A Global Index of Information and Political Transparency

Interest in the political and economic consequences of transparency has grown significantly over the past decade. The literature, however, has been hampered by methodological issues over what actually constitutes ‘transparency’, as well as the lack of a quantitative indicator that has substantial coverage across countries, and time. This paper uses a methodology similar to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index to construct composite indicators of what we call Informational Transparency, and Political Transparency. These new indicators have been taken from 24 individual sources, with scores being derived annually between 1980 – 2010 across more than 180 countries. A brief example looking at the effects of transparency on economic growth shows that countries that have improved their informational transparency grew strongly over this period, however, there appears to be no growth benefits from improved political transparency