Country profile - IRQ

Corruption in Iraq

18 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 46.6 (2022).

Grand: 25.1 Petty: 57.6 Latest observed: 2018

Iraq: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Iraq is Dohouk (39.1/100), and the least corrupt is Kerbela (55.5/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 18 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Iraq's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 46.6/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Dohouk (SCI 39.1/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Kerbela (SCI 55.5/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 25.1/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 57.6/100 (last directly observed in 2018).
  • Trend: Iraq's SCI moved from 46.3/100 (1995) to 46.6/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 18 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Iraq compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Iraq into 18 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 46.6 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 23 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -1.2 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 18 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

53 43 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (18)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Dohouk IRQr101 1995-2022 39.1
2 Salaheldeen IRQr112 1995-2022 40.2
3 Babylon IRQr109 1995-2022 41.3
4 Najaf IRQr113 1995-2022 42.4
5 Muthanna IRQr115 1995-2022 43.1
6 Wasit IRQr111 1995-2022 43.6
7 Kirkuk IRQr104 1995-2022 44.1
8 Basra IRQr118 1995-2022 45
9 Baghdad IRQr108 1995-2022 45.8
10 Suleimaniya IRQr103 1995-2022 46.7
11 Erbil IRQr105 1995-2022 48.6
12 Anbar IRQr107 1995-2022 48.8
13 Maysan IRQr117 1995-2022 49.5
14 Thi-Qar IRQr116 1995-2022 49.6
15 Qadisiya IRQr114 1995-2022 50.1
16 Nenava IRQr102 1995-2022 50.9
17 Diala IRQr106 1995-2022 54.8
18 Kerbela IRQr110 1995-2022 55.5

Download Iraq

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download IRQ.csv