Question

What are 5 advantages and 5 disadvantages of the Corruption Perceptions Index ?

Answer 1

Corruption perceived index is an index which measures the level of corruption in 180 countries based on the assessments of experts and public opinions on a scale ranging from 0 to 100. Countries who get the rank around 0 are highly corrupted and countries getting 100 ranking are most clean countries from corruption.

Advantages:-

(1) The corruption perception index has helped countries to pertain democracy by putting the issue on global policy agenda which will help them to remove corruption from their public sectors.

(2) It aims to combat the trend of global corruption which is also the causes of many criminal activities and failure of democracy.

(3) It helps in reducing misuse of entrusted public power of government workers and resources for their private gain by drawing global as well as media attention.

(4) The corruption measuring index draws global attention to the most corrupted countries which force them to implement anti- corruption policies in their public sectors and punitive actions for the offenders for the welfare and development of their countries.

(5) It sends a strong messages to all the public workers to maintain their clean images and abstain from any kind of corruptions.

Disadvantages:-

(1) The nature of corruption can be different from one place to another which needs to be measured differently also. But the corruption perception index has the same way to measure all different types of corruption which is the major disadvantage of it.

(2) The measuring and ranking of countries based on the nature of corruption in public sectors but exclude private sectors. So it fails to picturize the overall scenerio of corruption in a country which makes the index a cliched one.

(3) It only takes account of the perceptions of experts and business elites. Whereas the opinions of general public are totally ignored making the whole corruption measuring index a total blunder as it is the general public who suffer most due to corruption.

(4) It does not always reflect the actual reality of corruption that people experience due to its biased measuring indicators. The margins of errors are huge in this index compared to actual corruption as it does not measure the indirect effects of subjective factors.

(5) The corruption perception Index which works on perceptions rather than experiences becomes counter productive for the most corrupted countries as they stop receiving funds and other international supports for their economic development from the developed countries.