Governance is the process of making and enforcing decisions within an organization or society. It encompasses decision-making, rule-setting, and enforcement mechanisms to guide the functioning of an organization or society. Effective governance is essential for maintaining order, achieving objectives, and addressing the needs of the community or members within the organization. Furthermore, effective governance promotes transparency, fosters trust among stakeholders, and adapts to changing circumstances, ensuring the organization or society remains responsive and resilient in achieving its goals. It is the process of interactions through the laws, social norms, power or language as structured in communication of an organized society over a social system. It is done by the government of a state, by a market, or by a network. It is the process of choosing the right course among the actors involved in a collective problem that leads to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of acceptable conduct and social order". In lay terms, it could be described as the processes that exist in and between formal institutions.
In political philosophy, limited government is the concept of a government limited in power. It is a key concept in the history of liberalism.
Human rights in Kazakhstan are uniformly described as poor by independent observers. Human Rights Watch says that "Kazakhstan heavily restricts freedom of assembly, speech, and religion. In 2014, authorities closed newspapers, jailed or fined dozens of people after peaceful but unsanctioned protests, and fined or detained worshipers for practicing religion outside state controls. Government critics, including opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov, remained in detention after unfair trials. Torture remains common in places of detention."
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption may involve many activities which include bribery, influence peddling and embezzlement and it may also involve practices which are legal in many countries. Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts with an official capacity for personal gain. Corruption is most common in kleptocracies, oligarchies, narco-states, and mafia states.
The following are links to some international rankings of the United States.
The ease of doing business index was an index created jointly by Simeon Djankov, Michael Klein, and Caralee McLiesh, three leading economists at the World Bank Group, following the release of World Development Report 2002. The academic research for the report was done jointly with professors Edward Glaeser, Oliver Hart, and Andrei Shleifer. Though the first report was authored by Djankov, Klein, and McLiesh, and they continue to be listed as "founders" of the report, some sources attribute the genesis of the idea to Djankov and Gerhard Pohl. Higher rankings indicated better, usually simpler, regulations for businesses and stronger protections of property rights. Empirical research funded by the World Bank to justify their work show that the economic growth effect of improving these regulations is strong. Other researchers find that the distance-to-frontier measure introduced in 2016 after a decision of the World Bank board is not correlated with subsequent economic growth or investment.
The Fund for Peace is an American non-profit, non-governmental research and educational institution. Founded in 1957, FFP "works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security."
Based on a long-standing research program of the World Bank, the Worldwide Governance Indicators capture six key dimensions of governance between 1996 and present. They measure the quality of governance in over 200 countries, based on close to 40 data sources produced by over 30 organizations worldwide and are updated annually since 2002.
William Horlick Neukom is an American former managing general partner of the San Francisco Giants baseball team ownership group. He held this position from May 2008 to December 31, 2011, and he was the managing partner when the Giants won the World Series in 2010, the first World Series win since the team had moved to California in 1958. Prior to holding this position, he was President of the American Bar Association in 2007–08. He was the principal legal counsel for Microsoft for almost 25 years. He was also the chairman of the law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis, LLP in Seattle, now part of K&L Gates. He is a Co-founder & CEO of the World Justice Project.
Daniel Kaufmann is the president emeritus of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), which resulted from the merger of the Revenue Watch Institute – Natural Resource Charter. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he was previously a senior fellow, and until July 2019 served in the international board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and in a number of advisory boards on governance, anti-corruption and natural resources and has also been in high-level expert commissions such as at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Prior to that, he was a director at the World Bank Institute, leading work on governance and anti-corruption. He was also a senior manager and lead economist at the World Bank, writing and working on many countries around the world, and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He has also served in other boards and councils in the past, including at the World Economic Forum.
Sustainability metrics and indices are measures of sustainability, and attempt to quantify beyond the generic concept. Though there are disagreements among those from different disciplines, these disciplines and international organizations have each offered measures or indicators of how to measure the concept.
The Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), established in 2007, provides an assessment of the quality of governance in African countries. The IIAG is compiled by 81 indicators and 265 variables from 54 data projects, coming from 47 independent African and international data sources. Published every two years, the IIAG is one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of data on African governance.
The Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI), first published in spring 2009 and updated in 2011, analyze and compare the need for reform in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, as well as each country's ability to respond to current social and political challenges. The project is designed to create a comprehensive data pool on government-related activities in the countries considered the world's most developed free-market democracies. In addition, it uses international comparisons to provide evidence-based input for reform-related public discourse taking place in these countries. The SGI are updated every two or three years.
The rule of law is a political ideal that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. It is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law". The term rule of law is closely related to constitutionalism as well as Rechtsstaat. It refers to a political situation, not to any specific legal rule. The rule of law is defined in the Encyclopædia Britannica as "the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power."
Juan Carlos Botero Navia is a Colombian lawyer and researcher, who served as Executive Director of the World Justice Project in Washington, DC and as co-author of its WJP Rule of Law Index and Open Government Index.
The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) is a project that reports both aggregate and individual governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories covering the period from 1996 to 2021. It considers six dimensions of governance:
The World Resources Forum (WRF) is a non-profit organisation for sharing knowledge about the economic, political, social and environmental implications of global resource use. WRF promotes resource productivity among researchers, policymakers, business, NGOs and the public. In addition to organizing international and regional conferences, the WRF Secretariat coordinates multistakeholder dialogue projects, amongst others the Sustainable Recycling Initiative (SRI) as well as the H2020 projects Towards a World Forum on Raw Materials (FORAM), and CEWASTE. The WRF contributes to other EC-projects and projects with the German development organisation GiZ, UNEP and UNIDO.
Corruption is a serious and growing problem for doing business in Nicaragua.
The Netherlands Helsinki Committee (NHC) is a non-governmental organization that promotes human rights and strengthens the rule of law and democracy in all countries of Europe, and the Central Asian countries participating in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Sustainable Development Goal 16 is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2015, the official wording is: "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels". The Goal has 12 targets and 23 indicators.
