Transparency International says the continued failure of most countries to significantly control corruption is contributing to a crisis in democracy around the world by creating a vicious cycle, where corruption undermines democratic institutions and, in turn, weak institutions are less able to control corruption.
The group’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a sort of annual snapshot of the relative degree of perceived global corruption, ranks 180 countries and territories from 0 at highly corrupt to 100 at very clean. The report says this year more than two-thirds of the countries scored below 50, with a global average score of 43.
