Good Governance

Suhwan (Alma) Seo

Poli Sci 150

Professor Hawkins

November 19, 2012

Blog 9: Good Governance

             The debate between corruption and economic development is unsettled. Some have argued that corruption damages economic development because it undermines the economy; however, others have argued that corruption may be desirable because if provides a quick way to bypass unnecessary regulations and policies. So taking samples of 163 countries, the data showed a certain correlation between economic development and corruption level. By taking the GDP PPP per capita (gross domestic product at purchasing power parity per capita) and the corruption index score of each country, the data did show a positive relationship between the two sets of data.

           Samuels gave few hypothesis concerning good governance and economic development. One said that the leaders had to respond to special-interest pressures for raising taxes and spending on unproductive activities. Another said that leaders often are not public-minded so they are susceptible to corruption (Samuels 296). From the collected data, there seems to be a positive correlation between

             The corruption index score came from Transparency International which monitors corporate and political level of corruptions and puts out a score for each country. The corruption index score goes from zero (high corruption) to ten (very clean) ("Transparency International). The economic development of each country was designated by each country's GDP PPP per capita. The data came from the information provided by the World Bank ("World Development Indicator").

          (Data graph would not post)

             After taking the data, the linear correlation which measures the strength and the direction of a linear relationship between two variables was calculated. The result was that r, the linear correlation coefficient, equaled to be 0.775. As r gets closer to 1, it shows a strong positive correlation between the two data ("Statistic 2"). From this result, it would be safe to assume that corruption and economic development have some relationship.

             In addition, the R² is the coefficient of determination. R² shows the strength of the linear association between two variables. It also measures how well the regression line represents the data, and the further the line is away from the points, the less the regression line is able to explain about the point ("Statistic 2"). Since the R² equaled 0.6006, the regression line is accountable to only 60% of the data points. Though it may not be the high percent, it still is high enough to assume that the linear regression line is reliable for these data points.

             Even with amongst these data points, there are outliers that can skew the data and it's linear correlation shape. Because of the outliers, there is a distortion in the tightness of the graph. According to this correlation, countries with no corruption should have better economies; however, this isn't always so. For example, St. Lucia has a GDP PPP per capita of around $9385 and has a corruption index score of 7. Most countries with a similar GDP PPP per capita as St. Lucia have corruption index scores around 2 and 3. Furthermore, countries like Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea have fairly high GDP PPP per capita but have one of the lowest scores on the corruption index. So though most countries tend to follow a common trend, there are few countries that don't always follow it.

             In conclusion, from the data collected, there seems to be a positive correlation between corruption and economic development. The correlation may not be the strongest; however, there still a moderate correlation to assume there is a certain relationship. Though there are few outliers, most of the countries seem to follow the trend that higher corruption equals less economic development in the country.

Works Cited

Samuels, David J. 2012. Comparative Politics. New Jersey: Pearson Education

"Statistics 2 - Correlation Coefficient and Coefficient of Determination." Statistics 2 - Correlation Coefficient and Coefficient of Determination. Finding Your Way Around, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2012. <http://mathbits.com/MathBits/TIsection/Statistics2/correlation.htm>.

"Transparency International - the Global Coalition against Corruption." Transparency International - the Global Coalition against Corruption. Transparency International, 2012. Web. 18 Nov. 2012. <http://www.transparency.org/>.

"World Development Indicators." The World Bank. The World Bank, 2012. Web. 18 Nov. 2012. <http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators>.