Indicators of Governance and Institutional Quality

New global standards of governance are emerging. Citizens of developing countries are demanding better performance on the part of their governments, and they are increasingly aware of the costs of poor management and corruption. Attitudes are also changing in industrial countries where bribery is no longer viewed as a legitimate cost of doing business overseas. At the World Bank and other international agencies, scarce resources must be allocated to governments that will use them most effectively, and countries are asking for help in diagnosing governance failures and in finding solutions. These developments have led to new interest in measuring the performance of governments, using indicators of governance and institutional quality.This section provices access to many of the existing indicators by indicator source for all countries. It also provides a brief "User’s Guide" describing the ways in which indicators differ from each other, with an emphasis on selecting the indicators that are most appropriate for one’s particular purposes.