Worldwide Governance Indicators

The World Bank has released the results of its ongoing examination of world governments along six dimensions: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. Government Matters 2007 offers you various ways to see the data. For instance, you can call up a graph that compares Canada and the United States. Initially I looked at Canada’s current values compared to two prior years and was scratching my head a bit about the less than perfect record for “political stability,” understanding that it was about Quebec but thinking even so that it showed un peu trop de peur. Then I did the Canada-U.S. comparison and was really surprised by the relatively poor showing by the U.S. in that same category.

Both countries score high on “rule of law,” you won’t be surprised to learn, though I might have made the spread somewhat wider.

The authors of the study have published a report on this year’s data.

[via Law Librarian Blog]