The 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) measures perceived levels of public-sector corruption in 182 countries and territories, drawing on 13 independent data sources and using a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). This year, the global CPI average has dropped for the first time in more than a decade to just 42 out of 100. The vast majority of countries are failing to keep corruption under control: 122 out of 180 score under 50 in the index. At the same time, the number of countries scoring above 80 has shrunk from 12 a decade ago to just five this year. In particular, there is a worrying trend of democracies seeing
worsening perceived corruption – from the United States (64), Canada (75) and New Zealand (81), to various parts of Europe, like the United Kingdom (70), France (66) and Sweden (80).
Our research shows that corruption is not inevitable. Countries with long-term improvements in CPI scores have largely seen sustained effort from political leaders and regulators to implement broad legal and institutional reforms. Persistently low or declining CPI scores usually go hand in hand with limited or eroding democratic checks and balances, the politicisation of justice systems, undue influence over political processes, and a failure to safeguard civic space. It is not a surprise that countries with full democracies tend to score highly on the CPI, while non-democratic regimes largely perform the worst. In most of the world’s full autocracies, such as Venezuela (10) and Azerbaijan (30), corruption is systemic and manifests at every level.
