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World Governance Indicators

The World Governance Indicators (WGI), produced annually by the World Bank Group, are designed to help researchers and analysts assess broad patterns in perceptions of governance across countries and over time. The WGI aggregate data from more than 30 think tanks, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and private firms across the world. Included indicators are selected on the basis of three criteria:  1) produced by credible organizations, 2) provide comparable cross-country data, and 3) regularly updated. 

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The WGI include six aggregate governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories for the period from 1996-2022:

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Voice and Accountability: The WGI Voice and Accountability measures the perception 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. [Sources: 


Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism: Perceptions of the likelihood of political instability and/or politically motivated violence, including terrorism. Variables are sourced from a multitude of international assessments and measures of internal violence such as Civil War, Interstate War, Intensity of Ethnic, Religious, or Regional conflicts, among many others.

 
Government Effectiveness: Government effectiveness captures 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.


Regulatory Quality: Regulatory quality captures perceptions of the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development. 

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Rule of Law: Rule of law captures 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.


Control of Corruption: Control of corruption captures 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. 

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Aggregated data reflect the diverse views on governance of many stakeholders worldwide, including tens of thousands of survey respondents and experts.

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The WGI are intended for general cross-country comparisons and for evaluating broad trends over time. When evaluations of the governance reforms of specific countries are required, the WGI should be supplemented with more detailed country-specific information. 

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When using WGI data, the user should be mindful that changes in a country’s score over time might reflect a one or combination of three factors: changes in the underlying source data, the addition of new data sources for a country that are only available in the more recent period, and changes in the weights used to aggregate the individual sources. 

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WGI data for 1996-2022 can be accessed here

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