Based on a long-standing research program of the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

, the Worldwide Governance Indicators capture six key dimensions of

governance Governance is the overall complex system or framework of Process, processes, functions, structures, Social norm, rules, Law, laws and Norms (sociology), norms born out of the Interpersonal relationship, relationships, Social interaction, intera ...

(Voice & Accountability, Political Stability and Lack of Violence,

Government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality,

Rule of Law The essence of the rule of law is that all people and institutions within a Body politic, political body are subject to the same laws. This concept is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law" or "all are equal before the law". Acco ...

, and Control of

Corruption Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense that is undertaken by a person or an organization that is entrusted in a position of authority to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's gain. Corruption may involve activities ...

) between 1996 and present. They measure the quality of governance in over 200 countries, based on close to 40 data sources produced by over 30 organizations worldwide and are updated annually since 2002. The governance indicators contribute to the growing empirical research of governance which have provided activists and reformers worldwide with

advocacy Advocacy is an Action (philosophy), activity by an individual or advocacy group, group that aims to influence decision making, decisions within political, economic, and social institutions. Advocacy includes activities and publications to infl ...

tools for policy reform and monitoring. The indicators, and the underlying data behind them, are part of the current research and opinions that have reinforced the experiences and observations of reform-minded individuals in government,

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.good governance is key for development.Kaufmann, Daniel and Kraay, Aart
"Growth Without Governance"
(November 2002). World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2928. Their growing recognition of the link between good governance and successful development, as empirical evidence suggests, has stimulated demand for monitoring the quality of governance across countries and within individual countries over time. Virtually all of the individual data sources underlying the aggregate indicators are, along with the aggregate indicators themselves, publicly available. The Worldwide Governance Indicators are a compilation of the perceptions of a very diverse group of respondents, collected in large number of surveys and other cross-country assessments of governance. Some of these instruments capture the views of firms, individuals, and public officials in the countries being assessed. Others reflect the views of NGOs and aid donors with considerable experience in the countries being assessed, while others are based on the assessments of commercial risk-rating agencies. A complementary vision of the macro-level Worldwide Governance Indicators are the World Bank Governance Surveys, which are country level governance assessment tools developed by the World Bank Institute.

Criticisms

The Worldwide Governance Indicators offer a useful snapshot of some perceptions of a country’s quality of governance but researchers have pointed out significant problems in their construction. These critiques have been extensively rebutted by the WGI authors in several publications. These critics have claimed that users often fail to take into account or are not aware of their limitations. Criticisms include: * Too complex: The WGI “Control of Corruption” uses 24 different sources in varying combinations for different countries. The sheer number and diversity of indicators, produced by others, in a single WGI make it very difficult to understand. * Arbitrary: For example, WGI use the indicator “Environmental regulations hurt competitiveness” from the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey, but ignore that Survey’s several questions that give high ratings to countries with a high standard of environmental protection. * Absence of an underlying theory of "good" governance: no normative concept or unifying single theory to distinguish between good or bad governance. When are taxes, labour or environmental regulatory protection desirable and when are they excessive? * Hidden biases: Low weight given to household surveys relative to the weights of expert assessments and firm surveys. For example, Gallup’s World Poll that asks citizens about their exposure to crime gets zero weight for "Rule of Law", but Global Insight Business Risk and Conditions, a U.S. commercial business information provider that measures the crime risk to businesses, gets the third highest weight. * Lack of comparability over time and space: For example, the WGI “Control of Corruption” for Eastern Europe and Central Asia has 23 different combinations of sources, but only four pair of countries ratings are based on a common set of sources. * Lack of actionability: WGI offers little guidance to concrete actions to improve the quality of governance. For example, an indicator for Rule of Law "how secure business people feel about their property" not ''why'' they feel that way. * Over-selling: The World Bank Institute advertises its WGIs as "reliable measurements of governance", but for example gives the misleading impression that the views of ordinary citizens are well represented, making the indicators particularly attractive to donor agencies concerned about the poor. WBI heavily stressed inclusion of the Gallup World Poll, a cross-country household survey available for a large number of countries, but Gallup’s World Poll gets zero weight on two WGIs, marginal weight on two other WGIs and provides no data for the remaining two. * Lack of conceptual clarity: “ e six governance indicators measure a broad underlying concept of ‘effective governance’ … they appear to say the same thing, with different words … the six indexes do not discriminate usefully among different aspects of governance. Rather, each of the indexes – whatever its label – merely reflects perceptions of the quality of governance more broadly. An implication is that they may have limited use as guides for policymakers, and for academic studies of the causes and consequences of ‘good governance’ as well… their availability may well have crowded out efforts at measuring the impact of institutions as they really exist in a particular place on real outcomes."

Strengths

Despite the above noted limitations and concerns recent econometric research looking at how reliable some of these indicators are, vis-a-vis data collected from natural experiments and other observational surveys, have actually concluded that the Good Governance Indicators do in fact seem to be measuring, albeit imperfectly, levels of corruption and government effectiveness. Concepts like corruption are inherently illicit and therefore difficult to measure.Rohwer, Anja (2009) : Measuring Corruption: A Comparison between theTransparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index and the World Bank's WorldwideGovernance Indicators, CESifo DICE R eport, ISSN 1613-6373, ifo Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität München, München, Vol. 07, Iss. 3, pp. 42-52 While including multiple sources can make these indicators confusing, it can also avoid the potential for bias or influence over any single source. The weighting process for these indicators attempts to improve on issues of uncertainty present in other indices like the

Corruption Perceptions Index The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index that scores and ranks countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as assessed by experts and business executives. The CPI generally defines corruption as an "abuse of entr ...

. These indicators are also well correlated with other indicators of good governance indicating that any issues present may be present in all governance indicators. These indicators also have credibility due to their wide use in academia, international development, and business.Panizza, U. (2017). The use of corruption indicators in sovereign ratings. Interamerican Development Bank. https://publications.iadb.org/en/handle/11319/8562 They are used by a range of credit rating agencies such as Moody's,

Standard & Poor's S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is co ...

, and Fitch to determine sovereign bond ratings. A number of bilateral foreign assistance agencies, such as the US Government's Millennium Challenge Corporation condition aid on a country's performance on these indicators. These uses are often justified by reference to the connection between these indicators and development outcomes such as growth and poverty reduction as well as technical features of this dataset such as the broad country coverage and consistent, annual updates.

References

*http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/pdf/booklet_decade_of_measuring_governance.pdf, date=July 2010

External links

* * provides transparent source data and references used in the Worldwide Governance Indicators * :Worldwide ratings of country performances on six governance dimensions from 1996 to present * * * * * * {{cite web, url=http://www.pai.pacindia.org/ , title=Public Affairs Index - A ranking of states of India on Governance (Includes the PAI 2016 report by Public Affairs Centre http://www.pacindia.org) Political corruption World Bank International rankings Crime statistics

Criticisms

Strengths

See also

References

External links