Public sector corruption index
| Quick info | |
|---|---|
| Data type | Numeric |
| Scale | Metric |
| Value labels | Not applicable |
| Technical name | polnat_politics_corruption_publ_vdem |
| Category | Political factors |
| Label | Aggregated mid-level index of corruption in the public sector (V-Dem) |
| Related indicators | |
The "Public sector corruption index" is a V-Dem mid-level index focusing on several types of corruption in the public sector. It ranges from low (0) to high (1) with lower values indicating less corruption.
Conceptually, the index captures the extent to which public sector employees routinely "grant favors in exchange for bribes, kickbacks, or other material inducements" and how often "they steal, embezzle, or misappropriate public funds or other state resources for personal or family use" (Coppedge et al. 2021, 297).
Coding rules
The index is composed of several components and lower-level indices applying V-Dem's measurement model (Pemstein et al. 2021) which in turn are indices built from a number of indicators. The index itself is the average of two indicators, namely "public sector bribery (v2excrptps) and embezzlement (v2exthftps)" (Coppedge et al. 2021, 297) [note that variable names in italics refer to V-Dem's nomenclature in their dataset, not in WeSIS].
Bibliographic info
Citation: McMann, Kelly, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Jan Teorell, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2016. "Strategies of Validation: Assessing the Varieties of Democracy Corruption Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 23. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
Related publications:- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundtröm, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2021. "V-Dem Codebook v11.1" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
- Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2021. “The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data”. V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 6th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Linnea Fox, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Ana Good God, Sandra Grahn, Allen Hicken, Katrin Kinzelbach, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Anja Neundorf, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Marcus Tannenberg, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Felix Wiebrecht, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2025. "V-Dem Codebook v15". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
- Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2025. "The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 10th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
Misc
Project manager(s): Nils Düpont (INF), Paul Bederke
Data release:- Version 0.001: Initial release
- Version 0.002: Updated with data from V-Dem v11.1
- Version 0.003: Updated with data from V-Dem v15
Revisions: Prior to version 0.003 data for Germany and Yemen were separated adhering to their COW code in a strict sense; as of v0.003 data is now in line with V-Dem's continous ID reflecting the "related unit coding" of WeSIS.
Sources
- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, Nazifa Alizada, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Garry Hindle, Nina Ilchenko, Joshua Krusell, Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Josefine Pernes, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, Steven Wilson and Daniel Ziblatt. 2021. "V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v11.1" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds21
- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Linnea Fox, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Ana Good God, Sandra Grahn, Allen Hicken, Katrin Kinzelbach, Joshua Krusell, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Natalia Natsika, Anja Neundorf, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Marcus Tannenberg, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Felix Wiebrecht, Tore Wig, Steven Wilson, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2025. "V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v15" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds25
