July 11, 2007 - The report, Governance Matters, 2007: Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2006 was launched yesterday by the World Bank Institute and the World Bank Development Economics Vice-presidency. The report shows that a number of countries are making progress in improving governance and fighting corruption. This is encouraging given that good governance and corruption control are fundamental for long-term growth and reducing poverty. “The hopeful news is that a considerable number of countries, including in Africa, are showing that it is possible to make significant governance progress in a relatively short period of time. Such improvements in governance are critical for aid effectiveness and for sustained long-run growth.” says Daniel Kaufmann, co-author of the report and Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute “Bribery around the world is estimated at about US $1 trillion dollars, and the burden of corruption falls disproportionately on the bottom billion people living in extreme poverty,” The report, authored by the World Bank’s Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi, builds on research on the importance of governance and its impact on development over the past decade. Good governance matters for other human development outcomes such as infant mortality, illiteracy, and inequality, as well. Good governance has also been found to significantly enhance the effectiveness of development assistance in general, and of World Bank funded projects in particular. Measuring countries' governance performance, and their improvements over time, is thus a key item on the governance agenda. But it is also a complex challenge, as governance has many dimensions, each with inherent measurement challenges. The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project shows how this challenge can be met. This year’s report represents a decade-long effort by the researchers to build and update the most comprehensive cross-country set of governance indicators currently available to the public. The aggregate indicators as well as data from the underlying sources are available at a newly-redesigned website at www.govindicators.org. The indicators cover 212 countries and territories, drawing on 33 different data sources to capture the views of tens of thousands of survey respondents worldwide, as well as thousands of experts in the private, NGO, and public sectors. Data on Azerbaijan shows there are no major or statistically significant changes in the country's scores over the last period, namely 2004- 2006. There are overall improvements in almost all indicators - and particularly so in Government Effectiveness where the changes were statistically more significant than in any other area. It is worth noting that the country's score in Voice and Accountability stands out as decreasing while it records improvement in Political Stability. Another improved indicator is on Regulatory Quality, which demonstrates a steady trend over the last six years. The report also discovers that: - Some emerging economies are matching rich countries on key dimensions of governance - Improving governance helps fight poverty and improves standards of living - Where there is commitment to reform, improvements in governance can take place relatively quickly. - -On average the quality of governance around the world has not improved much over the past decade despite individual countries improvements Background Information This is the sixth update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators, reflecting work over the past decade to develop evidence-based measures that help development stakeholders track the quality of institutions, support capacity building, improve governance, and address corruption. The WGI measure the following six components of good governance: 1. Voice and Accountability – measuring 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 – measuring perceptions of the likelihoood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including terrorism 3. Government Effectiveness – measuring 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 – measuring the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development 5. Rule of Law – measuring the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence 6. Control of Corruption – measuring 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 "Measuring governance poses unique challenges. Governance is complex and has many different aspects, and so no single indicator can fully capture a country's governance performance" says Aart Kraay, Lead Economist in the World Bank's Development Research Group, and co-author of the report. "It is therefore important to draw on the wide variety of data sources on governance currently available. The Worldwide Governance Indicators are a way of collecting and summarizing this wealth of information, based on the experiences and insights of stakeholders worldwide. ### The full paper, the synthesis of the main findings, and the new indicators dataset itself are available at: http://www.govindicators.org Or access through the general site on governance and corruption, at: http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance For more information about the World Bank's work in Azerbaijan, visit www.worldbank.org.az Azeri version |
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