This book avoids relying on surveys of the perceptions of corruption as indices of state exploitation. Existing surveys have focused on business elites and owners rather than citizens per se (for example, both BEEPS and Transparency International [TI] surveyed only businesspeople, and TI polls only the representatives of international firms, which may face additional barriers in countries where the ways of doing business may not be familiar). Others have asked the question only sporadically (for example, the New Democracies Barometer asked questions regarding bribery, but only in the Czech Republic in 1998). Even where public opinion regarding state efficacy and corruption has been canvassed, the indices are problematic. The respondents rely on previous survey results in formulating their opinion. Comparability across countries is severely limited. “Effectiveness,” “corruption,” and “legitimacy” are concepts that are difficult to measure, and the reference baselines vary enormously from country to country.

Minor corruption can be publicized to the point of creating perceptions of massive catastrophe. It is thus not surprising that as more and more international agencies began to pay attention to corruption, all the countries in the region received worse rankings after 1997. Such changes in perceptions of corruption and politicization may have more to do with their changed form than with any increase in actual levels. Some analysts have defended such polls by arguing that since they are expensive and yet are in high demand, the data must be valuable.