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Global initiatives of assessing governance

Governance assessment: overview of governance assessment frameworks and results from the 2006 World Governance Assessment

How can global governance assessment be strengthened?

Authors:
Publisher: Overseas Development Institute, London, 2007

Full text of document

This report presents the summary of discussions at the ODI Learning Workshop-2007 on governance assessments. Discussions focus on the way in which the World Governance Assessment (WGA) could further contribute to country-level processes, including the shaping of a country agenda for improving governance and links between the WGA and other processes. Issues covered include:

  • The extent to which and ways in which the WGA can capture informal institutions and power relationships
  • The design of the survey process so as to generate an impact among national stakeholders as well as donors
  • Links with other ongoing processes, such as the pursuit and monitoring of the MDGs (e.g. by highlighting relevant questions in the WGA)
  • Developing more fully fledged country reports and including a discussion of key events in these .
  • Further clarification and guidance on how to undertake the surveys in-country (e.g. distribution of questionnaires) .
  • Focusing on power as a main outcome from the survey. The main question in the assessment could be: how do people perceive themselves in relation to power?
  • Insert 'why questions' (for qualitative comments) which can reveal governance priorities or perceptions of the most urgent area for change
  • Putting economic/governance correlations into perceptions: ask 'how do you think the country should develop?' Including extra dimensions on the agenda which can be understood through the analysis.

The report starts with an overview of assessment initiatives. Section 2 covers the discussion dealing with the second round of the WGA. Country experiences of carrying out the WGA survey are reflected in Section 3 focussing mainly on Namibia, Mongolia and Palestine. Section 4 captures key issues for consideration regarding the way forward.

Some of the proposals for the further development of WGA include:

  • extending surveys within countries
  • focusing on particular groups of countries (such as fragile states or regional ‘clusters’)
  • undertaking the WGA on larger scale, including more countries.