Despite the salience of transparency in policy and democracy debates a global measurement of transparency has always been missing. In its absence, measuring the impact of transparency on accountability and corruption for a large number of countries has been difficult, with scholars using more or less adequate proxies. This paper introduces a new measurement of real transparency—the T-index—using 14 de facto components, based on direct observations of official websites in 129 countries and five de jure components, based on the transparency laws and conventions adopted. The resulting index is a measurement with very good internal and external validity and moderate precision. The paper argues that de facto transparency must be considered alongside de jure (legal) transparency if we are to judge the impact (or lack of) transparency against accountability and corruption, as a large implementation gap exists, in particular in poor countries, between legal commitments and real transparency. The T-index has significant impact on both perception and objective indicators of corruption, including perceived change in corruption over time as measured by the Global Corruption Barometer. An analysis of outliers shows that high transparency alone is not sufficient to achieve control of corruption, especially in countries with low human development and poor rule of law, although transparency is a robust predictor of corruption with GDP controls. The data with all sources is available for download as T-index 2022 dataset: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.7225627 and an interactive webpage developed for updates is available at www.corruptionrisk.org/transparency.

中文翻译：

---

透明度与腐败：通过新指数衡量真正的透明度

尽管透明度在政策和民主辩论中非常突出，但全球范围内始终缺乏对透明度的衡量标准。在缺乏透明度的情况下，衡量透明度对许多国家的问责和腐败的影响一直很困难，学者们或多或少地使用了足够的替代指标。本文介绍了一种新的真实透明度衡量标准——T 指数——基于对 129 个国家官方网站的直接观察，使用 14 个事实上的组成部分，以及基于所采用的透明度法律和公约的 5 个法律上的组成部分。由此产生的指数是一个具有非常好的内部和外部有效性和中等精度的测量。该文件认为，如果我们要判断透明度对问责制和腐败的影响（或缺乏），就必须同时考虑事实上的透明度和法律上的（法律）透明度，因为法律之间存在巨大的执行差距，特别是在贫穷国家。承诺和真正的透明度。T 指数对腐败的认知和客观指标都有重大影响，包括根据全球腐败晴雨表衡量的腐败随时间变化的认知变化。对异常值的分析表明，仅靠高透明度不足以实现对腐败的控制，特别是在人类发展水平低和法治差的国家，尽管透明度是通过 GDP 控制来控制腐败的有力预测指标。所有来源的数据均可作为 T-index 2022 数据集下载：DOI 10.5281/zenodo.7225627，并可在 www.corruptionrisk.org/transparency 上获取为更新而开发的交互式网页。