Evidence, corruption, and reform: the importance of context-sensitivity

The types of corruption measures that practitioners find along the existing spectrum can complement each other, but have also posed challenges for policy makers and practitioners. We argue that these challenges have been characterized as conflict between precision and politics, which obscures the possibility for incorporating both aspects into corruption measurements. The paper presents a framework for evaluating corruption datasets in terms of their accessibility to a range of stakeholders, as well as their methodological design, potential for sustainability, and explicit link to reform actions. We believe that this exercise will dispel the myth that the gap between objectivity and inclusiveness is inevitable, and the findings will provide examples of how openness and reform action have been built into the design of some corruption datasets.