The manipulation of official statistics as corruption and ways of understanding it

Abstract

We argue that the manipulation of official statistics is corruption and indeed it is grand corruption and political corruption. We note the steps that have been taken in recent decades, which inter alia help make corruption in official statistics more difficult, but argue that instances of corruption persist. To decisively address the problem, it is important to have an analytical tool for understanding it. In this context, we provide a typology of the various broad manifestations or phenomena of corruption in official statistics. We then proceed to identify the process or mechanism that gives rise to these manifestations/phenomena, the elements/component parts of this process/mechanism and the ways these parts interact. This constitutes the schematic model that we propose for understanding corruption in official statistics. In this context, we provide a discussion of the nature of the individual elements/component parts of the process of corruption of official statistics, i.e., we discuss the drivers of the phenomena, the enabling conditions of the phenomena, the modalities and methods used to arrive at the phenomena, and the vectors or agents that execute/propagate the phenomena. We believe all cases of corruption in official statistics can be analyzed using this schematic model. The benefit of having such a model is that it enables one to identify what institutional or legal setting, action, institution or person presents a problem, vulnerability or source of risk in a given system of production of a specific official statistical product in a given country, and address it. The model can also inform a discussion about what needs to be changed at the level of international/supranational arrangements, whether concerning institutional settings, processes, or legal and ethical frameworks, affecting the production of official statistics.