Transparency International (TI) is an international organisation devoted to fighting corruption, including, but not limited to, political corruption.

TI is organised as a group of some 90 national chapters, with an international secretariat. Originally founded in Germany as a not-for-profit organisation, TI is now an international non-governmental organisation, and is moving towards a completely democratic organisational structure. The organisation describes itself as follows:

Transparency International is the leading global non-governmental organisation devoted to combating corruption. Its mission is to create change towards a world free of corruption.

It rejects any idea of "northern superiority" regarding corruption, and is dedicated to exposing corruption world-wide.

One of the most notable publications produced by TI is the annual Global Corruption Report.

The value of their corruption surveys is disputed, since they are based on polls indicating the "subjective appreciation of the polled people as to the amount of corruption in the studied countries rather than on objective information". Another problem is that what is legally defined, or perceived, to be corruption differs between jurisdictions: a political donation legal in some jurisdiction may be illegal in another. Similarly, one country's acceptable tip may be another country's unacceptable bribe.

To such critics, TI replies that not only they use comparatistic methods as developed during last decades by renown institutes, but that precisely their aim is to get a united view on curruption. And, to get people united to introduce integrity.

A relation of countries' competitiveness and corruption has been discussed for the first time in a TI workshop in Prague, Nov '89.

External links

• Official site | TI's mission statement