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bne April 2019 Central Europe I 35
it in the middle of the group.
And perhaps surprisingly Belarus was the best performing country from East- ern Europe at 66th place overall with a score of 0.52 and fifth best in the WJP regional ranking.
Uzbekistan is another eye-catcher that moved up two places but remains near the bottom of the global table at 94th place from 128th. That compares with its neighbour Kazakhstan which also moved up two places but is far higher placed – higher than any other country in Eastern Europe or Central Asia except Georgia – ranked 65th overall with a score of 0.52.
Turkey was by far the worst in the group and ranks 109th overall, with one of the worst performances in the world.
Subfactors
Drill into the various factors that make up the index and Russia performs very poorly on the constraints on government such as the constitution, institutional checks and balances as well as non-gov- ernment factors like a free press.
The authoritarian systems in most of Eastern Europe show up in this category the most as all the countries – even the most progressive on this score, Ukraine – rank below their overall scores, pulled down by their lack of democracy or functioning democratic institutions.
Russia scored a lowly 0.37 in this subcate- gory ranking it 112th out of 128 countries, just ahead of Belarus with 0.36. That compares to Ukraine’s 0.46 and 90th rank, which put it in the middle of the field. Again Kazakhstan performs better than Russia and Belarus with 0.43 and a rank of 100th, but less well than Ukraine.
The “lack of corruption” subfactor threw up some bigger surprises with Russia outper- forming all the other counties in its region with a score and rank of 0.45 and 68th – both much better than its overall results.
Since the 2014 economic crisis, the cash strapped Russian government has been vigorously cracking down on lower level corruption in the hunt for fresh capital. There has been a revolution in the tax
service that saw tax revenues jump by 20% in 2018, despite the fact that the tax base remains unchanged.
By comparison Ukraine performed very poorly according to the WSJ survey with a score of 0.33 and ranking 108th, put- ting it near the worst in the world.
Belarus did remarkably well with 0.55 at 47th place, while Kazakhstan was again in the middle of the global rank (0.47, 61st), but ahead of its peers in Russia and Ukraine.
Russia’s strong showing stands in stark contrast with Transparency International’s (TI’s) most recent ranking that handed the “most corrupt country” in Eastern Europe title back to Russia after it slipped three places to 138th out of 180 countries surveyed, while Ukraine improved rising ten places to 120, as bne IntelliNews reported in January in “HEATMAP: Russia and Ukraine battle it out for title of most corrupt country in Europe.”
The difference could be attributed to the fact that the TI survey is a “corrup- tion perception survey” that simply polls panellists’ impressions rather than try- ing to objectively measure corruption.
Amongst the other subfactors the con- trasts continue. In the limited scope of “fundamental human rights” the countries
scored: Ukraine (0.61, 50th), Belarus (0.47, 94th), Kazakhstan (0.46, 95th), and Russian (0.45, 104th) in that order.
Shockingly several of the countries in emerging Europe outperformed even the US in the “order and security” category. However, this should not be a surprise, as Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group argued in his book “The J Curve” that authoritar- ian societies often produce more stability and security but underperform on eco- nomic potential thanks to the heavy polic- ing of their states. Democratic societies, by contrast, can be more chaotic, but they allow for more innovation and prosperity. To highlight the point Uzbekistan, which is only now emerging from its pariah sta- tus under the boot of its dictatorial former president Islam Karimov, has emerged
as the ninth best country in the world (0.91, 9th) for order and security.
The US scored (0.76, 49th) on order and security, well behind Belarus (0.81, 27th) and Kazakhstan (0.78, 37th) but ahead of Ukraine (0.73, 60th) and Rus- sia (0.66, 86th).
On “regulatory enforcement” Kazakhstan leads (0.51, 63th) with Belarus close behind (0.5, 65th) – both in the middle of the global field. Russia (0.49, 72nd) is not too far behind but Ukraine is down near the bottom of the list (0.42, 103rd).
Eastern Europe & Central Asia
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