Perceptions for various indicators. Estimate of governance (ranges from approximately -2.5 (weak) to 2.5 (strong) governance performance) Percentile rank among all countries (ranges from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest) rank)

Good governance is essential for development. It helps countries improve economic growth, build human capital, and strengthen social cohesion. Empirical evidence shows a strong causal relationship between better governance and better development outcomes. The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are designed to help researchers and analysts assess broad patterns in perceptions of governance across countries and over time. The WGI cover over 200 countries and territories, measuring six dimensions of governance starting in 1996: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. The aggregate indicators are based on several hundred individual underlying variables, taken from a wide variety of existing data sources. The data reflect the views on governance of survey respondents and public, private, and NGO sector experts worldwide Rule of Law captures perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence. Percentile rank indicates the country's rank among all countries covered by the aggregate indicator, with 0 corresponding to lowest rank, and 100 to highest rank. Percentile ranks have been adjusted to correct for changes over time in the composition of the countries covered by the WGI. Percentile Rank Upper refers to upper bound of 90 percent confidence interval for governance, expressed in percentile rank terms.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Nepal was reported at 21.7 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Nepal - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are a research dataset summarizing the views on the quality of governance provided by a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies; and the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them. Rule of Law captures perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence. Percentile rank indicates the country's rank among all countries covered by the aggregate indicator, with 0 corresponding to lowest rank, and 100 to highest rank. Percentile ranks have been adjusted to correct for changes over time in the composition of the countries covered by the WGI.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Bangladesh was reported at 26.89 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Bangladesh - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Vietnam was reported at 56.13 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Vietnam - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Ethiopia was reported at 24.06 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Ethiopia - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

To empirically assess the institutional foundations of corporate governance in fragile states, this study draws on three primary datasets: the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), and the World Bank Doing Business Rankings. The CPI dataset, published annually by Transparency International, offers historical data on perceived levels of public sector corruption across 180 countries. Key variables include CPI score, global rank, standard error, number of sources, and confidence intervals—making it a widely accepted proxy for measuring institutional integrity and regulatory trust. The WGI dataset, developed by the World Bank, provides standardized estimates of governance performance, with particular emphasis in this study on the Control of Corruption (CC) indicator. Each WGI entry includes an annual governance score, standard deviation, percentile rank, and confidence intervals, enabling longitudinal and cross-country comparisons of institutional quality. Finally, the Doing Business 2020 dataset presents detailed rankings on business environment performance, encompassing key dimensions such as starting a business, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency. These indicators collectively measure procedural efficiency and legal infrastructure—core components of a functioning corporate governance system. Together, these datasets offer a comprehensive foundation for evaluating how institutional voids in fragile states like Haiti constrain effective governance and impede private sector development.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Pakistan was reported at 30.66 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Pakistan - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Singapore was reported at 100 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Singapore - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in China was reported at 73.58 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. China - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

The ability to monitor state behavior has become a critical tool of international governance. Systematic monitoring allows for the creation of numerical indicators that can be used to rank, compare, and essentially censure states. This article argues that the ability to disseminate such numerical indicators widely and instantly constitutes an exercise of social power, with the potential to change important policy outputs. It explores this argument in the context of the United States’ efforts to combat trafficking in persons and find evidence that monitoring has important effects: Countries are more likely to criminalize human trafficking when they are included in the U.S. annual Trafficking in Persons Report, and countries that are placed on a “watch list” are also more likely to criminalize. These findings have broad implications for international governance and the exercise of soft power in the global information age. in AJPS publication

According to the government artificial intelligence (AI) readiness index rankings, the United States (U.S.) is the highest-ranked country on the worldwide index in 2024, with an index score of *****. This means that the U.S. is considered the country best situated in the world to implement AI within public services, from healthcare to education to transportation. Other noteworthy countries with high indexes were Singapore, the Republic of Korea, and France coming in at second, third, and fourth respectively. China ranks **** on the index as it only measures AI readiness instead of AI implementation. Compared to many other countries that may score more highly for AI readiness, China is advanced in implementing AI capabilities to public services as it has made this a top government priority.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Indonesia was reported at 69.81 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Indonesia - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

The average for 2023 based on 193 countries was -0.07 points. The highest value was in Liechtenstein: 1.61 points and the lowest value was in Syria: -2.75 points. The indicator is available from 1996 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are a research dataset summarizing the views on the quality of governance provided by a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies; and the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them. Control of Corruption captures perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as "capture" of the state by elites and private interests. Percentile rank indicates the country's rank among all countries covered by the aggregate indicator, with 0 corresponding to lowest rank, and 100 to highest rank. Percentile ranks have been adjusted to correct for changes over time in the composition of the countries covered by the WGI. Percentile Rank Lower refers to lower bound of 90 percent confidence interval for governance, expressed in percentile rank terms.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Egypt was reported at 41.98 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Egypt - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

The IMF-adapted ND-GAIN index is an adaptation of the original index, adjusted by IMF staff to replace the Doing Business (DB) Index, used as source data in the original ND-GAIN, because the DB database has been discontinued by the World Bank in 2020 and it is no longer allowed in IMF work. The IMF-adapted ND-GAIN is an interim solution offered by IMF staff until the ND-GAIN compilers will review the methodology and replace the DB index.Sources: ND-GAIN; Findex - The Global Findex Database 2021; Worldwide Governance Indicators; IMF staff calculations. Category: AdaptationData series: IMF-Adapted ND-GAIN IndexIMF-Adapted Readiness scoreReadiness score, GovernanceReadiness score, IMF-Adapted EconomicReadiness score, SocialVulnerability scoreVulnerability score, CapacityVulnerability score, EcosystemsVulnerability score, ExposureVulnerability score, FoodVulnerability score, HabitatVulnerability score, HeathVulnerability score, SensitivityVulnerability score, WaterVulnerability score, InfrastructureMetadata:The IMF-adapted ND-GAIN Country Index uses 75 data sources to form 45 core indicators that reflect the vulnerability and readiness of 192 countries from 2015 to 2021. As the original indicator, a country's IMF-adapted ND-GAIN score is composed of a Readiness score and a Vulnerability score. The Readiness score is measured using three sub-components – Economic, Governance and Social. In the original ND-GAIN database, the Economic score is built on the DB index, while in the IMF-adapted ND-GAIN, the DB Index is replaced with a composite index built using the arithmetic mean of “Borrowed from a financial institution (% age 15+)” from The Global Financial Index database (FINDEX_BFI) and “Government effectiveness” from the Worldwide Governance Indicators database (WGI_GE). The Vulnerability, Social and Governance scores do not contain any DB inputs and, hence, have been sourced from the original ND-GAIN database. Methodology:The procedure for data conversion to index is the same as the original ND-GAIN and follows three steps: Step 1. Select and collect data from the sources (called “raw” data), or compute indicators from underlying data. Some data errors (i.e., tabulation errors coming from the source) are identified and corrected at this stage. If some form of transformation is needed (e.g., expressing the measure in appropriate units, log transformation to better represent the real sensitivity of the measure etc.) it happens also at this stage. Step 2. At times some years of data could be missing for one or more countries; sometimes, all years of data are missing for a country. In the first instance, linear interpolation is adopted to make up for the missing data. In the second instance, the indicator is labeled as "missing" for that country, which means the indicator will not be considered in the averaging process. Step 3. This step can be carried out after of before Step 2 above. Select baseline minimum and maximum values for the raw data. These encompass all or most of the observed range of values across countries, but in some cases the distribution of the observed raw data is highly skewed. In this case, ND-GAIN selects the 90-percentile value if the distribution is right skewed, or 10-percentile value if the distribution is left skewed, as the baseline maximum or minimum. Based on this procedure, the IMF–Adapted ND-GAIN Index is derived as follows: i. Replace the original Economic score with a composite index based on the average of WGI_GE and cubic root of FINDEX_BFI1, as follows:IMF-Adapted Economic = ½ · (WGI_GE) + ½ · (FINDEX_BFI)1/3 (1) The IMF-adapted Readiness and overall IMF-adapted ND-GAIN scores are then derived as: IMF-Adapted ND-GAIN Readiness = 1/3 · ( IMF-Adapted Economic + Governance + Social) IMF-Adapted ND-GAIN = ½·( IMF-Adapted ND-GAIN Readiness+ND-GAIN Vulnerability) ii. In case of missing data for one of the indicators in (1), IMF-Adapted ND-GAIN Economic would be based on the value of the available indicator. In case none of the two indicators is available, the IMF-Adapted Economic score would not be produced but the IMF-Adapted ND-GAIN Readiness would be computed as average of the Governance and Social scores. This approach, that replicates the approach used to derive the original ND-GAIN indexes in case of missing data, ensures that the proposed indicator has the same coverage as the original ND-GAIN database.
1 Given that the FINDEX_BFI data are positively skewed, a cubic root transformation has been implemented to induce symmetry.

Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank in Oman was reported at 62.26 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Oman - Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

The British Crown Dependency of Jersey was ranked as the most politically stable country worldwide in 2023, ahead of the Cayman Islands and Liechtenstein. The Caribbean Islands are known for their favorable conditions for large international companies and wealthy individuals, with no income and fortune tax. Lowest stability in Syria On the other end of the scale, Syria had the lowest political stability. The Middle Eastern-country suffered from a civil war between 2012 and 2024, with the Syrian government battling a range of military groups, including the terrorist organization Islamic State. Fragile State Index Another way of measuring political stability is the Fragile States Index, compiled annually by the Fund for Peace. In 2024, Somalia was ranked as the most fragile state ahead of Sudan. The index measures state fragility on a range of economic, social, and political indicators.