Governance Matters

Every other two years, the World Bank comes out with statistics analyzing the socio-economic performance of each country. The resulting report is known as the GRICS: Governance Research Indicator Country Snapshot. The word "governance" is broken down into six indicators: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. For a more technical discussion of the theory behind governance indicators, please go here.

I am especially interested in rule of law development in Asia, so I clicked here to see how East Asian countries were doing regarding rule of law development:

Besides comparing countries in Asia, you may also compare countries of the world, and come up with a similar chart. When I chose the countries, I selected the "10 largest GDP" (meaning the richest) and the selection yielded this nice user-friendly chart. It is indeed not surprising that Singapore and Hong Kong rank the highest, and China ranking 7th out of ten countries.

While the comparison is bi-yearly, the last one being 2004, the latest statistics came out May of this year (2005).

The percentile rank for China's rule of law indicator is 40.6%. The lowest percentile rank is Somalia, 0%. Guess which country has the highest rule of law percentile ranking?

Iceland--100%.

Can you imagine living in a country where there is 100% rule of law? (just joking, the 100% should be in relative terms, meaning that it's the most "rule-of-law-ly" country in the world--it sets the example for all of us!)

Source: World Bank.