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Abstract
Conclusions: Governance in 16 Developing Countries, World
Governance Survey Discussion Paper 10
This paper presents the conclusions of our effort to undertake
systematic and comprehensive governance assessments in 16
developing countries - drawing on the views of local stakeholders.
This raised major conceptual and methodological challenges;
it was logistically complex and measuring governance is also
politically sensitive, although often much less so than we
expected. Nevertheless, it was an enormously rewarding exercise.
This working paper outlines what we consider to be the principal
achievements our first attempt at making sense of the governance
concept in an empirical and 'real-world' context.
The first achievement was the ability to develop a comprehensive
framework and process-oriented set of indicators for assessing
governance at the national level that have been accepted and
produced meaningful results in all countries where the study
was conducted. The sixteen countries in the study represent
over half the world's population.
The second achievement is the success we experienced in the
field tests of our approach. Our response rate in the survey
was generally good or excellent. The opportunity for qualitative
comments in addition to the ratings added considerable value
to our study, as did the reports that we receive by each country
coordinator on the quality of the data and the contextual
factors that may help explain the ratings.
The third achievement, in our view, is our ability to apply
the governance concept for analytical usage. The 'rules-in-use'
orientation that we have adopted in this study provides not
only a more coherent focus but also a better understanding
of how governance is a dynamic, yet different, variable from
policy-making or policy implementation. We bring to the table
the idea that governance relates to regime and thus to the
framework of rules within which policy is being made and implemented.
The fourth achievement is a definite sense that our approach
is a valuable complement to other studies in the governance
and democratization fields. First of all, it adds value to
the econometric studies of governance that are being used
by the World Bank and many other agencies in this field. Secondly,
it provides a challenge to the many studies of democratization
that try to measure a set of variables that are problematic
in a global perspective because of their particular Western
origin.
These achievements notwithstanding, our study was exploratory
and meant to spur governance research in the future as much
as to provide definite answers to key governance questions.
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