Measuring and delimiting corruption

Measuring political orders has become the new frontier of 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 indictors, this article scrutinises
the individualism methodological choices that have been pivotal in
normalising and institutionalising the framing of corruption as a delimited
(preferably national) abomination.