On Jan 29, 2019, Transparency International (TI) released the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2018 (CPI 2018) which revealed a correlation between corruption and democracy. The results found that democratic governments or well established democracies are less corrupt than autocratic regimes.
The Democracy Index, compiled by the United Kingdom-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), classified four types of regimes — full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regimes and full autocratic.
The index has maintained Malaysia’s placing under “flawed democracy”, despite the historic general election last year. CPI 2018 also revealed that the continued failure to significantly prevent corruption is contributing to a crisis in democracy in most of the 180 countries studied.
TI’s analysis revealed that full democracies scored an average of 75 on the CPI; flawed democracies (average 49); hybrid regimes, which show elements of autocratic tendencies (35); autocratic regimes performed the worst, with an average score of just 30 on the CPI. A country’s CPI score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Thus, the countries with higher scores will rank much higher in position (as being less corrupt) compared with the lower score countries.
Worldwide, Denmark is in the top spot with 89 points, while New Zealand ranked second with 88 points. Finland, Sweden and Switzerland share third spot with 85 points, making them among the top five least corrupt countries. These countries have strong democratic institutions, political rights and civil liberties.
Amongst the criteria used to determine rankings are robust rule of law, independent oversight institutions and a broad societal consensus against the misuse of public office and resources for private interest.
Although Malaysia has jumped one rank up in the latest CPI from 62 to 61 among 180 countries, but only scored 47 out of 100 for two consecutive years along with Jordan and Croatia, it still fell under the criteria of flawed democracies (average score of 49). However, Congo, Maldives and Kenya are considered as hybrid democracies (an average score of 35) while Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen which were listed as full autocratic regimes performed the worst, with an average score of 30 on the CPI.
The results disclosed that the countries with low CPI scores not only have weak democratic institutions and systems and lack political rights, but also failed to curb corruption. Under a fully democratic system of government, the rule of law, independent judiciary, media and civil society are the key indicators of a full democracy.
According to Delia Matilde Ferreira Rubio, president of TI: “Our research makes a clear link between having a healthy democracy and successfully fighting public sector corruption.
“Its findings also suggest that strengthening institutions provide democratic checks and balances, bridging the gap between laws and their implementation, and supporting public accountability and press freedoms.
“These interventions can contribute to not only fighting corruption but also to preservation and consolidation of democratic institutions and norms. The less democratic countries normally tend to increase in voter suppression and disenfranchisement, hinder political rights, practise conflict of interest, interference in national institutions to weaken checks and balances and undermining the freedom of media.”
While Patricia Moreira, managing director of TI, stated that: “Corruption chips away at democracy to produce a vicious cycle, where corruption undermines democratic institutions and, in turn, weak institutions are less able to control corruption.”
Countries with a lower score are deemed to be more corrupt, and are generally characterised by poor governance with institutions and impunity for corruption. The index indicated that corruption tends to thrive in fragile states and countries enmeshed in conflicts such as Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
Besides taking action to fight corruption, a country must find possible solutions to improve the level of democracy as failure to prevent corruption is contributing to the crisis of democracy.
The writer is president of the Malaysian Association of Certified Fraud Examiners