Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain.
Good governance is the process of evaluating how well public institutions manage public resources, conduct public affairs, and ensure the realization of human rights in a way that is largely free from abuse and corruption and properly takes into account the rule of law. Governance refers to "the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented " . Governance in this context can apply to corporate, international, national, or local governance as well as the interactions between other sectors of society.
Governance is the overall complex system or framework of processes, functions, structures, rules, laws and norms born out of the relationships, interactions, power dynamics and communication within an organized group of individuals. It sets the boundaries of acceptable conduct and practices of different actors of the group and controls their decision-making processes through the creation and enforcement of rules and guidelines. Furthermore, it also manages, allocates and mobilizes relevant resources and capacities of different members and sets the overall direction of the group in order to effectively address its specific collective needs, problems and challenges.
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index that scores and ranks countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as assessed by experts and business executives. The CPI generally defines corruption as an "abuse of entrusted power for private gain". The index is published annually by the non-governmental organisation Transparency International since 1995.
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 Governance and Anti-Corruption Country Diagnostics is a survey tool, which uses information gathered from in-depth, country-specific surveys of households, businesses, and public officials about institutional vulnerabilities. The tool is used by the World Bank and partner governments to measure and evaluate critical governance challenges within the public sector.
Global Integrity was an independent, nonprofit organization tracking governance and corruption trends around the world using local teams of researchers and journalists to monitor openness and accountability. Global Integrity's reporting has been cited by over 50 newspapers worldwide, and is used by the World Bank, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation and other donor agencies to evaluate aid priorities. Global Integrity's methodology for metrics of governance and corruption differed from the Corruption Perceptions Index or Bribe Payers Index) because GI drew from local experts and transparent source data, rather than surveys of perceptions. Unlike traditional charities, Global Integrity was a hybrid organization that seeks to generate earned revenue to support its public-interest mission.
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.
Economics of corruption deals with the misuse of public power for private benefit and its economic impact on society. This discipline aims to study the causes and consequences of corruption and how it affects the economic functioning of the state.
Civil service reform is a deliberate action to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, professionalism, representativity and democratic character of a civil service, with a view to promoting better delivery of public goods and services, with increased accountability. Such actions can include data gathering and analysis, organizational restructuring, improving human resource management and training, enhancing pay and benefits while assuring sustainability under overall fiscal constraints, and strengthening measures for performance management, public participation, transparency, and combating corruption.
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.
Canada is recognized in international rankings for a variety of reasons, ranging from its high standard of living to its strong economy and political stability. Canada ranks high on its social, legal, healthcare and education systems with its universities ranked among the best in the world. The country consistently ranks high in other various indices measuring factors such as human rights, quality of life, safety, happiness, prosperity and sustainability. This has led to Canada being recognized as one of the best countries in the world to live. Despite these facts there are varied domestic concerns, Canada ranks among the lowest of the most developed countries for housing affordability, technology affordability, healthcare accessibility, and foreign direct investment.
The Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) is an extensive economic survey undertaken as a joint initiative of the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
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:
Government competitiveness is a state capacity concept created by Tobin Im, a scholar of public administration and a professor at the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University. Since 2011, Center for Government Competitiveness (CGC) at Seoul National University has developed the Government Competitiveness (GC) index which evaluates government achievements in the various fields and furthermore provides policy recommendations to increase competitiveness of government in the future.
Joel S. Hellman is an American political scientist currently serving as dean and distinguished professor in the practice of development at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He was appointed in July 2015. Formerly, he was chief institutional economist at the World Bank.
The Human Capital Index (HCI) is an annual measurement prepared by the World Bank. HCI measures which countries are best in mobilizing their human capital, the economic and professional potential of their citizens. The index measures how much capital each country loses through lack of education and health. The index ranges between 0 and 1, with 1 meaning maximum potential is reached. HCI is used in country studies of employment and wages, for example in Ukraine after Russia's invasion.
The government effectiveness index is a ranking of state capacity developed by the World Bank Group. It measures the quality of public services, civil service, policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of a government's commitment to improving or maintaining these aspects. The index includes 193 countries, each scored from -2.5 to 2.5. It is part of a broader set of government quality indicators.
The Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) is a measure of the development status and governance of political and economic transformation processes in developing and transition countries around the world. The BTI has been published biennially by the Bertelsmann Stiftung since 2005, most recently in 2022 on 137 countries. The index measures and compares the quality of government action in a ranking list based on self-recorded data and analyzes successes and setbacks on the path to constitutional democracy and a market economy accompanied by sociopolitical support. For this purpose, the "Status Index" is calculated on the general level of development with regard to democratic and market-economy characteristics and the "Management Index" on the political management of decision-makers.
Democracy indices are quantitative and comparative assessments of the state of democracy for different countries according to various definitions of democracy.
