• Institutional development
• Institution building
• Parliamentary development
• Electoral systems & reforms
• Political parties
• Informal institutions
• Media

Institutional development

While political scientists have traditionally deployed objective indicators of “political organization and administrative capacity”, including tax ratios, tax structures, political participation and the nature and extent of public service provision, they are beginning to import subjective indicators of “governance” from economics.

In fact, the customary distinction between objective and subjective measurement is by now less salient than the various differences among the subjective or “perceptions-based” alternatives. Whose perceptions do they capture? Of which institutions or issue areas? And to what effect?

The authors of this paper hold that the leading perceptions-based indicators are:

• poorly explicated
• give the perceptions and interests of business people (and foreign businesspeople in particular) undue influence
• are riddled with measurement error and all but impossible to interpret
• should therefore be either reconsidered or replaced by improved objective indicators that take public sector inputs as well as outputs into account.

The authors make the case for reconsideration and/or replacement in three principal sections:

• Section 1 offers an abbreviated introduction to the perceptions-based literature.
• Section 2 develops a critique of the conceptual and operational underpinnings of the leading perceptions-based indicators.
• Section 3 discusses objective alternatives.

(Adapted from the authors' summary)

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