Did you look at the actual data behind this survey? I just did, and it's a little sketchy.
The US ranks alongside the rest of Europe for most of the data sources that include the US (many of TI's data sources do not), except for two surveys which sharply differ:
* TI's own "Bribery Payer's Index", which gives the US a 4.6 out of 10 (a score more compatible with Southeast Asia than North America) in the crosstabs, but for which the actual TI BPI report gives results back in line with Europe.
* IMD's survey from 2010, which gives the US a 6.5 (again, significantly lower than Europe) but for which no actual data appears to be publicly available.
In both cases, the actual data extracted from these surveys (the TI index is a meta-analysis of many surveys; a survey of surveys) is "phone surveys to business leaders"; TI has selected specific questions from these surveys as indicative and discarded the rest of them. In the IMD case, for instance, there appears to be one question at all that's selected from the survey: "Is there bribery or corruption, yes or no".
A 6.5 score from the IMD report puts the US in the 6-7 band along with Estonia, Malaysia, Spain, and Israel. This seems like an extraordinary claim, as is the claim that there is less bribery in Qatar and Chile than in the US.
Similarly, the 4.x score in the BPI survey puts the US in a band with China, Russia, the Czech Republic, the Philippines and Argentina. This is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence.
If you excluded the BPI and IMD surveys from the data set, the US would probably be duking it out for tenths of a point at the top of the list with the rest of Europe. As it stands, we're simply in the top quintile, unlike China.
I agree that this is an extroidinary claim, but it is technically named as the Corruption Perception Index, which is relevent to the discussion about the perception of organizations doing business in different countries.
The real question is: Is there any other data on this scale to refute or back this research?
The US ranks alongside the rest of Europe for most of the data sources that include the US (many of TI's data sources do not), except for two surveys which sharply differ:
* TI's own "Bribery Payer's Index", which gives the US a 4.6 out of 10 (a score more compatible with Southeast Asia than North America) in the crosstabs, but for which the actual TI BPI report gives results back in line with Europe.
* IMD's survey from 2010, which gives the US a 6.5 (again, significantly lower than Europe) but for which no actual data appears to be publicly available.
In both cases, the actual data extracted from these surveys (the TI index is a meta-analysis of many surveys; a survey of surveys) is "phone surveys to business leaders"; TI has selected specific questions from these surveys as indicative and discarded the rest of them. In the IMD case, for instance, there appears to be one question at all that's selected from the survey: "Is there bribery or corruption, yes or no".
A 6.5 score from the IMD report puts the US in the 6-7 band along with Estonia, Malaysia, Spain, and Israel. This seems like an extraordinary claim, as is the claim that there is less bribery in Qatar and Chile than in the US.
Similarly, the 4.x score in the BPI survey puts the US in a band with China, Russia, the Czech Republic, the Philippines and Argentina. This is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence.
If you excluded the BPI and IMD surveys from the data set, the US would probably be duking it out for tenths of a point at the top of the list with the rest of Europe. As it stands, we're simply in the top quintile, unlike China.