MEASURING AND DELIMITING CORRUPTION

Abstract

Measuring political orders has become a new frontier in the emerging mode of governance. Over the recent decades, ambitious anti-corruption strategies have been accompanied by a proliferation of performance indicators that have grown substantially in number and typologies. The study of metrics and their use in global governance has also reached greater attention. Yet, the relationship between politics and information remains controversial, and scholars do not agree on the capacity, role and performativity of indicators in serving or contesting power structures standing behind governance exercises. By focusing on two of the most widely used indicators of corruption— the World Bank’s Control of Corruption indicator (CC) and Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI)— this article defines to what extent these measures have contributed to delimit our understanding of corruption, by overemphasising the role of single individuals (public agents) and the absence of market competition, and by de facto discouraging a more contextualised understanding of the transnational political economy of corruption. By questioning some of the values and conventions vested in corruption indicators, this article scrutinises methodological individualism choices that have been pivotal in normalising and institutionalising the framing of corruption as a delimited (preferably national) abomination.

Keywords:
Methodological individualism, Competitiveness, Reflexivity, Authority