Many Of The Countries Negotiating ACTA In Secret Saw Their Corruption Perception Increase

from the if-the-perception-fits... dept

Wed, Nov 3rd 2010 2:21am — Mike Masnick

While there are certainly many other factors that go into such rankings, Jamie Love points us to the news that many of the countries negotiating ACTA in secret over the past few years have had their perceived corruption ratings increase. Transparency International famously puts out its Corruption Perceptions Index each year, highlighting how people view their own governments in terms of corruption. Again, obviously, there are many other factors that go into such ratings, but it does seem rather telling that so many of the countries that have very publicly hid behind bogus claims to avoid publicly discussing an agreement that will impact many people, are somehow viewed as more corrupt than in the past.

Now, I should note that Love says that 34 of the 37 participants had their corruption perception increase (the blog post claims only Morocco, Japan and Canada had better ratings), but that's not actually the case. First, I believe they missed Singapore, which also had a slightly better rating. Separately, 27 of the 37 countries are lumped together as "the EU," which apparently negotiated as a single entity. However, if you go through all 27 EU countries, it is worth noting that six of the 27 show slight improvements in their corruption perception, and another five stayed flat. Still, that does mean that 15 of the 27 EU countries did appear more corrupt. That said, since the EU negotiated as a single entity, it's a little tricky to judge how ACTA negotiations reflected on any individual country. For example, with a country like Malta, did anyone there really even care about ACTA? Separately, it's worth noting that many of the changes are small, and perhaps within the margin of error on such a rating system.

Either way, at the very least, it can be suggested that the majority of countries involved saw their ratings get worse -- and that's especially true of the countries that were heavily involved in the negotiations.

One quick note: it's a bit confusing but the Corruption Perception Index measures on a 0 to 10 scale, with 10 being "clean" and 0 being "highly corrupt." So, when I claim, above, that their "perceived corruption ratings increased," it means the score on the corruption scale declined. In other words, a decline in the Corruption Perception Index actually means an increase in perceived corruption (which suggests the index is misnamed somewhat...).

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Filed Under: acta, corruption, politics

11 Comments

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btrussell (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 4:11am

Canadian poll must have taken place before the G8-20 meetings.
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Richard (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 4:25am

EU
Speaking from within the EU I would say that if the EU was doing the negotiating then it is the perception of the EU as corrupt that counts. National governments tend to distance themselves from the EU - precisely to avoid being tarnished by such things - so looking at the corruption perception of national governments is probably irrelevant.
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James Love (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 4:29am

I stand corrected
Shows the risks of retweeting
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Chargone (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 4:32am

Re:
if that's the index i think it is, New Zealand seems to keep managing to rate as something like 'least corrupt' on those.

which i suppose is true. there's probably not a lot of corruption.

plenty of stupid, but not much corruption.

mind you, at this point i don't think anyone counts politicians acting only in the interests of their own social class and completely contrary to any and all election promises as corrupt unless they actually accepted cash or something analogous to do so.

which means the current government folding up and doing stupid things because it profits foreign corporations wouldn't be seen as corrupt unless they were actively and personally bribed as individuals. glee.
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Ben (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 4:59am

"Again, obviously, there are many other factors that go into such ratings, but it does seem rather telling that so many of the countries that have very publicly hid behind bogus claims to avoid publicly discussing an agreement that will impact many people, are somehow viewed as more corrupt than in the past. "

I think this entire article needs the old correlation doesn't imply causation reminder first. Just because you put the "obviously" part doesn't make that statement, or article, any less of a stretch. It isn't really THAT telling that the ACTA negotiations had any significant effect at all on the corruption perception index.

From the new article:
"Of course, other factors are measured to determine the corruption perception index (CPI), and may be that the dark ACTA negotiating process has influenced, might not."
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Hephaestus (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:35am

Re:
Ditto. Correlation doesn't imply causation, to imply that ACTA caused even a slight increase in the percieved corruption doesn't work logically. If you took every event on earth and asked the same question some of them would statistically work out the same way as the ACTA questions.

For all we know these countries could have been introduced to Haggis via the food channel and thats what caused this change in the CPI ...

PS - Italy is higher than I thought it would be.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:40am

A more plausible explanation is that these countries' governments genuinely are more corrupt, which would explain both their participation in the ACTA negotiations and why they're perceived as more corrupt.
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Hephaestus (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:42am

Re: Re: Brainfart
If you took every event on earth and asked the same question, is this responsible? Some of them would statistically work out the same way as the ACTA conclusion.
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Ady Max, 3 Nov 2010 @ 7:58am

RFID ID Cards in Germany
Read this:
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/7927/1
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Nastybutler77 (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 11:21am

Re:
I think this entire article needs the old correlation doesn't imply causation reminder first.

I agree. Mike is usually the first one to point that out, so I'm not sure why he chose to sidestep it here. I dislike ACTA as much as the next sane person, but this seems like too much of a stretch.
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TtfnJohn (profile), 3 Nov 2010 @ 1:21pm

Re:
It would have been much worse if they'd asked in B.C.

But, hey, we got rid of Campbell today!!
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