This study helps users find their way through the jungle of governance indicators, and shows how they tend to be widely misused both in international comparisons and in tracking changes in individual countries.

This study helps users find their way through the jungle of governance indicators, and shows how they tend to be widely misused both in international comparisons and in tracking changes in individual countries.

As difficult as it might seem to define governance, it appears to be that much more difficult to measure it. Since the World Bank Institute launched the Worldwide Governance Indicators in the late 1990s, the governance indicators field has flourished and experienced significant advances in terms of methodology, data coverage and quality, and policy relevance. Other major initiatives have added to a momentum that propelled research on governance indicators seen in few other academic fields in the economic and social sciences. Given these developments and the prominence and policy relevance the field of governance indicator research has achieved, the time is ripe to take stock and ask what has been accomplished, what the shortcomings and potentials might be, and what steps present themselves as a way forward. This volume— the fifth edition in an annual series tackling different aspects of governance around the world— assesses what has been achieved, identifies strengths and weaknesses of current work, and points to issues that need to be tackled in order to advance the field, both in its academic importance as well as in its policy relevance. In short, the contributions to this volume explore the scope of existing governance indices and indicator frameworks, elaborate on current challenges in measuring and analysing governance, and consider how to overcome them.

Abstract: This paper reports on the latest update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2006: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. This latest set of aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance taken from 33 data sources provided by 30 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector, and nongovernmental organization experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The paper also explicitly reports the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. It finds that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons, as well as monitoring progress over time. In less than a decade, a substantial number of countries exhibit statistically significant improvements in at least one dimension of governance, while other countries exhibit deterioration in some dimensions. The decade-long aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated individual indicators, are available in a newly-redesigned website at www.govindicators.org.

Abstract: The Worldwide Governance Indicators, reporting estimates of six dimensions of governance for over 200 countries between 1996 and 2005, have become widely used among policymakers and academics. They have also attracted some explicit written criticisms. In this short paper the authors synthesize 11 critiques offered by four recent papers. They then refute them as either conceptually incorrect or empirically unsubstantiated.

Abstract: The authors report on the latest version of the worldwide governance indicators, covering 213 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance from 1996 until end-2005: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. The latest indicators are based on hundreds of variables and reflect the views of thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents and experts worldwide. Although global averages of governance display no marked trends during 1996-2005, nearly one-third of countries exhibit significant changes [for better or for worse] on at least one dimension of governance. Three new features distinguish this update. (1) The authors have moved to annual reporting of governance estimates. This update includes new governance estimates for 2003 and 2005, as well as minor backward revisions to biannual historical data for 1996-2004. (2) The authors are, for the first time, publishing the individual measures of governance from virtually every data source underlying the aggregate governance indicators. The ready availability of the individual data sources underlying the aggregate governance indicators is aimed at further enhancing the transparency of the methodology and of the resulting aggregate indicators, as well as helping data users and policymakers identify specific governance challenges in individual countries. (3) The authors present new evidence on the reliability of expert assessments of governance which, alongside survey responses, form part of the aggregate measures of governance.

Informal institutions — family and kinship structures, traditions, and social norms — are often decisive factors in shaping policy outcomes and this book advocates a pragmatic way of dealing with them.

This report proposes a practical, country-based framework for developing good governance indicators for programmes funded by the European Union.

Perceiving complex multidimensional problems has proven to be a difficult task for people to overcome. However, introducing composite indicators into such problems allows the opportunity to reduce the problem's complexity. Emerging Trends in the Development and Application of Composite Indicators is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the benefits and challenges presented by building composite indicators, and how these techniques promote optimized critical thinking. Highlighting various indicator types and quantitative methods, this book is ideally designed for developers, researchers, public officials, and upper-level students.