Country profile - NZL

Corruption in New Zealand

15 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 76.7 (2022).

Grand: 59.3 Petty: 82.2 Latest observed: 2020

New Zealand: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of New Zealand is Marlborough (70.2/100), and the least corrupt is Northland (83/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 15 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, New Zealand's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 76.7/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Marlborough (SCI 70.2/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Northland (SCI 83/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 59.3/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 82.2/100 (last directly observed in 2020).
  • Trend: New Zealand's SCI moved from 73.2/100 (1995) to 76.7/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 15 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How New Zealand 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 New Zealand into 15 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 76.7 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 87 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 2.2 ≈ −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 15 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

78 72 1995 2022

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

Regions (15)

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 Marlborough NZLr111 1995-2022 70.2
2 Gisborne NZLr105 1995-2022 71.1
3 Tasman - Nelson NZLr110 1995-2022 72.2
4 Bay of Plenty NZLr104 1995-2022 74.8
5 West Coast NZLr112 1995-2022 74.9
6 Waikato NZLr103 1995-2022 76.6
7 Canterbury NZLr113 1995-2022 77.1
8 Southland NZLr115 1995-2022 77.2
9 Wellington NZLr109 1995-2022 78.1
10 Otago NZLr114 1995-2022 78.3
11 Taranaki NZLr107 1995-2022 78.4
12 Manawatu-Wanganui NZLr108 1995-2022 78.5
13 Hawkes Bay NZLr106 1995-2022 79.2
14 Auckland NZLr102 1995-2022 79.3
15 Northland NZLr101 1995-2022 83

Download New Zealand

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 NZL.csv