Publication: Response to 'What Do the Worldwide Governance Indicators Measure?'
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Date
2010
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09578811
Published
2010
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Thomas (2009) dismisses the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) as an 'elaborate and unsupported hypothesis' because of the failure to demonstrate the 'construct validity' of these indicators. We argue that 'construct validity' is not a useful tool to assess the merits of the WGI, and even if it were, Thomas provides no evidence of any practical consequences of failure to meet the criteria of construct validity.
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Publication The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Six, One, or None?(2010)Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, have become popular in comparative political analysis. Few studies examine the validity or reliability of these indexes. To partially fill this gap, this study uses factor, confirmatory factor and path analysis to test both measurement and causal models of the six Worldwide Governance indicators. They purportedly measure distinct concepts of control of corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness, rule quality, political stability, and voice and accountability. Rather than distinguishing among aspects of the quality of governance, we find that they appear to be measuring the same broad concept.Publication The Worldwide Governance Indicators : Methodology and Analytical Issues(2010-09-01)This paper summarizes the methodology of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project, and related analytical issues. 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The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying source data, are available at www.govindicators.org.Publication The Worldwide Governance Indicators Project : Answering the Critics(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-03)The Worldwide Governance Indicators, reporting estimates of six dimensions of governance for over 200 countries between 1996 and 2005, have become widely used among policymakers and academics. They have also attracted some explicit written criticisms. In this short paper the authors synthesize 11 critiques offered by four recent papers. They then refute them as either conceptually incorrect or empirically unsubstantiated.Publication Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008(2009-06-01)This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.Publication Governance Matters VII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996-2007(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06)This paper reports on the latest update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2007: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. 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In less than a decade, a substantial number of countries exhibit statistically significant improvements in at least one dimension of governance, while other countries exhibit deterioration in some dimensions. These aggregate indicators, spanning more than a decade, together with the disaggregated individual indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.
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