Governance Matters VII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996-2007

Kaufmann, Daniel ; Kraay, Aart ; Mastruzzi, Massimo

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNTABILITY;    ADB;    AGGREGATE GOVERNANCE;    AGGREGATE GOVERNANCE INDICATORS;    AGGREGATE INDICATOR;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4654
RP-ID  :  WPS4654

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper reports on the latest updateof the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) researchproject, covering 212 countries and territories andmeasuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and2007: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability andAbsence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness,Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption.The latest aggregate indicators are based on hundreds ofspecific and disaggregated individual variables measuringvarious dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sourcesprovided by 32 different organizations. The data reflect theviews on governance of public sector, private sector and NGOexperts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm surveyrespondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly reportthe margins of error accompanying each country estimate.These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuringgovernance using any kind of data. The authors also brieflydescribe the evolution of the WGI since its inception, andshow that the margins of error on the aggregate governanceindicators have declined over the years, even though theystill remain non-trivial. The authors find that even aftertaking margins of error into account, the WGI permitmeaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoringprogress over time. In less than a decade, a substantialnumber of countries exhibit statistically significantimprovements in at least one dimension of governance, whileother countries exhibit deterioration in some dimensions.These aggregate indicators, spanning more than a decade,together with the disaggregated individual indicators, areavailable at www.govindicators.org.