Maps of the world--Corruption vs. Democracy

I love maps.  More than simply allowing you to know where things are, they're an excellent way of visualizing data.  For example, here is Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index. Now, let's look at the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index. There is a strong correlation between the two.  Something that immediately popped out at me was India.  It's a democracy.  The EIU classifies it as the 35th most democratic regime in the world.  That being said, it is very corrupt.  It ties for 84th least corrupt on TI's rankings of country corruption.

The interested reader should read more about how TI measures corruption and how EIU defines democracy.

I am not drawing any conclusions.  Really I'm not.  Seriously.  This is far too complex an issue.  I just enjoy seeing Morocco ranked 89th in terms of corruption while seeing it classified as an autocracy--it's the 120th most democratic regime, according to EIU.  Singapore (2rd least corrupt) and Hong Kong (12th least corrupt) are perennially ranked as two of the least corrupt countries in the world.  Yet neither, particularly Singapore, boast a democracy.  EIU ranks them as the 82nd and 84th most democratic regimes in the world, giving them the designation of a hybrid regime.  Yet this is just a failing of terminology.  EIU looks at the following four attributes of a country to determine its status:

"Whether national elections are free and fair"

"The security of voters"

"The influence of foreign powers on government"

"The capability of the civil servants to implement policies"

The two city-states, while enjoying the power to elect local representatives, do not have the power to vote for their leaders.  Still, EIU ranks them as far more democratic than the "democracy" of Afghanistan, which ranks 136th.  In this regard, I couldn't agree with EIU more.  For we could easily ask, elections aside, did the people of Afghanistan elect Hamid Karzai?