What Is Governance?

TLDR

The commentary highlights the lack of reliable empirical measures and conceptual consensus on what defines high‑quality government in executive branches and bureaucracies. The authors aim to replace output measures with a two‑dimensional framework that uses capacity and autonomy to assess executive branch quality. They propose four measurement approaches—procedural, capacity, output, and autonomy—and then focus on a capacity‑autonomy framework. The framework explains why low‑income countries are advised to reduce bureaucratic autonomy while high‑income countries seek to increase it.

Abstract

This commentary points to the poor state of empirical measures of the quality of states, that is, executive branches and their bureaucracies. Much of the problem is conceptual, as there is very little agreement on what constitutes high‐quality government. The commentary suggests four approaches: (1) procedural measures, such as the W eberian criteria of bureaucratic modernity; (2) capacity measures, which include both resources and degree of professionalization; (3) output measures; and (4) measures of bureaucratic autonomy. It rejects output measures and suggests a two‐dimensional framework of using capacity and autonomy as a measure of executive branch quality. This framework explains the conundrum of why low‐income countries are advised to reduce bureaucratic autonomy while high‐income ones seek to increase it.