World Governance Indicators Project

The Worldwide Governance Indicators project (WGI project) maintains an index of perceptions of governance quality.

Description

There are 6 dimensions to governance as measured by this project:

1. Voice and Accountability (va),
2. Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism (pv),
3. Government Effectiveness (ge),
4. Regulatory Quality (rq),
5. Rule of Law (rl), and
6. Control of Corruption (cc)

Importantly, the project aims to index perceptions of these dimensions, not an objective status.

The measurements are collected from survey research and expert assessments.

Examples of survey measurements:

• World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey
• Afrobarometer

• Latinobarómetro

• Americas Barometer
• Gallup World Poll

Examples of expert assessment measurements:

• Reporters without Borders Press Freedom Index
• Freedom House
• Bertelsmann Transformation Index

• V-Dem

• World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment

• USDOS Trafficking in Persons Report

These measurements are aggregated within dimensions to a per-year, per-country unit using an unobserved components model. The aggregate scores effectively range from -2.5 to 2.5. (The units are standard deviations on a normal distribution characterizing governance quality, so 99% of scores are within that range.) Countries are also often ranked into yearly percentiles. In the online portal, 90% confidence intervals are reported as well.

The project suggests that these scores be used for cross-country and time series analyses.

See also

WGI project home

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