The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Methodology and Analytical Issues

TLDR

The data reflect the views of survey respondents and experts worldwide, highlighting the inherent difficulties in measuring governance. This paper summarizes the methodology of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project and related analytical issues. The WGI cover over 200 countries and territories, measuring six governance dimensions since 1996, are constructed from several hundred underlying variables from diverse data sources, and report margins of error for each country estimate. Even after accounting for margins of error, the WGI enable meaningful cross‑country and over‑time comparisons.

Abstract

This paper summarizes the methodology of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project, and related analytical issues. The WGI cover over 200 countries and territories, measuring six dimensions of governance starting in 1996: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, 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. The WGI also explicitly report margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. Even after taking these margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country and over-time comparisons.