The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an annual study published by Transparency International (TI) that ranks countries in terms of "the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians." Established in 1995, it is defines corruption as "the abuse of public office for private gain".
TI claims that the CPI 2005 draws on "16 different polls and surveys from 10 independent institutions… The institutions who provided data for the CPI 2005 are: Columbia University, Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House, Information International, International Institute for Management Development, Merchant International Group, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, World Economic Forum and World Markets Research Centre." Early CPIs used public opinion surveys, but now only "expert" are used. TI requires at least three sources to be available in order to rank a country in the CPI. In 2005, the CPI ranked 159 countries.
TI writes in their FAQ on the CPI that "residents' viewpoints correlate well with those of experts abroad. In the past, the experts surveyed in the CPI sources were often business people from industrialised countries; the viewpoint of less developed countries was underrepresented. This has changed over time, giving increasingly voice to respondents from emerging market economies."
References
There are numerous variants of a TI's FAQ about the CPI on the web, in various languages and formats, from various dates, on various web sites. The quotations in this article are all from
- Frequently Asked Questions: TI Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI 2005) (retrieved 22 Nov 2005)