What is Governance?
Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies; and the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them.
" One of the best kept secrets at the World Bank is their World Bank Country Governance Indicators ."
Co-Founder, Center for Privatization, Washington, DC
The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) projectreports aggregate and individual governance indicators for 212 countries and territories over the period 1996–2006, for six dimensions of governance:
 | Voice and Accountability |
| Political Stability and Absence of Violence |
| Government Effectiveness |
| Regulatory Quality |
| Rule of Law |
| Control of Corruption |
The aggregate indicators combine the views of a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. The individual data sources underlying the aggregate indicators are drawn from a diverse variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations.
The six aggregate indicators and the underlying data sources can be viewed interactively on the Governance Indicators webpage . Documentation of the latest update of the WGI can be found in "Governance Matters VI: Governance Indicators for 1996–2006." Further documentation and research using the WGI is available on the Resources page of this website or at www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance.
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi2007/sc_country.asp
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=999979
Governance Matters VI: Governance Indicators for 1996-2006
DANIEL KAUFMANN
World Bank Institute
AART KRAAY
World Bank - Development Research Group (DECRG)
MASSIMO MASTRUZZI
World Bank - Research Department July 2007
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4280Abstract:
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.
