The Worldwide Governance Indicators and Tautology : Causally Related Separable Concepts, Indicators of a Common Cause, or Both?
Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, are widely used in research and in aid policy. Few studies examine the validity of these indexes, however. This paper partially fills this gap by examining empiric...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/07/9670849/worldwide-governance-indicators-tautology-causally-related-separable-concepts-indicators-common-cause-or-both http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6839 |
| Summary: | Aggregate indexes of the quality of
governance, covering large samples of countries, are widely
used in research and in aid policy. Few studies examine the
validity of these indexes, however. This paper partially
fills this gap by examining empirically the dimensionality
of the Worldwide Governance Indicators. The six indexes
purportedly measure distinct concepts of control of
corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness,
regulatory quality, political stability, and voice and
accountability. Using standard statistical techniques for
testing measurement validity, the analysis concludes that
the six indexes do not discriminate usefully among different
aspects of governance. Rather, each of the indexes merely
reflects perceptions of the quality of governance more
broadly. An implication of the findings is that the
Worldwide Governance Indicator indexes are frequently
misused in research and policy applications, where it is
commonly assumed that the indexes provide distinct measures
of different aspects of the quality of governance. A
further implication is that Transparency
International's even more widely-known aggregate index
similarly reflects perceptions not only of corruption, as
intended, but of the quality of governance more broadly. |
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