Guyana ranks poorly on some key governance indicators

Guyana has scored moderately in the Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996 – 2007, garnering above 50 out of 100 in only two of the six criteria by which governance is measured in the study, says a World Bank Institute (WGI) Report entitled Governance Matters 2008.

The report gives the most recent 2007 data on six dimensions of governance from the WGI project: Voice and Accountability (in which Guyana scored 51 out of 100), Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism (33), Government Effectiveness (54), Regulatory Quality (33), Rule of Law (35), and Control of Corruption (32). (A 51 percentile rank means that 51% of the countries scored worse and 49% better.)

The scores for Guyana are marginally better than those achieved for the year 2006. The report said that some developing countries have been making progress in governance and in fighting corruption with some of them matching rich country performance in overall governance measures.

“Some countries are making rapid progress in governance, including in Africa, showing that a measure of ‘Afro-optimism’ is called for,” said Daniel Kaufmann, co-author of the report and Director of Governance at the World Bank Institute, while acknowledging that the data also shows large variation in performance across countries, and even among neighbours within each continent. “Progress reflects reforms in those countries where political leaders, policymakers, civil society and the private sector view good governance and corruption control as crucial for sustained and shared growth.”

The report said that good governance can be found at all income levels, with some emerging economies matching the performance of rich countries on key dimensions of governance. “Over a dozen emerging countries, including Slovenia, Chile, Botswana, Estonia, Uruguay, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mauritius, and Costa Rica score higher on key dimensions of governance than industrialized countries such as Greece or Italy. And in many cases these differences are statistically significant,” said a press release accompanying the report.

It said that over 2002-2007, the Indicators show sharp improvements in governance, along with reversals. “Examples include strong improvements in Voice and Accountability in countries such as Ukraine and Haiti; improvements in Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism in Argentina; and improvements in Control of Corruption in Georgia and Tanzania,” the release said.

But it said that despite governance gains in some countries, overall quality of governance around the world has not improved much over the past decade. “Coinciding with countries that have done well, a similar number have experienced deteriorations in several governance dimensions, including Zimbabwe, Cote D’Ivoire, Belarus, Eritrea and Venezuela.

In many other countries, no significant change in either direction is yet apparent in recent years,” the press release said.

According to the press release, the Indicators suggest that where there is commitment to reform, improvements in governance can and do occur. It said that over the past decade from 1998-2007, countries in all regions have shown substantial improvements in governance, even if at times starting from a very low level. “Examples include: Ghana, Indonesia, Liberia and Peru in Voice and Accountability; Rwanda, Algeria and Angola in Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism; Afghanistan, Serbia and Ethiopia in Government Effectiveness; Georgia and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Regulatory Quality; Tajikistan in Rule of Law; and Liberia and Serbia in Control of Corruption,” the release said.

Aart Kraay, co-author of the WGI and lead economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank said: “The WGI and other efforts to measure are useful in prompting public discussion of governance challenges and successes. But at the same time, discussions of governance based on empirical measures need to be realistic about the limits of existing data. In this respect it is important that users take seriously the margins of error reported in the WGI, which reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data.”

This year’s study is the seventh update of the WGI, a decade-long effort by the researchers to build and update the most comprehensive cross-country set of governance indicators currently available. The newly released set of the six updated aggregate indicators, as well as data from the underlying sources, are at www.govindicators.org.

The Indicators cover 212 countries and territories, drawing on 35 different data sources to capture the views of tens of thousands of survey respondents worldwide, as well as thousands of experts in the private, NGO, and public sectors.

The WGI are used by policymakers and civil society groups worldwide as a tool to assess governance challenges and monitor reforms, and by scholars researching the causes and consequences of good governance.

The data and research do not reflect the official views of the World Bank and are not used by the World Bank Group or for any other official purpose.