World Bank Finds Little Improvement In Global Governance
While some countries are making strides in improving accountability and tackling corruption, overall governance standards across the world are not improving much, the World Bank said Monday.
In its eighth release of Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), the Bank found a similar number of countries advancing or regressing among the 212 covered by the study, with many not showing much of a change in either direction in recent years.
The data show improvements in controlling corruption in Indonesia, Tanzania, Estonia, Georgia, Rwanda, Serbia and Liberia, but also declines in countries such as Zimbabwe, Eritrea and Ivory Coast and Greece, illustrating that graft is not only a problem in least developed nations.
– The good news is that some countries are recognizing and responding to governance challenges and are showing strong improvements that reflect concerted efforts by political leaders, policymakers, civil society and the private sector, said World Bank Lead Economist Aart Kraay.
In fact, the updated WGI show that current governance standards have plenty of room for improvement in many industrialized countries and emerging economies.
– We should not presume that rich and powerful countries have the very best levels of governance and corruption control; the financial crisis reminds us that the quality of governance in G8 countries is not always exemplary, said Daniel Kaufmann, co- author of the report and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The WGI is a research project initiated by Kaufmann and Kraay in the late 1990s, and is now co-authored with Massimo Mastruzzi of the World Bank Institute.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
