Worldwide Governance Indicators

Governance—the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised—plays a central role in shaping development outcomes. A large body of research highlights how inclusive and accountable institutions support higher economic growth, stronger public services, and expanded opportunities. When governance systems struggle to perform these functions, development outcomes are often harder to sustain. First published in 1999, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) provide annual composite indicators summarizing six dimensions of governance: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. The WGI 2025 release included methodological revisions, and hence historical estimates have been recalculated back to 1996 to ensure full consistency over time. The WGI draw on perception data from 35 cross-country sources—including household surveys, firm surveys, and expert assessments—to offer a comparable picture of governance quality across more than 200 economies from 1996 to 2024. The WGI provide two complementary outputs: (i) governance estimates expressed in a standard statistical unit, and (ii) scores on an absolute 0–100 scale anchored to fixed reference points.The WGI composite indicators and underlying source data are available at www.govindicators.org.