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Understanding Corruption And Its Effects On Free Speech Essay

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The measurement, as a result of the varying definitions and forms of corruption, is very difficult to do and becomes further complicated due to the illegal and concealed nature of such acts (Brunetti 2003). Initial surveys took more of a straightforward questioning approach, but given that the nature of some of the most corrupt countries may have severe restrictions on free speech, they may have discouraged respondents from providing accurate answers (Soares 2004). A more common approach to understanding corruption focuses more on the notion of perceived corruption. That is, instead of asking the survey respondents directly about their experiences with corruption, the surveyors ask the respondents about how much corruption they think exists within their country or specific field of work. The first such surveys were administered by Transparency International (TI) over a cross-national platform (Treisman 2007; Montinola 2002). They noted that the more subjective indexes of perceived corruption – which were based on evaluations of both experts and the opinions of business people and citizens – turned out to be highly correlated with a variety of factors that are commonly believed to be the roots of corruption. Currently, two such indexes have evolved from the first efforts created by TI – a Corruptions Perceptions Index (CPI) created by TI and a rating of the control of corruption published by the World Bank (WB). The CPI essentially averages the standardized values while

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