Planning a governance assessment: a guide to approaches, costs and benefits

Over the past 15 years, governance has become a key concept in the debates surrounding international development. However, governance assessments vary according to the interests, needs and culture of the assessor. Some focus mostly on public sector corruption; others take a broader approach which can include elements of human rights and democracy examined across civil society, the private sector, the judiciary and government institutions. This guide therefore examines the basic issues that a country or organization should consider when developing and producing a governance assessment. The paper also explains the trade-offs of various approaches and methodologies in terms of quality and costs. At the same time, it provides some basic background on the technical aspects of conducting a governance assessment.

The guide provides the following findings:

• Country-led governance assessments will increase ownership for citizens, assuming that the process is participatory and includes input from stakeholders inside and outside of government. While Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have blossomed during the past 15 years, real CSO “watchdogs” remain scarce
  
• International teams that conduct survey-based assessments often have superior survey research skills, but lack the inside knowledge needed to get good-quality data and draw representative samples in many places where census data is out of date and other challenges are present
  
•  Assessments that can claim a high level of professionalism, are policy relevant, include government and non-government stakeholders, engage the public and build local statistical capacity are likely to be most attractive to donors and international organizations
  
• Few countries where governance is a major concern can afford to fund a country-led assessment. In more developed countries, civil society organizations fund governance research, but in most developing countries civil society organizations rely on donors to fund their research.

The paper provides recommendations and conclusions such as:

• It is critical to practice democratic governance in all phases of the assessment process: planning, conducting the assessment, analyzing the data, and reporting of the results
  
• Clearly, the practice of governance principles, such as accountability, transparency, fairness, participation and efficiency, are essential. If any of these principles are missing from the process, the assessment will not be credible and will lack legitimacy
  
• The practice of democratic governance within the assessment process will lead to legitimacy and acceptance by civil society, the general public, the government and external actors such as bilateral and multilateral donors.