Corruption perception index – trends and changes in central and eastern european countries

Over the last two decades, effective preparation in corruption control raised the awareness in numerous evolving democracies of the world. Different corruption perception around the world can vary in many occasions, some people express corruption as a direct bribe, for others it is interface with corrupt public authorities or businesses. However, the principles of perception of corruption have been fundamentally changed by the international non-governmental organization Transparency International, which has released a model based on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) initiative. The organization's research reveals how various countries around the world manage to control corruption by evaluating the opinions of international experts and financial business representatives. The CPI is a key indicator of the public sector corruption worldwide that provides annual scores for 180 countries. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to find out how the elements not included in the methodology of the corruption perception index determine the changes and tendencies of the final anual results. Selected theory for a legitimate research and comparison is based on efficient democratic background and the importance of international communities. In order to achieve this goal, following the annual index results, this thesis examines countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Research objects: Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary. All of the results of this thesis raised some important questions that can become basis for future researches and studies. The analysis revealed these findings and conclusions: 1. CPI successfully discloses the level of public sector corruption and expresses this in annual numerical terms. However, widespread criticism and suggestions for a lack of private sector research suggest that such research would benefit from a complementary or alternative private sector research mechanism that would make cross-country comparisons even more effective and legitimate. 2.In order to successfully evaluate the trends and changes of CPI, a set of first and second generation methods is needed for the assessment. The first generation World Bank’s global governance indicator provides more reliability and support for comparison, while second-generation methods give better weight to expansion of research. The appliance of such methods helps to reveal the problems of corruption in the private sector and to adapt them to the annual changes in the CPI. 3. The analysis confirms the conclusions of the theoretical approach that a stable democracy ensures more effective control of corruption. Neither Poland nor Hungary recorded positive upturns in the CPI change stages as a result of the vast majority of reforms. The electoral change in Estonia and Lithuania did not cause significant changes, on the contrary, it increased the overall estimates by positive points. 4.The role of the international community is a necessary element in identifying the main problems related to corruption and in assessing the progress made by states in their annual reports. However, not all elements of the international community of theoretical access can be adapted to explain changes in CPI. 5. There is no tool of international law that will ultimately prevent corruption in countries. Effective political efficiency of states and the practice of good governance should be used as a strategy in order to improve corruption control. 6.States that have included the objectives of the CPI in the national strategy of the government's anti-corruption program receive better annual assessments and stand out in stable management of public sector corruption control