2024 is a high-stakes year for democracy and prosperity across the world. People in over 60 countries, almost half the world’s population, will head to the polls. However, trust in public institutions remains low, with public confidence evenly split between people who say they trust their national government and those who do not. In addition, although the clouds over the global economy are parting, lingering inflation in many countries and continuing geopolitical tensions present ongoing risks to the cost of living and economic growth.
Corruption exacerbates these challenges. It deepens inequalities and weakens economic growth, erodes the resilience and proper functioning of democracies, and impedes representation and trust in government. Although in recent years OECD countries have invested heavily in improving their anti-corruption frameworks, the work is far from finished and many improvements are yet to be made. Efforts to promote public integrity must intensify.
This first edition of the OECD Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook aims to support countries’ continued work to combat corruption, uphold integrity, and to safeguard democracies and prosperity for years to come. Drawing on new data gathered through the OECD Public Integrity Indicators, it demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats to anti-corruption and integrity systems, highlighting opportunities to improve both data gathering and implementation. These improvements must be made if countries are to respond to some of the most important challenges they currently face, namely the green transition, the rise of artificial intelligence, and increasing foreign interference and strategic corruption.
The Outlook is the first in a new series of biennial reports which will track the performance of OECD countries’ integrity frameworks and analyse integrity risks.
The Public Integrity Indicators, which provide the majority of the primary data for this report, were developed for and with governments, based on the Recommendation of the Council on Public Integrity and other international legal instruments from bodies such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the Council of Europe. The indicators were developed by a Task Force consisting of members of the Working Party of Senior Public Integrity Officials: Austria, Brazil, Chile, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the Slovak Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States. The indicators were approved in 2019 by all OECD Member countries.
This report was approved by the Public Governance Committee via written procedure on 14 March 2024.
