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The worldwide governance indicators : methodology and analytical issues

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• Kaufmann, Daniel
• Kraay, Aart
• Mastruzzi, Massimo
• Daniel Kaufmann

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The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Methodology and Analytical Issues

• Published: 01 September 2015
• Volume 3 , pages 220–246, ( 2011 )

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• Daniel Kaufmann ,
• Aart Kraay &
• Massimo Mastruzzi  

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This paper summarizes the methodology of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project, and related analytical issues. The WGI has covered over two hundred countries and territories, measuring six dimensions of governance starting in 1996: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Eff ectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. The aggregate indicators are based on several hundred individual underlying variables, taken from a wide variety of existing data sources. The data reflect the views on governance of survey respondents and public, private, and NGO sector experts worldwide. We also explicitly report 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 and over-time comparisons. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying source data, are available at <www.govindicators.org>.

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Brookings Institution, [email protected].

World Bank, [email protected].

World Bank, [email protected].

The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Brookings Institution, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are not used by the World Bank for resource allocation. Financial support from the World Bank’s Knowledge for Change trust fund, and the Hewlett Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. We would like to thank S. Rose, S. Radelet, C. Logan, M. Neumann, N. Meisel, J. Ould-Auodia, R. Fullenbaum, M. Seligson, F. Marzo, C. Walker, P. Wongwan, V. Hollingsworth, S. Hatipoglu, D. Cingranelli, D. Richards, M. Lagos, R. Coutinho, S. Mannan, Z. Tabernacki, J. Auger, L. Mootz, N. Heller, G. Kisunko, J. Rodriguez Mesa, J. Riano, V. Penciakova, and D. Cieslikowsky for providing data and comments, and answering our numerous questions. Particular thanks is due to Arseny Malov for his work in designing and maintaining the WGI website at <www.govindicators.org>.

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Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A. & Mastruzzi, M. The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Methodology and Analytical Issues. Hague J Rule Law 3 , 220–246 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1017/S1876404511200046

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Published : 01 September 2015

Issue Date : June 2011

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1017/S1876404511200046

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Worldwide Governance Indicators Project (1996-2021)

Published by: open development mekong.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project constructs aggregate indicators of six broad dimensions of governance:

Voice and Accountability Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism Government Effectiveness Regulatory Quality Rule of Law Control of Corruption

The six aggregate indicators are based on over 30 underlying data sources reporting the perceptions of governance of a large number of survey respondents and expert assessments worldwide. Details on the underlying data sources, the aggregation method, and the interpretation of the indicators, can be found in the WGI methodology paper:

Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi (2010). "The Worldwide Governance Indicators : A Summary of Methodology, Data and Analytical Issues". World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5430 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1682130

Full interactive access to the aggregate indicators, and the underlying source data, is available at www.govindicators.org.

Note that this Worldwide Governance Indicators update incorporates revisions to data for previous years, and so this data release supersedes data from all previous releases.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are a research dataset summarizing the views on the quality of governance provided by a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. These data are gathered from a number of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and private sector firms.

Data Resources (1)

Worldwide governance indicators wgi dataset (including lmcs), additional info.