Search for a command to run...
Six dimensions of governance are estimated covering 199 countries and territories for four periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. The indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance drawn from 25 data sources constructed by 18 organizations. These individual measures are assigned to categories capturing key dimensions of governance. An unobserved-components model is used to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. Point esti-mates of the dimensions of governance are provided as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. Methodological issues are also addressed, including tests for potential biases, and the interpretation and use of the data, given the estimated margins of errors for the indicators. The data and a Web-based graphical interface are available online at www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/govdata2002/index.html. This article presents estimates of six dimensions of governance for 199 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 developed in the context of an ongoingproject tomeasure governance across countries. Section I describes the data used in developing this round of the governance indicators, which include several new sources. Data sources used in the earlier studies were updated forward to 2002 andbackward to1996, andpreviously estimated indicators for1998and2000were revised to reflect the new data. The aggregation procedure, described in section II, provides not only estimates of governance for each country but alsomeasures of the precision or reliability of these estimates. Although the new data have improved the precision of the governance indicators, themargins of error remain large relative to the units in which governance is measured, so that comparisons across countries and especially over time should be made with caution. Measurement error is not unique to these indicators but is pervasive among all measures of governance and