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National Cultures, Corruption Practices and Corruption Indices Cont...

Without doubt, the culture, norms, principles and values prevalent in the country influence the behavioural outcomes of citizens and thereby the corporate and public bodies. For instance, giftgiving is a symbol of good manners in African culture and at times this over justifies corruption as the patronage might not be viewed as corruption. In spite of varied perspectives on what constitutes corruption, literary work agrees on three generalised views - moralistic, official and monopolistic. While the moralistic view explains corruption as anything that violates or disturbs moral standards, official view looks at corruption as the violation of office code or misuse of public office for private gain. The third view, monopolistic, interprets corruption as the unaccountable actions of a monopolistic entity, which gets a sole power to decide whether any activity can be upheld or blocked without usual debates and discussions.

Research identifies three types of corruption levels. The first one is an aggressive form of bribing officials for 'jumping the queue' for a legitimate service. This type of malpractice is a direct manifestation of the administrative inefficiency. The second type of corruption is about violation of established law and doing something beyond law. The third and the most dangerous one is described as the 'state capture', where the public policies are changed in favour of the corruptor, who starts owning the state. It may be greed-based or need based, grand or petty. Whatever be the level of corruption, misuse of entrusted power for a private gain is the common factor. However, measuring the degree of illegitimate activities was the major problem for a long time. While all countries were concerned about the corruption, a reliable source to measure the level of corruption in different countries was almost non-existent. But since 1995, to portray corruption in different countries, Transparency International (TI), an international NGO known for its policies against corruption, has come up with the measure of the 'perceived corruption' levels in various countries. Details and perceptions on corruption are collected in all countries and are ranked depending on the perceived threat - termed as Corruption Perception Index (CPI).

The value of CPI ranges from 0 to 10, where 0 represents a high level of corruption in the country and 10 denotes a no corruption or highly clean environment in the country.Through surveys and interviews across the world, TI collects details and perceptions about corruption in several countries and every country is ranked. Annexure I gives the ranking of the countries from 1998 to 2008. While some countries have more substantial progress in fighting corruption, as shown by their improved rankings, many countries are yet to take any concrete action to fight corruption. Though no empirical evidence is available on cause and effect relations, poverty breeds corruption and corruption deepens poverty.⁴

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4]Johnston Michael, “Poverty and Corruption”,http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/22/corruption-poverty-development-bizcorruption09-cx_mj_0122johnston.html, January 22nd 2009