> Such organizations literally calculate those 'indexes' on ! perceptions !.
Yes, that is literally what I said: "The rankings themselves are based on expert perceptions."
> Leaving aside just by selecting the 'right' sample you can make anything happen, there is a bigger elephant in the room: Cultural differences.
Yes, I do not disagree here. Regardless, this is orthogonal to my original comment. My original comment was that the notion that Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe leading up to the current events is not supported by either the article used as a reference nor the underlying data source that the article itself used.
For the sake of expediency, I granted many (implicit) assumptions that I would not otherwise agree to such as that "corruption" can be quantified on a one-dimensional axis (among many others). Because the original commenter referenced an article and, therefore, an underlying data source implicitly, I granted those assumptions and showed that the conclusion still does not follow the data. Because the original commenter ostensibly believes the veracity of the statement and the validity of the data source then I can grant those assumptions and show that the conclusion does not follow, regardless of whether or not I personally believe those assumptions; I don't need to address those assumptions to address the statement.
> In countries like France, Russia and Eastern Europe, complaining is a national sport.
It seems like you have a fundamental concern about the Transparency Institute's methodology. I totally agree with this concern. Regardless, it would hopefully be part of the TI's job to calibrate these cultural norms out in order to compare across the world.
> So these indexes are just PR and propaganda vessels that pitch the world view of their establishment and their society's culture.
I don't necessarily disagree with this but, again, this is orthogonal to the context of my original statement. You seemed concerned in your previous comment about Randian biases in the corruption metric. That's a completely valid point, but my reference of the Nordic countries was just to illustrate that I do not think that is quite the case here. If, as I understand your most recent comment clarified, you're more broadly concerned about any sort of biases in the metric, then I agree.