World Governance Index

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) is a project that reports both aggregate and individual governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories covering the period from 1996 to 2021. It considers six dimensions of governance:[1]

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

These aggregate indicators are based on the views of a large number of enterprise, citizen, and expert survey respondents in both industrial and developing countries. The indicators draw from over 30 individual data sources produced by a variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and private sector firms.[2]

The 2022 WGI update includes significant revisions to the underlying source data, which affect the data for earlier years in the WGI dataset. This latest release supersedes previous releases.[3]

Background

Creating a set of indicators for the World Governance Index (WGI) is a comprehensive and complex process. The objective is to measure a modern concept that, despite its historical roots,[4] is currently applied in certain frameworks and implemented by identified entities.[5] Although there is agreement on diagnosing its challenges,[6] it is still far from being fully "stabilized".

Drawing from the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which was unanimously adopted by heads of state and government in 2000, a team of researchers from the Forum for a new World Governance (FnWG), consisting of Gustavo Marín, Arnaud Blin, and Renaud François, concentrated their research on five core concepts that outline the application framework of world governance and represent key objectives to be achieved by 2015:

• Peace / Security
• Democracy / Rule of Law
• Human Rights / Participation
• Sustainable Development
• Human Development

What is the purpose of a WGI?

The research team considered its mission with two goals in mind:

• The first was to create a World Governance Index (WGI) providing an overall picture of world governance at time T based on data obtained for the 179 countries included in the survey. The WGI combines 5 indicators, each made up of 13 sub-indicators, each of those made up of 37 indexes. These indexes were selected from among the best available databases. They are all provided by recognized sources, well known for their quality, seriousness, and reliability.

Factors constituting the World Governance Index

Indicator	Sub-indicator	Index
Peace / Security	National Security	Conflicts
		Refugees / Asylum Seekers
		Displaced Persons
	Public Security	Political climate
		Degree of trust
		Violent Crime
		Homicides / 100,000 inhabitants
Rule of Law	Body of Laws	Ratification of International Treaties
		Protection of Property Rights
	Legal System	Independence
		Effectiveness
		Settlement of Contractual Disputes
	Corruption	Corruption Perceptions Index
Human Rights / Participation	Civil and Political Rights	Respect of Civil Rights
		Respect of Physical Integrity Rights
		Freedom of the Press
		Violence against the Press
	Participation	Participation in Political Life
		Electoral Process and Pluralism
		Political Culture
	Discrimination / Gender Inequalities	Women's Political Rights
		Women's Social Rights
		Women's Economic Rights
		Female Parliamentary Rate
Sustainable Development	Economic Sector	Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita
		GDP Growth Rate
		Inflation Rate
		Ease in starting a business
	Social Dimension	Poverty Rate / Inequalities (Gini Coefficient)
		Unemployment Rate
		Ratification of International Labor Law Treaties
	Environmental Dimension	Ecological Footprint / Biocapacity
		Environmental Sustainability
		Environmental Performance Index
Human Development	Development	Human Development
	Well-being / Happiness	Subjective Well-being
		Happiness

• The second goal is to motivate world-governance actors to consider the resulting WGI and the relative importance of the different indicators. This should allow them to identify the "key" or "pilot" indicators that will set up the conditions for good world governance and, more importantly, guarantee their sustainability. The ultimate goal of this study is part of a long-term process. On the basis of the situation described by the WGI and of its diagnosis, it should allow actors in charge of governance to raise the right questions in order to consider solutions.

Methodology and databases

The 37 indexes constituting the WGI have been set on a scale from zero to one, a scale similar to the one developed by the United Nations Development Programme for its Human Development Index (HDI).

Although some of the indexes used (only 4 out of the 37) were drawn from databases that had not been updated since 2007, the 2008 World Governance Index nevertheless reflects the state of world governance in 2008.

The regional rankings are inspired from UNDP classification. The 179 countries surveyed in this study —microstates were deliberately not included in this list – were grouped into six regional subgroups:

• Africa
• European Union / OECD
• Latin America / Caribbean
• Asia / Pacific
• Arab World
• NIS / Central Asia / Balkans

Sources

World Governance Index: PDF document, 81 pages.

References

1. "Worldwide Governance Indicators". World Bank. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
2. "Worldwide Governance Indicators". World Bank. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
3. "Worldwide Governance Indicators". World Bank. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
4. See the first chapter of Global Governance on Wikipedia.
5. This includes organizations like the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions.
6. Among many similar diagnoses, see for example: World Humanity Action Trust (2000), "Governance for a Sustainable Future", Reports of the Commissions of the World Humanity Action Trust, Russell Press Ltd., Nottingham (UK), p. 30 Archived 2016-06-12 at the Wayback Machine; (2009), O'Hara, P.A. (ed.), "Public Policy and Political Economy", International Encyclopedia of Public Policy - Governance in a Global Age, Vol. 3, Perth; "Environmental governance" on Wikipedia; "Current global governance systems lack capacity to deal with global risks" in Daily Financial Times, Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. Colombo (Sri Lanka), January 14, 2011 Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine; etc.