Worldwide Governance Indicators

Governance can be broadly defined as the set of traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes (1) the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced, (2) the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies, and (3) the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them.

The WGI measure six broad dimensions of governance:

1. Voice and Accountability (VA) – capturing perceptions of the extent to which a country's citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media.
2. Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism (PV) – capturing perceptions of the likelihood of political instability and/or politically-motivated violence, including terrorism.
3. Government Effectiveness (GE) – capturing perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies.
4. Regulatory Quality (RQ) – capturing perceptions of the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development.
5. Rule of Law (RL) – capturing perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence.
6. Control of Corruption (CC) – capturing perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as "capture" of the state by elites and private interests.

The six composite WGI measures are useful as a first tool for broad cross-country comparisons and for evaluating broad trends over time. However, they are often too blunt a tool to be useful in formulating specific governance reforms in particular country contexts. Such reforms, and evaluation of their progress, need to be informed by much more detailed and country-specific diagnostic data that can identify the relevant constraints on governance in particular country circumstances. The WGI as complementary to a large number of other efforts to construct more detailed measures of governance, often just for a single country. Users are encouraged to consult the disaggregated individual indicators underlying the composite WGI scores to gain more insights into the particular areas of strengths and weaknesses identified by the data.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators were updated every two years between 1996 and 2002. After 2002, they are updated on a yearly basis. Annual updates are released at the end of September of each year with data through the previous calendar year.

No, 1996 will remain the starting year. Going further back in time would require dropping several of data sources as they became available only in recent years. Dropping sources would decrease both the precision of the estimates (i.e. higher standard error) and the interpretation of changes over time (as a country relative position could be affected by the subtraction of sources rather than an actual change in its performance).

Some of the WGI data sources may revise their historical data with each new data update. In addition, in some years new data sources have been added to the WGI with historical data extending to previous years in the WGI. In both cases, the historical source data in the WGI database are updated (and the historical aggregate WGI measures are recalculated). Finally, there sometimes are errors in the processing of the source data for previous years that are corrected in the current update. All of these may contribute to differences in the data between vintages of the WGI dataset. For these reasons, each annual update of the WGI supersedes previous vintages of the dataset.   Typically, the revisions to the historical data between WGI vintages are very small.  Each year’s WGI update includes a note describing any revisions to the historical data (click here for the document describing revisions to the source data in the current WGI update).

The entire WGI dataset is publicly available and downloadable in Excel and Stata formats.

Yes.  A full replication package for the WGI is available here.

The WGI are based on a large number of different data sources, capturing the views and experiences of survey respondents and experts in the public and private sectors, as well as various NGOs. These data sources include: (a) surveys of households and firms (e.g. Afrobarometer surveys, Gallup World Poll, and Global Competitiveness Report survey), (b) NGOs (e.g. Global Integrity, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders), (c) commercial business information providers (e.g. Economist Intelligence Unit, S&P Global, Political Risk Services), and (d) public sector organizations (e.g. CPIA assessments of World Bank and regional development banks). For a complete list of sources used in the current update of the WGI, click here.

Yes. On the Interactive Data Access, in the “table view” click on country scores to expand the view to display the source data for each score. All of the source data for a selected country and indicator can be retrieved from the “country data view” tab in the Interactive Data Access tab. Source data can also downloaded for all countries here. Source data are displayed on a common 0-1 scale. Please note that the source data in these units are comparable over time, but not across sources. See WGI methodology paper for details.

The WGI are based on 35 data sources that fall into two broad categories: surveys of households and firms (accounting for 11 data sources), and expert assessments (accounting for 24 data sources). Household and firm surveys capture the views of people living and working in the countries to which the data apply. Expert assessments reflect the views and perceptions of experts employed and/or convened by the organizations producing the data sources. In many cases these experts also are located in the regions or countries on which they provide information. In terms of geographic diversity, six data sources are produced by organizations based in the “Global South” (African Development Bank CPIA, African Electoral Index, Afrobarometer, Asian Development Bank CPIA, Latinobarometro, and the Africa Integrity Indicators). A further seven data sources (World Bank Business Enterprise Performance Surveys, Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer, Global Competitiveness Survey, Gallup World Poll, IMD World Competitiveness Survey, Americas Barometer Survey, and World Justice Project) are surveys of households or firms that cover respondents in developing countries as well as advanced economies. For more information on the WGI data sources, please consult the data files for the individual data sources posted here, as well as Annex A of the WGI methodology paper.

A description of the variables contributing to each of the six aggregate WGI measures can be found by clicking on their names:

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

For a description of each data source and access to underlying data click here.

The WGI compile and summarize information from over 30 existing data sources that report the views and experiences of citizens, entrepreneurs, and experts in the public, private and NGO sectors from around the world, on the quality of various aspects of governance. The WGI data sources are selected based on four criteria:

1. The data sources must provide subjective perceptions of relevant dimensions of governance, as the WGI are based exclusively on this type of data.
2. The sources must provide original primary data produced using a well-defined methodology.
3. The data sources must cover multiple countries, so that cross-country comparisons are possible.
4. The data sources must be updated regularly, ideally every year, although some WGI data sources are updated once every two or three years.

Suggestions for additional data sources that meet these criteria are welcome – please email suggestions to wgi@worldbank.org. 

The views and perceptions of firms and households matter because they make decisions based on them. Households will not use the police if they perceive the police to be corrupt. Firms will not use the courts and opt for informality if they view the benefits of the formal sector as being small. Perceptions-based data are a valuable tool for capturing the realities of governance outcomes "on the ground", which may be very different from the formal rules "on the books" that can be captured with objective data. In some areas, notably corruption, it is nearly impossible to measure governance in any other way than by relying on the experiences and views of informed respondents.

Data sources based on expert assessments have advantages and disadvantages relative to surveys. One advantage is that they lend themselves well to cross-country comparisons, as their methodologies are explicitly designed for this purpose. Expert assessments can also provide more granular technical assessments, for example on the quality of specific types of public institutions, that would be more difficult for a typical household or firm survey respondent to provide and informed view on. Expert assessments also are less likely to be affected by respondent reticence, a concern in household and firm surveys where respondents may be unwilling to give candid responses to sensitive questions about corruption or other dimensions of governance, particularly in countries where governance is weak. On the other hand, a shortcoming of expert assessments is that they reflect the views of a narrower set of respondents than household or firm surveys. It also is possible that the ratings provided by one expert assessment to some extent reflect the views of other expert assessments, so that each assessment does not bring completely independent information on the underlying governance concept of interest. To guard against this, we do not use expert assessments that are explicitly based on other existing data sources.

Individual questions from the underlying data sources are assigned to each of the six aggregate indicators. For example, a firm survey question on the regulatory environment would be assigned to Regulatory Quality, or a measure of press freedom would be assigned to Voice and Accountability. A full description of the individual variables used in the WGI and how they are assigned to the six aggregate indicators is available at www.govindicators.org. Multiple questions from the same source are also averaged together.

Each one of the six aggregate WGI measures are then constructed as a weighted average of the rescaled data from the individual sources, using a statistical technique known as an unobserved components model (UCM). The rescaling of the variables reflects the fact different indicators use different explicit and implicit units to measure governance. The weights in each year reflect the pattern of correlation among sources in that year: the UCM assigns more weight to sources that are more correlated with each other and sources that are less correlated get less weight. Weighting the indicators in this way improves the precision of the aggregate indicators but matters relatively little for the ranking of countries, which is very similar using unweighted averages.

For details, please refer to the WGI methodology paper.

All measures of governance and the investment climate are unavoidably imprecise. The WGI capture this imprecision by showing margins of error with countries scores that capture the statistically-likely range of values of governance. These margins of error reflect the extent of agreement among the underlying data sources: when data sources tend to agree, the margins of error are smaller, and when they disagree, margins of error are larger.

Margins of error are also smaller for country estimates based on more data sources. For example, margins of error for a country estimate based on just one data source would be more than twice as large as for a country estimate based on five data sources. A typical country estimate in the WGI data in recent years is based on 11 separate data sources. These margins of error reflect the reality that governance is difficult to measure using any kind of data. In most measures of governance or the investment climate they are however left implicit or ignored altogether. The interactive WGI website clearly reports 90 percent confidence intervals for all country governance estimates. The margins of error have declined over time as the number of data sources on which the WGI are based has increased.

For details on the construction and interpretation of these margins of error please refer to the WGI methodology paper.

The six aggregate WGI measures are constructed using a statistical methodology known as an Unobserved Components Model (UCM). This methodology has two key advantages over other approaches such as simply rescaling and averaging indicators together. First, it provides a way of assigning greater weight to indicators that are more informative about governance, resulting in a more precise overall average. Second, the methodology generates margins of error around the estimates of governance that capture the unavoidable uncertainty in measuring governance, with a clear statistical interpretation.  These margins of error should be taken into account when comparing the WGI estimates of governance across countries and over time. Please refer to the WGI methodology paper for more details.

The weights assigned to each of the individual data sources on which the aggregate indicator is based for a given country and year reflect the precision of the underlying data sources, with more precise data sources receiving greater weight. The precision of the data sources is determined using a statistical technique known as an Unobserved Components Model (UCM) – see Section 3 of the WGI methodology paper for details. The precise weights are different for each country, indicator, and year, because the aggregate indicators may be based on different data sources in each case. The average (across countries) of the weights assigned to each data source for the six aggregate indicators in every year can be downloaded from the WGI website in Excel and Stata format. To see the weights used for any specific country-indicator-year combination, please retrieve the Excel tool that reproduces the WGI calculations available on the WGI website.

The six aggregate WGI indicators reflect a series of decisions about the selection of WGI data sources, the assignment of questions to different data sources, and the approach to aggregation. The definitions of the dimensions themselves also involves some judgment, as alternative conceptualizations of governance might lead to a larger or smaller number of dimensions with potentially different structure than what we use in the WGI. We recognize that there may be no single outcome for many of these decisions that will be satisfactory to all users of the WGI. For this reason, the WGI website allows users to easily access the source data in Excel and Stata format and provides a full reproducibility package that replicates the WGI calculations, so that interested users can readily explore alternative organizations of the WGI source data and approaches to aggregation that suit their specific purposes.

When comparing two countries, or one country at two points in time, it is important to take margins of error into account. A useful rule of thumb is that if the two confidence intervals overlap, the difference between the two countries or two points in time is not statistically, or likely practically, significant.

Put differently, when changes in the aggregate governance scores are small relative to the reported margins of error, they should not be over-interpreted – in such cases the WGI data are not informative about trends in governance, or differences across countries. For more details, click here.

Changes in governance over short year-to-year periods are difficult to measure with any kind of data, and are typically quite small. Recognizing this, users of the WGI should in most cases not focus on short-run year-to-year changes but rather in trends over longer periods.

As with comparisons across countries, comparisons of governance scores for one country over time need to take into account margins of error: if confidence intervals for governance estimates in two periods overlap, the WGI data should not be interpreted as signaling meaningful changes in governance. The vast majority of year-to-year changes in the WGI are too small relative to margins of error to be viewed as statistically, or practically, significant, and so should not be over-interpreted as indicating a significant change in governance performance. However, over longer periods of time such as a decade, the WGI data do show significant trends in governance in a number of countries.

Changes over time in a country’s score on the WGI reflect a combination of three factors (i) changes in the underlying source data, (ii) the addition of new data sources for a country that are only available in the more recent period, and (iii) changes in the weights used to aggregate the individual sources. For large and statistically significant changes over long periods of time, changes in the underlying source data are most often the most important of these three factors. For the many smaller and often insignificant changes over shorter periods, a combination of all three factors contributes to changes in country scores.

Full access to the individual underlying data sources via www.govindicators.org can help users better understand the reasons for changes in the aggregate indicators for a particular country.

The WGI measure governance in units where the average score for the world as a whole is zero in every period. Therefore, the six composite WGI measures cannot be used to study trends in world averages of governance, although they can of course be used to compare countries’ performance relative to one another.

To gain insights into trends in global averages of governance it is necessary to consult the data sources. Available evidence suggests no clear pattern of systematic improvements or declines in global averages (see WGI methodology paper for details). This observation can be used to rationalize choice of units for the WGI where the world average is constant over time.

Yes. For approximately two-thirds of all possible pairwise country comparisons on the WGI, margins of error reflecting 90% confidence intervals do not overlap, indicating statistically significant differences. Looking at changes over time over long periods such as a decade, typically around 8 percent of countries covered will show a significant improvement or decline in the WGI measures. However, many small changes over shorter periods, or small differences between countries with similar ranks on the WGI, are not significant and should not be overinterpreted.

The six aggregate WGI indicators are not combined into a single overall composite governance indicator, for conceptual and statistical reasons. Conceptually, the resulting indicator would be extremely broad and difficult to interpret.  Statistically, the concern is that many of the WGI data sources contribute to more than one of the six aggregate indicators.  This raises the concern that some of the observed correlation between the six aggregate indicators may simply reflect the fact that they draw on closely related indicators produced by the same organization, rather than true patterns in the underlying dimensions of governance.  This in turn complicates the construction of margins of error that would be essential for interpreting cross-country differences and over-time changes in such an overall aggregate indicator of governance.

This indicator does not measure how long a particular government has been in power. Instead, it captures perceptions of the likelihood of politically-motivated violence, including terrorism. Thus the United States for example has a sharp decline in this dimension between 2000 and 2002. This happened not because the political process in the United States is now perceived as more unstable than in the 1990s. Rather, it reflects perceptions of the risk of terrorist attacks on the United States that increased sharply following the events of September 11, 2001. Similarly, countries that are functioning democracies, but are marred by domestic politically-motivated violence, may also not score well on this indicator.