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The practice of good governance distinguishes successful democratic nations from those many states which do little for their people. Governance is the delivery of a number of critical public goods to citizens: security, rule of law, political freedoms, an enabling framework for economic performance, education, health, and so on. Where a regime fails to perform?fails to provide reasonable quantities and qualities of essential public goods?it is governing poorly. But can the nations of the world, particularly the nations of the developing world, be rated according to how well they govern? Is it desirable, and possible, to develop a set of rankings of countries with the best governed at the top and least well governed at the bottom? Could such a ranking system, analogous to that developed by Transparency International for corruption, encourage countries to attempt to govern themselves more effectively?Marie Besancon?s Good Governance Rankings: The Art of Measurement, WPF Report 36, examines the nature of the governance problem and the extent to which the salient questions have been answered. She reports on a WPF-Program-organized meeting at the Kennedy School of Government that discussed these and other critical governance issues. Her detailed analysis prepares policy makers to re-examine the criteria being readied for the Millennium Challenge Account, and those being used formally or informally by several national aid agencies. It also prepares policy makers to decide on the feasibility of creating a robust method of comparing how one government performs against another.Dr. Besancon also reviews the fifty most prominent data sets already employed to answer parts or nearly all of the relevant questions. The appendix to her report contains an appraisal of each of those data sets. It is intended to spur further research and discussion on how best to measure governance in the modern world.
Higher education and innovation policies are today seen as central elements in national economic competitiveness, increasingly measured by global rankings. The book analyses the evolution of indicator-based global knowledge governance, where various national attributes have been evaluated under international comparative assessment. Reflecting this general trend, the Shanghai ranking, first published in 2003, has pressured governments and universities all over the world to improve their performance in global competition. More recently, as global rankings have met criticism for their methodology and scope, measurements of various sizes and shapes have proliferated: some celebrating novel methodological solutions, others breaking new conceptual grounds. This book takes a fresh look at developments in the field of knowledge governance by showing how emerging indicators, innovation indexes and subnational comparisons are woven into the existing fabric of measurements that govern our ideas of higher education, innovation and competitiveness. This book argues that while rankings are becoming more numerous and fragmented, the new knowledge products, nevertheless, tend to reproduce ideas and practices existing in the field of global measurement.
Indicators and rankings are widely used by governments and organisations to assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and success of policy decisions. This book evaluates the creation of indicators, their impact on policy decisions, and the implications of their use.
The use of indicators as a technique of global governance is increasing rapidly. Major examples include the World Bank's Doing Business Indicators, the World Bank's Good Governance and Rule of Law indicators, the Millennium Development Goals, and the indicators produced by Transparency International. Human rights indicators are being developed in the UN and regional and advocacy organizations. The burgeoning production and use of indicators has not, however, been accompanied by systematic comparative study of, or reflection on, the implications, possibilities, and pitfalls of this practice. This book furthers the study of these issues by examining the production and history of indicators, as well as relationships between the producers, users, subjects, and audiences of indicators. It also explores the creation, use, and effects of indicators as forms of knowledge and as mechanisms of making and implementing decisions in global governance. Using insights from case studies, empirical work, and theoretical approaches from several disciplines, the book identifies legal, policy, and normative implications of the production and use of indicators as a tool of global governance.
Over the last decade, international rankings have emerged as a critical tool used by international actors engaged in global governance. State practices and performance are now judged by a number of high-profile indices, including assessments of their levels of corruption, quality of democracy, creditworthiness, media freedom, and business environment. However, these rankings always carry value judgments, methodological choices, and implicit political agendas. This volume expertly addresses the important analytical, normative, and policy issues associated with the contemporary practice of 'grading states'. The chapters explore how rankings affect our perceptions of state performance, how states react to being ranked, why some rankings exert more global influence than others, and how states have come to strategize and respond to these public judgments. The book also critically examines how treating state rankings like popular consumer choice indices may actually lead policymakers to internalize questionable normative assumptions and lead to poorer, not improved, public policy outcomes.
Governance is the word that describes the tension-filled interaction between citizens and their rulers, and the various manners in which diverse kinds of governments enable their constituents to achieve satisfaction and material prosperity, or to thwart those and related aspirations. This report outlines a rationale for and a method of ranking the countries of the world according to the quality of their governance. It suggests the establishment of a new non-governmental organization to oversee the process, and details how that NGO would create the necessary rating system.
A notable group of social scientists explore the political economy of good governance and how it relates to performance management, the influence of political parties, education and health issues in developing countries, the economic performance of transition economies, and the effects of climate on poverty.
As difficult as it might seem to define governance, it appears to be that much more difficult to measure it. Since the World Bank Institute launched the Worldwide Governance Indicators in the late 1990s, the governance indicators field has flourished and experienced significant advances in terms of methodology, data coverage and quality, and policy relevance. Other major initiatives have added to a momentum that propelled research on governance indicators seen in few other academic fields in the economic and social sciences. Given these developments and the prominence and policy relevance the field of governance indicator research has achieved, the time is ripe to take stock and ask what has been accomplished, what the shortcomings and potentials might be, and what steps present themselves as a way forward. This volume-- the fifth edition in an annual series tackling different aspects of governance around the world-- assesses what has been achieved, identifies strengths and weaknesses of current work, and points to issues that need to be tackled in order to advance the field, both in its academic importance as well as in its policy relevance. In short, the contributions to this volume explore the scope of existing governance indices and indicator frameworks, elaborate on current challenges in measuring and analysing governance, and consider how to overcome them.
The practice of good governance distinguishes successful democratic nations from those many states which do little for their people. Governance is the delivery of a number of critical public goods to citizens: security, rule of law, political freedoms, an enabling framework for economic performance, education, health, and so on. Where a regime fails to perform?fails to provide reasonable quantities and qualities of essential public goods?it is governing poorly. But can the nations of the world, particularly the nations of the developing world, be rated according to how well they govern? Is it desirable, and possible, to develop a set of rankings of countries with the best governed at the top and least well governed at the bottom? Could such a ranking system, analogous to that developed by Transparency International for corruption, encourage countries to attempt to govern themselves more effectively?Marie Besancon?s Good Governance Rankings: The Art of Measurement, WPF Report 36, examines the nature of the governance problem and the extent to which the salient questions have been answered. She reports on a WPF-Program-organized meeting at the Kennedy School of Government that discussed these and other critical governance issues. Her detailed analysis prepares policy makers to re-examine the criteria being readied for the Millennium Challenge Account, and those being used formally or informally by several national aid agencies. It also prepares policy makers to decide on the feasibility of creating a robust method of comparing how one government performs against another.Dr. Besancon also reviews the fifty most prominent data sets already employed to answer parts or nearly all of the relevant questions. The appendix to her report contains an appraisal of each of those data sets. It is intended to spur further research and discussion on how best to measure governance in the modern world.
Abstract: Scholars, policymakers, aid donors, and aid recipients acknowledge the importance of good governance for development. This understanding has spurred an intense interest in more refined, nuanced, and policy-relevant indicators of governance. In this paper we review progress to date in the area of measuring governance, using a simple framework of analysis focusing on two key questions: (i) what do we measure? and, (ii) whose views do we rely on? For the former question, we distinguish between indicators measuring formal laws or rules 'on the books', and indicators that measure the practical application or outcomes of these rules 'on the ground', calling attention to the strengths and weaknesses of both types of indicators as well as the complementarities between them. For the latter question, we distinguish between experts and survey respondents on whose views governance assessments are based, again highlighting their advantages, disadvantages, and complementarities. We also review the merits of aggregate as opposed to individual governance indicators. We conclude with some simple principles to guide the refinement of existing governance indicators and the development of future indicators. We emphasize the need to: transparently disclose and account for the margins of error in all indicators; draw from a diversity of indicators and exploit complementarities among them; submit all indicators to rigorous public and academic scrutiny; and, in light of the lessons of over a decade of existing indicators, to be realistic in the expectations of future indicators.