Higher judicial corruption links to less equal access to power globally
Comparing Equal Access to Power Index with Judicial Corruption Score across 173 countries, 1948–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.62
- Holding size constant
- +0.54
- Countries compared
- 173
- Period
- 1948–2025
What might link these
Countries with weaker judicial integrity may enable elite capture, reducing fair power distribution. A careful reader should note that reverse causality or omitted governance factors could blur the link.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. Correlation alone cannot prove whether corruption drives inequality or vice versa.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.