IPI Methodology at a Glance

Public integrity is a public good resulting from an equilibrium between opportunities for corruption in a society (such as power discretion and material resources) and constraints that autonomous organizations (e.g. the judiciary, media), groups (civil society) and individuals (voters, whistleblowers) can use to prevent power holders from abusing office in their own interest.

The Index of Public Integrity (IPI) aims to capture a snapshot of this balance in 114 countries for which data is available. It is a composite index consisting of six components. For the 2015, 2017 and 2019 editions, the components were: administrative burden, trade openness, budget transparency for opportunities, and judicial independence, e-citizenship and freedom of the press for constraints.

Starting from the 2021 edition, administrative burden and trade openness have been replaced by administrative transparency and online services, due to unavailable alternative data on the original components (based on the World Bank Doing Business project, which closed).. Below you will find an outline of the methodology behind the IPI, detailing recent changes.

A more extensive explanation of the methodology and the original composition of the IPI can be found in the following peer-reviewed publication:

Measuring Control of Corruption by a New Index of Public Integrity – Mungiu-Pippidi, A., Dadašov, R. Measuring Control of Corruption by a New Index of Public Integrity. European Journal on Criminal Policy Research 22, 415–438 (2016).

How Were the IPI Components Selected?

The six components of the IPI were selected based on years of theoretical and empirical research on the control of corruption. They are nested in the theoretical framework proposed by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and her team at the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building (ERCAS). The components adumbrate the idea that corruption reflects a national-level equilibrium between resources and constraints.

Based on previous research, components were selected which reflect that theoretical framework and which are significantly associated with most common measurements of control of corruption. Tests also took into account differences in the levels of socio-economic development across countries by controlling for the Human Development Index (HDI). See the results here. In the process, particular attention was paid to choosing components which are also objective and actionable and thus can help in the design of evidence-based reform strategies.

Starting with the 2021 edition of the IPI, two original components had to be replaced due to issues related to the underlying data, namely the Doing Business Survey conducted by the World Bank. The series was fully discontinued, but direct replacements for those components could not be identified from other sources. Thus, two alternative components were devised that should in part capture what the indicators for administrative burden and trade openness were measuring: administrative transparency, based on a fraction of ERCAS’s own Transparency Index, and online services, based on the Online Services Index computed as part of the UN E-Government Development Index. The statistical validation tests indicate that the internal consistency of the index was preserved in the new composition.

How Were the Components Constructed?

In the current version, five of the components (budget transparency, administrative transparency, online services, judicial independence, freedom of the press) each rely on a single data source. Those components were standardized by constructing the so-called z-score of the variable, in order to equalize their mean values and standard deviations. For budget transparency, the mean score for the individual items considered was extracted and then standardized; administrative transparency in turn consists of the sum of individual components from the Transparency Index, which was then similarly standardized into z-scores. The final component, e-citizenship, is the only one based on different data sources. Its individual sub-components were standardized separately and then averaged.

Every final component score was then normalized to range between 1 and 10 using a min-max-transformation with higher values representing better performance in this issue area. The overall IPI was finally derived by the equally weighted average of all components.

The decision to assign equal weights resulted from a replication fo the original methodology in Mungiu-Pippidi and Dadasov 2016, when the index was first built by principal component analysis, then the impact (upload) of every component was measured. The new components, as well as the original ones fared very closely in their contribution to the component. This lead to the decision to assign equal weights and use a simpler average to build the index. The resulting aggregate correlates at 90% with the component.

The standardization procedure ensures that the IPI does not depend strongly on the component with the greatest dispersion. A country can score badly for one component, but still do well on the overall IPI. Such a situation would reflect overall a good level of control of corruption in the country, with scope for improvement in one reform area.

 

How is the IPI Validated?

The components of IPI strongly correlate despite measuring apparently different things. This shows that they all measure in fact a latent variable, the capacity of a society to control corruption and enable public integrity.

The internal consistency of the index resulted from principal component analysis was and remains very high with a KMO index of 0.80.

IPI also correlates at values between 60 and 80% with a variety of corruption measurements, either subjective (like Global Corruption Barometer’s “Most officials are corrupt”, Corruption Perception Index, Government Favoritism, Control of Corruption, but most importantly, objective, like Public Administration Corruption Index (PACI) or procurement red flags (for a correlation between subjective and objective indicators, see Mungiu-Pippidi and Martinez Kukutschka 2018

Due to the nature of its components, IPI explain what exactly prevents a country from reaching control of corruption. The components are actionable so they can serve as an evidence basis for reform strategies.

What changed between the latest and previous editions?

Due to accusations of data manipulation, China, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia were excluded from previous editions and were not included in the 2021 edition. Yemen had incomplete data for previous editions, but with the replacement of trade openness could now be added to the pool of countries, which totals 114.

As already described above, the original components administrative burden and trade openness were replaced by new components: administrative transparency and online services. Due to the discontinuation of Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press indicator, the source for the freedom of the press component was also changed for the Reporters without Borders’ Press Freedom Index.

 

Where Do the Components Come From?

Component Variable and Measurement
Judicial Independence
Based on the “judicial independence” indicator from the Executive Opinion Survey of the World Economic
Forum Global Competitiveness Dataset. This indicator asks the question “To what extent is the judiciary in your country independent from influences of members of government, citizens, or firms? [1 = heavily influenced; 7 = entirely independent]. The same data is used for the 2019 and 2021 editions, as a new version has not yet been released.The indicator has been standardized and transformed to be in range between 1 and 10, with 10 implying the highest judicial independence.The data by country can be found here.
Administrative Transparency
Consists of the standardized sum of individual scores for the following items in the de facto Transparency Index:

  • T-Index de facto 3 – Public procurement
  • T-Index de facto 4 – Land cadaster
  • T-Index de facto 5 – Register of commerce
  • T-Index de facto 6 – Auditor General’s annual report

The T-Index is based on independent data collection and review by the ERCAS team. The value has been standardized and transformed to be in range between 1 and 10, with 10 implying the highest administrative transparency.

The data by country can be found here.

Online Services The score is based on the Online Services Index, with integrates the UN E-Government Development Index. The data used stems from the report released in 2020.

The values have been transformed to be in range between 1 and 10, with 10 implying the highest trade openness.

The data by country can be found here.

Budget Transparency Simple mean value of the scores resulting from 14 specific questions from the Open Budget Survey that cover transparency of the Executive’s Budget Proposal. More information on questions and respective scores is presented in the full dataset. The data are to a large extent provided by the International Budget Partnership and in some cases reliance is placed on own data (these cases are noted with an asterisk in the spreadsheet provided below). For these countries, the same data is used for all IPI editions as no new data is available. For data extracted from the Open Budget Survey results, the same values are used for the 2019 and 2021 editions, as a new version has not yet been released.

The value has been standardized and transformed to be in range between 1 and 10, with 10 implying the highest budget transparency.

The data by country can be found here.

E-Citizenship Simple mean of standardized values of:

  • Fixed broadband subscriptions (% population)
  • Internet users (% population)
  • Facebook users (% population)

The first two variables were taken from International Telecommunication Union’s ICT Dataset; the latter is from the Internet World Stats.

The value has been transformed to be in the range between 1 and 10, with 10 implying the highest score for E-Citizenship.

The data by country can be found here.

Freedom of the Press The score stems from Reporters without Borders’ Press Freedom Index. Until 2019, the source used was Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press Report.

The values are standardized and transformed to be in range between 1 and 10, with 10 implying the highest freedom of the press.

The data by country can be found here.

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