Russia

Serbia

Solomon Islands

Somalia

South Africa

Tanzania

Tunisia

Turkey

Uganda

West Bank

Yemen

Zimbabwe  
 

To access the Global Integrity Report: 2008, please visit http://report.globalintegrity.org.   

The Global Integrity Report: 2008 was generously supported by the Australian Agency for International Development, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Legatum Institute, and the World Bank.

Global Integrity is a leading international non-profit organization that tracks governance and corruption trends around the world.  Working with a network of several hundred in-country journalists and researchers in 92 countries, we aim to shape and inform the debate around governance and anti-corruption reforms through in-depth diagnostic tools at the national, sub-national, and sector levels.  Our information is regularly used by aid donors, civil society advocates, and governments alike to press for governance reforms in both the developed and developing world.  For more information about the organization, visit http://www.globalintegrity.org.