21 September 2018: The World Bank Group released the 2018 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). The project reports on individual and aggregate governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories for six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability; political stability and absence of violence; government effectiveness; regulatory quality; rule of law; and control of corruption. The indicator data set is updated yearly.

In an FAQ on the WGI website, the project notes that in order to infer trends and identify changes over time, users must explore the underlying data, which is publicly available and can be downloaded from the website.

The WGI defines governance as the “traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised,” including the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced, government capacity to formulate and implement sound policies and respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions. The WGI provides measures for each of these dimensions of governance.

On voice and accountability, for instance, the WGI measure reflects the perceptions of the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government as well as measures on freedom of association, freedom of expression and a free media. Rule of law measures perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, particularly as they relate to contract enforcement, property rights, the police and courts and the likelihood of crime and violence.

Users can access the WGI’s updated interactive data access tool to select graphs, data, time series and country views. The time series view, for instance, allows users to view each indicator score between 1996 to 2017 to see changes over time. Users can also display any of the six aggregate WGI measures as a world map and move over the map to identify countries’ aggregate WGI indicator. Similarly, users can view any two of the six aggregate WGO measures on two world maps.

The WGI are based on over 30 individuals data sources provided by a survey of international organizations, non-government organizations, think tanks, private sector firms and other institutes in industrial and developing countries. The indicators cover the period 1996-2016. [WGI website]