World Governance Assessment (WGA)
Overseas Development Institute
The World Governance Assessment (WGA) is an attempt to establish how the quality of governance varies over time in countries around the world.
Norwegian Agency for Development Co-Operation (NORAD).
WGA has been used in academic studies, for the 2002 Human Development Report and in Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report. The WGA is being used by DFID as a source of information for its country governance analysis and by the Aga Khan Foundation.
The WGA is based on expert assessments.
Country and Year Coverage: The pilot phase covered 16 countries (1996-2000). The latest and final one (2001-2006) covers 10 countries.
Verena Fritz
Overseas Development institute
111 Westminster Bridge Road, London, SE1 7JD, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7922 0300
Email: v.fritz@odi.org.uk
The WGA is based on a survey questionnaire for each country, which covers 30 indicators for 6 defined dimensions of governance. The surveys are completed by so called ‘well informed persons’ who are seen to be experts on governance representing both state, civil society and the private sector. The experts are asked to assess their country on a 1-5 scale for each of the 30 indicators. The number of experts consulted per country varies from 33 to 41 persons. The questionnaire asks respondents to provide answers both for the present situation and 5 years ago.
The WGA is presented on a 1-5 point scale where higher scores are better.
The WGA can be used to assess and track changes in governance perceptions among certain key stakeholders in the survey countries – it can be used as an assessment of governance at the national level. The surveys also provide more in-depth comments for some of the countries.
The WGA is not a representative public opinion survey of the state of governance at the national level. As both the sample size and number of experts vary, care should be taken in using the findings for across country comparison.
The WGA assumes that the surveyed experts (”well informed persons”) are representative of key stakeholders in the country, i.e. civil society, state institutions and private sector.
