CorruptionRadar
Country profile - MEX

Corruption in Mexico

32 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 55.6 (2022).

Grand: 35.5 Petty: 63.3 Latest observed: 2019

Mexico: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Mexico is Hidalgo (48.4/100), and the least corrupt is Tlaxcala (63.6/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 32 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Mexico's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 55.6/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Hidalgo (SCI 48.4/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Tlaxcala (SCI 63.6/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 35.5/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 63.3/100 (last directly observed in 2019).
  • Trend: Mexico's SCI moved from 48.2/100 (1995) to 55.6/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 32 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Mexico 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 Mexico into 32 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 55.6 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 31 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -1 ≈ −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 32 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

58 47 1995 2022

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

Regions (32)

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 Hidalgo MEXr113 1995-2022 48.4
2 Mexico MEXr115 1995-2022 49.4
3 Chihuahua MEXr108 1995-2022 52.3
4 Distrito Federal MEXr109 1995-2022 52.6
5 Durango MEXr110 1995-2022 52.6
6 Guerrero MEXr112 1995-2022 52.6
7 Oaxaca MEXr120 1995-2022 52.6
8 Nuevo Leon MEXr119 1995-2022 52.7
9 Chiapas MEXr107 1995-2022 53
10 Campeche MEXr104 1995-2022 53.2
11 Colima MEXr106 1995-2022 53.3
12 Aguascalientes MEXr101 1995-2022 53.4
13 Tabasco MEXr127 1995-2022 53.4
14 Sonora MEXr126 1995-2022 53.7
15 Morelos MEXr117 1995-2022 54.1
16 Puebla MEXr121 1995-2022 54.3
17 Quintana Roo MEXr123 1995-2022 54.5
18 Sinaloa MEXr125 1995-2022 55
19 Veracruz MEXr130 1995-2022 56.1
20 Baja California MEXr102 1995-2022 57
21 Michoacan de Ocampo MEXr116 1995-2022 57.3
22 Baja California Sur MEXr103 1995-2022 57.4
23 San Luis Potosi MEXr124 1995-2022 57.4
24 Nayarit MEXr118 1995-2022 58
25 Jalisco MEXr114 1995-2022 58.9
26 Coahuila MEXr105 1995-2022 59
27 Guanajuato MEXr111 1995-2022 59.4
28 Tamaulipas MEXr128 1995-2022 60.1
29 Yucatan MEXr131 1995-2022 60.3
30 Queretaro MEXr122 1995-2022 61
31 Zacatecas MEXr132 1995-2022 62.5
32 Tlaxcala MEXr129 1995-2022 63.6

Download Mexico

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 MEX.csv