Trust and Perceptions of Corruption
The 2007 Pew survey found that in countries where people generally trust one another, there is also more confidence in the integrity of political leaders. As the figure below shows, the relationship between trust and corruption resembles the one between trust and crime. The percentage of people rating corrupt political leaders as a very big problem tends to be lower in countries that have high levels of trust such as Sweden, Canada, and Britain (the correlation coefficient is -.54). On the other hand, in nations such as Nigeria and Lebanon, trust is rare and concerns about political corruption are widespread.
Again, there are outliers. Kuwait is both a low trust and low corruption society. Indonesia is a high trust, high corruption country. And the Swedes are once again even less concerned about corruption than their high score on the trust measure would predict (the question about political corruption was not asked in China, the only country to top the Swedes on trust). Meanwhile, Americans — who have witnessed more than a few high profile political scandals over the last few years — were slightly more concerned about corrupt politicians than would have been expected, based on their reasonably high degree of social trust.
Eastern Europeans also tend to be more worried about corruption than one might anticipate given the level of social trust in the region. In all six Eastern European nations included on the survey, more than half say the issue of corrupt political leaders is a very important problem facing their country. Concern runs especially high in the Czech Republic, where nearly eight-in-ten (78%) see political corruption as a very important problem — only Nigerians express more concern about this issue.
Trust and Perceptions of Corruption  | S go I the I it go bi CONTERTARIZED  | 90  | North America  | Nigeria  | Latin imerica  | Czech Red,  | Western Europe  | Indonesia  | Lebanon  | Eastern Europe  | Peru  | Bulgaria  | Asia  | 70  | Poland  | Africa  | Middle East  | Chile  | Korea  | Morocco  | ULS  | 50  | Egypt  | Germany  | Kuwait  | 30  | canada  | Britain  | Sweden  | 10  | 20  | 30  | 40  | 50  | 60  | 70  | 80  | 90  | % Aloot Can Be Trusted 