Despite a change of administration in the United States last year, no significant progress has been made in curbing corruption at the national level, a new study of government accountability conducted by Global Integrity has shown.

Its report, which is an investigative study of 35 countries recently released in Washington, noted that since US President Barack Obama assumed office, very little progress in the corruption war has been recorded.

"We had waited for two years to cover the U.S. again, knowing that the 2008 presidential elections were going to bring one of two reformers into the White House," the Global Integrity's Managing Director, Nathaniel Heller, said.

"What we found this year was somewhat disappointing: no significant progress has been made since 2007. While it's only been one year, and while laudable efforts to increase the transparency of government information have been made, coordination between various agencies tasked with anti-corruption efforts remains inefficient."

Global Integrity, an award-winning international non-profit organisation that tracks governance and corruption trends globally, said that to improve future U.S. scores, efforts will need to be made to improve the effectiveness of the Inspectors General and to minimise the influence of special interest money in politics, "an area that will prove challenging in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow greater levels of corporate and union spending on election advertising."

The Global Integrity Report 2009 covers developed countries, as well as dozens of the world's emerging markets and developing nations, from Azerbaijan and China to Lebanon and Vietnam. Rather than measure perceptions of corruption, the report assesses the accountability mechanisms and transparency measures in place (or not) to prevent corruption through more than 300 "Integrity Indicators" as well as journalistic reporting of corruption.

"The United States have such as a robust and independent media and civil society organisations that serve as effective anti-corruption watchdogs, but continues to struggle with controlling the corrupting influence of money in politics," the study says.

"With the average cost of running a national-level political campaign ranging from US$1-10 million (never mind the nearly US$1 billion spent by political parties in the last presidential election), the U.S. sets the standard globally for the volume of private money flowing into the political process on an annual basis. The new Obama administration has begun to take small steps towards other important accountability and transparency reforms - including a commitment to better enforcement of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and improved citizen access to government data - but until improved controls over private money in politics are enacted, the U.S. has likely hit a "glass ceiling" in the context of governance and accountability reforms."

Cleaner China

It however refers to China's graduation from the Watch List as partly due to the government's push to raise accounting and auditing standards for the country's state-owned enterprises, to international levels.

"In the long-run, this potentially gives the public a fighting chance of understanding the inner workings of China's largest state owned companies," Mr Heller said.

It states that significant anti-corruption challenges remain in China, but that this "shows a small overall improvement from 2007, due in part to a new access to information regulation, which helped bolster citizen access to ombudsman reports and auditing records." Other major findings of the report include the mismanagement of foreign aids in some of the countries assessed.

The 2009 report covers countries like, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia, Macedonia, Malawi, Mexico, Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Norway, Rwanda and Serbia.



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