1 Governance Matters IV : New Data , New Challenges

2006

Over the past decade measuring corruption has become an ever-growing empirical field. Since the mid-nineties, we have undertaken various projects to measure corruption at the aggregate and disaggregated level. At the aggregate level, we have been constructing the Worldwide Governance Indicators that capture six dimensions of governance: Voice and

The World Bank Economic Review, 2004

2015

The scope of the paper is to explore the underlying determinants of governance quality at the global level. The study suggests that cross-country variation in governance is mainly attributed to differences not only in countries’ level of economic development but to the range of political freedom and level of social development. More specifically, the impact of economic development is stronger for the control of corruption, the rule of law and regulatory quality as far as the examined governance dimensions are concerned. Political development is strongly related to political stability and absence of violence as well as voice and accountability. A very interesting finding is the high correlation of social development, as depicted by the relevant human development index, with the level of government effectiveness. Therefore, strengthening and maintaining governance is achieved only through the adoption and effective implementation of the appropriate long-run policies. In a similar vein...

2003

The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions

Policy Research Working Papers, 2007

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 NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. We also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. We find 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 on a newly-redesigned website at www.govindicators.org.

Policy Research Working Papers, 2006

This paper reports on the latest version of the worldwide governance indicators, covering 213 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance since 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 over the period 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.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005

This paper presents the latest update of our aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (i) voice and accountability; (ii) political Instability and violence; (iii) government effectiveness; (iv) regulatory quality; (v) rule of law, and, (vi) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. We present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, we provide examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. We also analyze in some detail changes over time in our estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for our aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While we find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), we also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, we interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.

2021

Economic, social, political and technological developments around the world have greatly influenced the field of public administration, and new paradigms have been introduced accordingly. The Governance Approach, which was put forward by the World Bank and marked the restructuring reforms of the state in a short time, has become a new stage in the state-society relations. Instead of the management approach in which the state is accepted as the only actor in decision-making processes, the World Bank has put forward a participatory management approach. The governance approach, which deals with controversial issues such as changing the government-citizen relationship, strengthening democracy, improving the service delivery capacity of the government, and the rule of law, has the opportunity to be applied at global, national and local levels. Moreover, due to the governance approach, there has been a transition from the state-centred management approach to the democracy-centred management approach. Within the scope of this study, the effect of governance approach on democracy is investigated by focusing on the concepts of governance and democracy. Accordingly, the theoretical claim that governance has an impact on democracy is tested by various empirical analyses using quantitative data. The Worldwide Governance Indicator data published by the World Bank for 214 countries and the Democracy Index data prepared by The Economist Intelligent Unit for 165 countries were used in the analysis. Governance and democracy data for the last ten years (2009-2018) were included in the research. These data were prepared in six sub-dimensions for governance and five sub-dimensions for democracy. In this study, governance and democracy were analysed statistically with both main dimensions and sub-dimensions. Forty-two different hypotheses were tested within the scope of the research. As a result, it has been determined that governance and its six sub-dimensions have a very high effect on democracy and its five sub-dimensions. Keywords: democracy index, determinants of democracy, governance indicators, good governance, statistical analysis

1996

Six dimensions of governance are estimated covering 199 countries and territories for four periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. The indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance drawn from 25 data sources constructed by 18 organizations. These individual measures are assigned to categories capturing key dimensions of governance. An unobserved-components model is used to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. Point esti-mates of the dimensions of governance are provided as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. Methodological issues are also addressed, including tests for potential biases, and the interpretation and use of the data, given the estimated margins of errors for the indicators. The data and a Web-based graphical interface are available online at www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/govdata2002/index.html. This article presents estimates of six dimensions of gov...