'The Governance Indicators

: "'The Governance Indicators put to rest the tired assertion that these issues cannot be robustly measured and the lessons drawn cannot be put to subsequent positive use by governments, the development community, civil society and the media.'
John Githongo,
ex-Permanent Secretary, Governance & Ethics, Office of the President of Kenya

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project
reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for 212 countries and territories over the period 1996–2006, for six dimensions of governance:

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

The aggregate indicators combine the views of a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. The individual data sources underlying the aggregate indicators are drawn from a diverse variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations.
The six aggregate indicators and the underlying data sources can be viewed interactively on the Indicators page of this website. Documentation of the latest update of the WGI can be found in 'Governance Matters VI: Governance Indicators for 1996–2006.' Further documentation and research using the WGI is available on the Resources page of this website."