Country profile - SWE

Corruption in Sweden

8 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 75.2 (2022).

Grand: 68.7 Petty: 80.6 Latest observed: 2021

Sweden: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Sweden is Sydsverige (74.4/100), and the least corrupt is Stockholm (76/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 8 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Sweden's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 75.2/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Sydsverige (SCI 74.4/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Stockholm (SCI 76/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 68.7/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 80.6/100 (last directly observed in 2021).
  • Trend: Sweden's SCI moved from 72.3/100 (1995) to 75.2/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 8 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Sweden 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 Sweden into 8 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 75.2 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 83 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 2.1 ≈ −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 8 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

85 70 1995 2022

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

Regions (8)

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 Sydsverige SWEr104 1995-2022 74.4
2 Vastsverige SWEr105 1995-2022 74.4
3 Ostra Mellansverige SWEr102 1995-2022 75
4 Smaland med oarna SWEr103 1995-2022 75.1
5 Mellersta Norrland SWEr107 1995-2022 75.3
6 Norra Mellansverige SWEr106 1995-2022 75.8
7 Ovre Norrland SWEr108 1995-2022 75.9
8 Stockholm SWEr101 1995-2022 76

Download Sweden

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 SWE.csv