DUSHANBE, June 26, 2008, Asia-Plus — This year’s updated version of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), compiled by World Bank researchers, shows many developing country governments making important gains in control of corruption, and some of them matching rich country performance in overall governance measures, press release issued by the World Bank said.
The Indicators suggest that where there is commitment to reform, improvements in governance can and do occur. Over the past decade from 1998-2007, countries in all regions have shown substantial improvements in governance, even if at times starting from a very low level. Examples include: Tajikistan in Rue of Law; Ghana, Indonesia, Liberia and Peru in Voice and Accountability; Rwanda, Algeria and Angola in Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism; Afghanistan, Serbia and Ethiopia in Government Effectiveness; Georgia and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Regulatory Quality; and Liberia and Serbia in Control of Corruption.
Good governance can be found at all income levels, with some emerging economies matching the performance of rich countries on key dimensions of governance. Over a dozen emerging countries, including Slovenia, Chile, Botswana, Estonia, Uruguay, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mauritius, and Costa Rica score higher on key dimensions of governance than industrialized countries such as Greece or Italy. And in many cases these differences are statistically significant.
Over 2002-2007, the Indicators show sharp improvements in governance, along with reversals. Examples include strong improvements in Voice and Accountability in countries such as Ukraine and Haiti; improvements in Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism in Argentina; and improvements in Control of Corruption in Georgia and Tanzania.
But despite governance gains in some countries, overall quality of governance around the world has not improved much over the past decade. Coinciding with countries that have done well, a similar number have experienced deteriorations in several governance dimensions, including Zimbabwe, Cote D’Ivoire, Belarus, Eritrea and Venezuela. In many other countries, no significant change in either direction is yet apparent in recent years.
This year’s study is the seventh update of the WGI, a decade-long effort by the researchers to build and update the most comprehensive cross-country set of governance indicators currently available. The Indicators cover 212 countries and territories, drawing on 35 different data sources to capture the views of tens of thousands of survey respondents worldwide, as well as thousands of experts in the private, NGO, and public sectors.
The WGI measure six broad definitions of governance capturing the key elements of this definition: Voice and Accountability — the extent to which a country”s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media; Political Stability and Absence of Violence — the likelihood that the government will be destabilized by unconstitutional or violent means, including terrorism; Government Effectiveness — the quality of public services, the capacity of the civil service and its independence from political pressures; the quality of policy formulation; Regulatory Quality — the ability of the government to provide sound policies and regulations that enable and promote private sector development; Rule of Law — the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, including the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence; Control of Corruption — the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests.
