This pillar of the SGI examines the good governance capacities of a political system in terms of its executive capability and accountability. Sustainable governance is defined here as the political management of public affairs that adopts a long-term view of societal development, takes into account the interests of future generations, and facilitates capacities for social change.
The Governance index examines how effective governments are in directing and implementing policies appropriate to these three goals. As a measuring tool grounded in practical evidence, the Governance index draws on 37 qualitative indicators posed in an expert survey that measure a country's institutional arrangements against benchmarks of good practices in governance. Governance in this context implies both the capacity to act (''executive capacity'') and the extent to which non-governmental actors and institutions are endowed with the participatory competence to hold the government accountable to its actions (''executive accountability''). This includes citizens, legislatures, parties, associations and the media, that is, actors that monitor the government's activities and whose effective inclusion in the political process improve the quality of governance.
The dimension of Executive Capacity draws on the categories of steering capability, policy implementation and institutional learning. Steering capability questions explore the roles of strategic planning and expert advice, the effectiveness of interministerial coordination and regulatory impact assessments, and the quality of consultation and communication policies. Questions about implementation assess the government's ability to ensure effective and efficient task delegation to ministers, agencies or subnational governments. Questions on institutional learning refer to a government's ability to reform its own institutional arrangements and improve its strategic orientation.
The dimension of Executive Accountability is comprised of three categories corresponding to actors or groups of actors considered to be important agents of oversight and accountability in theories of democracy and governance. The questions here are designed to examine the extent to which citizens are informed of government policies, whether the legislature is capable of evaluating and acting as a ''check'' on the executive branch, and whether intermediary organizations (i.e., media, parties, interest associations) demonstrate relevance and policy know-how in exercising oversight. This approach is based on a dynamic understanding of governance in which power and authority is dispersed throughout the institutions, processes and structures of government. In order to account for the diversity of institutional arrangements, the index explicitly considers functional equivalencies in different countries, and pays equal attention to formal and informal as well as hierarchical and non-hierarchical institutional arrangements.
Type of variable: Continuous
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Last updated by source: 2022-09-12
| Dataset | No. Countries |
|---|---|
| Standard cross-section: | 41 |
| Standard time-series: | 41 |
| OECD cross-section: | 36 |