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The public opinion survey, published ahead of International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December, also found that citizens in countries across the globe continue to see political parties and parliaments as the institutions most compromised by corruption.

The Barometer, which surveys 63,199 respondents in 60 countries, offers a broad spectrum of data on common experiences of corruption, including which institutions most frequently demand bribes, where citizens see the greatest degree of corruption, and how they see both the future development of corruption and their governments' efforts to eradicate it.

Tax on poor families

The TI Global Corruption Barometer 2007 finds that it is the poor who are most often confronted with requests for bribes, in wealthy and poor countries alike. Extortion hits low-income households with a regressive tax that saps scarce household resources.

More than one in ten respondents reported having to pay a bribe in the past year for access to a service. The countries with the highest level of petty bribery are Albania, Cambodia, Cameroon, FYR Macedonia, Kosovo, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania and Senegal, where at least 30 per cent of respondents reported having paid bribes.

When asked about dealing with services, telephone and natural gas utilities were the least likely to demand bribes, while law enforcement was the most frequent source. Twenty-five per cent of respondents who came in contact with the police were asked to pay a bribe. Courts were the second most frequent source worldwide.

Corrupt police and judiciary

“The Barometer reveals that the police and the judiciary in many countries around the world are part of a cycle of corruption, demanding bribes from citizens,” said Transparency International managing director Cobus de Swardt.

“This finding means that corruption is interfering with the basic right to equal treatment before the law,” he added.

Although globally the police are the institution most frequently reported to demand bribes, there are important differences across regions. In the countries of the greater EU region, medical services stand out as the most common source of bribe demands.

In Latin America, Asia-Pacific and North America, petty bribery in the judiciary is a serious problem. In Africa, Russia, Moldova and the Ukraine, however, bribery was most prevalent in the education and health sectors, both vitally important to human development.

Petty bribery increased from 2006 to 2007 in some of the regions, such as Asia-Pacific (22 per cent of respondents reported paying a bribe to receive a service, up from 15 per cent) and South-East Europe (12 per cent, up from 8 per cent). Africa registered a slight decrease (42 per cent, down from 47 per cent).

“These sober figures underlie frightening real-world scenarios where money is extorted from innocent citizens in very vulnerable situations, such as during medical emergencies or when they are the victims of a crime,” said Transparency International chair Huguette Labelle. “Entrenched bribery inflicts deep and lasting wounds on a society, destroying belief in those who govern.”

Political parties

The Barometer also asks citizens which institutions they see as most affected by corruption. Year after year, political parties and parliaments – the very institutions entrusted to represent the public interest in political decision-making – take in first place.

“Our experience has shown that it is commitment at the top that will make or break efforts to fight corruption,” said de Swardt. “These troubling numbers show that government faces a crisis of legitimacy, with the potential to undermine democratisation, stability and the protection of human rights.”

The institutions which fared best in the eyes of ordinary citizens were religious bodies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Although still relatively clean, the perception of NGOs has worsened globally in comparison to 2004 survey results, as did the perception of private enterprises, indicating that these two sectors are under increasing public pressure to demonstrate transparency and accountability.

Public ready for a change

Public expectations about the extent of corruption in the future have become gloomier when compared to the Barometer 2003, with 54 per cent of respondents feeling that corruption would increase in the coming years – up from 43 per cent four years ago. In 2007, only one in every five respondents expected the level of corruption to decrease in the near future.

The Philippines and India stood out as the most pessimistic countries, with more than 79 per cent of respondents expecting an increase in corruption. Among the most pessimistic countries are Germany, Senegal, South Africa, Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The negative outlook was not universal: interviewees in Bulgaria, Ghana, FYR Macedonia, Nigeria and Singapore were decidedly optimistic, believing that future levels of corruption will fall.

Governments not doing enough

Attitudes towards government anti-corruption efforts were similar to future expectations of corruption, with over half of all respondents rating their government as ineffective. Only one in three of those polled felt that their government was effective in battling corruption.

The general public was most sceptical, on average, in North and Latin America, the greater EU region and Asia-Pacific.

That North Americans and Europeans see government efforts so negatively (with 19 and 28 per cent average approval ratings respectively), despite low levels of petty bribery, suggests that they are concerned about problems of grand corruption and the gap between the major graft that has been exposed and commitments to do something about it.

Transparency International said that the lack of an explicit approach to tackling corruption in the countries of the north may further aggravate this public uneasiness.

Notably, some of the African countries surveyed showed evidence of far greater optimism than that seen in the countries of North America and Europe. Labelle said that wealthy countries in particular need to listen to what their citizens are saying and adopt the kind of comprehensive approaches to anti-corruption at home that they have demanded from aid recipient countries for years.

“Turning promises into action is essential if anti-corruption efforts are to have an impact on the lives of ordinary people. Governments are key to making good on commitments to fighting corruption. But governments are not alone in their responsibility. We need to see concerted action from civil society and the private sector too,” concluded Labelle.

The Global Corruption Barometer reflects the findings of a public opinion survey that looks at perceptions and experience of corruption. This year 63,199 people in 60 countries and territories were interviewed for the survey between June and September 2007.

The Barometer survey has been carried out on an annual basis since 2003 on behalf of Transparency International by Gallup International Association as part of its Voice of the People Survey.

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Related links

• Transparency International
• Global Corruption Barometer 2007