>The Corruption Perceptions survey is a useful metric. The USA tends to hang with Japan around the high teens in ranking year after year. Interestingly, there is a wider variance in perceptions of American corruption than for other countries
I think the perception of corruption is interesting, because overall the West is far lower than elsewhere. Link for those interested: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2013/results
While when you actually talk to people, corruption in the West is pretty widely acknowledged and even outright accepted. For example, when the NSA stories first broke the reaction on Reddit was largely a mix of:
"Duh, this is confirming what we already know"
and
"Well, it's not like other countries aren't doing it too" (even though, at that time, only the NSA was being highlighted and there was little/no news about their European, Canadian, Australian etc. counterparts.
What had been previously relegated by the mass populace as conspiracy theory nonsense was very quickly accepted, and then very quickly relegated to acceptance.
What this would lead me personally to believe, from just watching these things unfold, watching the mass reaction to it and then talking with others about it, is that we in the West widely acknowledge corruption here but out of a combination of a feeling of powerlessness (what am I, Joe Bloggs, going to be able to do about it), being removed from it (this doesn't affect I, Joe Bloggs, all that much) and probably an inherent sense of nationalism (well, it's probably much worse over there in that other country) we actively downplay the level of corruption in our societies, and I believe that this probably ends up being reflected in these surveys.
I've no doubt that the above is conjecture, but it's just what I've formed from my own experiences. There is a very marked feeling of powerlessness though, and the little action taken, even political action, over the things that have been exposed in the West would solidify that opinion somewhat more.