News
Blogpost: Good FOI laws don’t make for good government
08 October 2012 | blogpost, commentary, comparative, global index, legislation, ranking, rtiSometimes one wonders whether international indices make much sense. The Right to Information Index is an illustration of why that may be. The RTI Index ranks the 93 countries that have legislation...
Blogpost: Are MIGA Guarantees Governance Products?
04 October 2012 | commentary, competitiveness, corruption, data, investment, private sectorI’ve considered whether MIGA guarantees are, in effect, governance products. Readers might rightly ask how I’ve come to this conclusion. Consider what a governance product is: something that...
Blogpost: Can We Measure Politics and Political Development?
01 October 2012 | commentary, feasiblity, fragility, global index, methodology, predictionMeasuring how countries perform is all the rage. Everyone from the World Bank to Bertelsmann to Africa’s most famous entrepreneur does it, producing indices on things like how competitive economies...
Blogpost: 2012 WGIs are poor for much of the Pacific Forum
25 September 2012 | blogpost, commentary, global index, pacific, wgiThe Worldwide Governance Indicators for the member states of the Pacific Forum are concerning. Perhaps most alarming are the ratings for the Regulatory Quality indicator. All (except Tokelau and New...
Blogpost: The role of data in keeping governments accountable
20 September 2012 | accountability, blogpost, children, commentary, education, mdgs, post-2015With the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals drawing nearer, there is much discussion around what needs to be done to achieve these goals, as well as what will happen post 2015. It...
Commentary: Democracy declined worldwide in 2011 with Arab Spring at risk, watchdog says
19 September 2012 | commentary, press coverage, reportWASHINGTON -- Democratic governance declined throughout the world in 2011, showing that gains made in the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring are very fragile and in its chaotic...
Blogpost (Philippines): Country Governance Assessment by ADB: A Reaction
17 September 2012 | commentary, nat initiative, philippines, undp-supportedThis paper focuses on the background and condition of the seven areas where good governance in the Philippines should be well developed and maintained. Although there have been efforts given to...
Study: Happiest countries have press freedom
27 August 2012 | blogpost, commentary, correlation, happiness, media, press freedom, research, study, well-beingFreedom of the press is a reliable indicator of a country’s happiness, journalism doctoral student Edson Tandoc Jr. concludes in a new study. Tandoc and Michigan State University’s Bruno Takahashi...
Blogpost: Making Data Accessible to Affect Policy: Will it Work?
27 August 2012 | blogpost, commentary, indicators, visualisationBrookings has compiled a series of data that they consider to be Development, Aid and Governance Indicators. The data is meant to support “evidence-based policy analysis and foster discussions about...
Blogpost: Questions from Paris on Parliamentary Monitoring Organizations
12 July 2012 | blogpost, citizen monitoring, commentary, event, parliament, pmos, web resource[...] While some organizations have been around for years, it is only recently that an international network of Internet-centric PMOs has begun to coalesce. I was struck by how many organizations...