Governance Matters VII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996-2007
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 2007: Voice and Accountability, Political Stab...
| 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/2008/06/9590599/governance-matters-vii-aggregate-individual-governance-indicators-1996-2007 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6870 |
| Summary: | 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
2007: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and
Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness,
Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption.
The latest aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of
specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring
various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources
provided by 32 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. The authors also explicitly report
the margins of error accompanying each country estimate.
These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring
governance using any kind of data. The authors also briefly
describe the evolution of the WGI since its inception, and
show that the margins of error on the aggregate governance
indicators have declined over the years, even though they
still remain non-trivial. The authors 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.
These aggregate indicators, spanning more than a decade,
together with the disaggregated individual indicators, are
available at www.govindicators.org. |
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