Six Organizations Say the U.S. Is at Its Most Corrupt in Modern History

The most widely cited global corruption measure, the CPI evaluates public sector corruption across 180 countries, factoring in bribery prevalence, nepotism, use of office for personal gain, and whistleblower protections.

The U.S. fell to 29th place out of 182 countries — tied with the Bahamas and ranked below Lithuania, Barbados, and Uruguay. The U.S. score declined from its peak of 76 in 2015 to 64 in the 2025 report, a decade of continuous erosion.

Transparency International specifically flagged the Trump administration's pausing of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement, curtailment of foreign agent registration law enforcement, and actions targeting independent institutions as "raising serious concerns" even beyond what the index could yet capture.

Washington-based Freedom House rates political rights and civil liberties in over 200 countries and has done so since 1972. It is widely regarded as a benchmark for evaluating democratic governance.

The U.S. scored 81 out of 100 — its lowest ever on the modern scale — placing it alongside South Africa and below several European allies, South Korea, and Panama. The U.S. declined by three points in a single year, a drop matched only by Bulgaria, where elections were marred by fraud allegations.

Freedom House attributed the decline to "legislative dysfunction and executive dominance, growing pressure on people's ability to engage in free expression, and efforts by the new administration to undermine anticorruption safeguards." Over the past 13 years, the U.S. has fallen a cumulative 11 points in this index.

V-Dem is a Swedish academic institution and one of the most rigorous democracy-measurement projects in the world, compiling detailed datasets across 202 countries and territories.

V-Dem rated the U.S. at 0.81 in 2006; by 2024 that had fallen to 0.75. Their 2026 report, covering 2025, found the U.S. among 44 countries "autocratizing," while only 12 are becoming more democratic. The current U.S. score is comparable to where it stood in 1966 — immediately after the Voting Rights Act was passed.

The Polity project is a long-running academic dataset that classifies governments on a spectrum from full democracy to full autocracy. It has been a foundational tool in political science research for decades.

Following January 6, 2021, Polity classified the U.S. as an "anocracy" — a hybrid regime between democracy and autocracy. In 2024 and 2025, it was further downgraded. By October 2025, Polity described the U.S. as "no longer a democracy" and "lying at the cusp of autocracy."

Bright Line Watch made similar statements in September 2025, describing expert ratings of the U.S. as "closer to those of a mixed or illiberal democracy than a full democracy."

The Century Foundation developed a new 100-point democracy assessment tool using 23 sub-questions across four major categories. The U.S. scored 79 in 2024 — a mediocre but passing grade. Their 2025 evaluation found a collapse to 57 out of 100, a 28% drop in a single year.

The biggest decline was in State Institutions (from 22/30 to 10/30), as Congress and the judiciary "failed to check the executive branch when it disregarded constitutional checks and balances." No subcategory improved. The analysis suggests U.S. democracy is at greater risk than at any time since Watergate.

The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) measure six dimensions of governance across 200+ countries, including Control of Corruption and Rule of Law, drawing on 35 different data sources from over 30 organizations. The 2025 revision was released in December 2025.

The WGI data confirmed the U.S. among a group of established democracies — alongside Canada and the UK — showing consistent downward trends in governance quality. The World Economic Forum echoed this finding, noting that "weakened leadership and eroding trust in institutions — including in established democracies — are increasing uncertainty, distorting competition, and reshaping the strategic environment."