[[File:Maprl.png|thumb|upright=2.05| ]] Based on a long-standing research program of the World Bank, the Worldwide Governance Indicators capture six key dimensions of governance (Voice & Accountability, Political Stability and Lack of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption) between 1996 and present. They measure the quality of governance in over 200 countries, based on close to 40 data sources produced by over 30 organizations worldwide and are updated annually since 2002. The governance indicators contribute to the growing empirical research of governance which have provided activists and reformers worldwide with advocacy tools for policy reform and monitoring. The indicators, and the underlying data behind them, are part of the current research and opinions that have reinforced the experiences and observations of reform-minded individuals in government, civil society, and the private sector, that good governance is key for development. Their growing recognition of the link between good governance and successful development, as empirical evidence suggests, has stimulated demand for monitoring the quality of governance across countries and within individual countries over time. Virtually all of the individual data sources underlying the aggregate indicators are, along with the aggregate indicators themselves, publicly available. The Worldwide Governance Indicators are a compilation of the perceptions of a very diverse group of respondents, collected in large number of surveys and other cross-country assessments of governance. Some of these instruments capture the views of firms, individuals, and public officials in the countries being assessed. Others reflect the views of NGOs and aid donors with considerable experience in the countries being assessed, while others are based on the assessments of commercial risk-rating agencies. A complementary vision of the macro-level Worldwide Governance Indicators are the World Bank Governance Surveys, which are country level governance assessment tools developed by the World Bank Institute.

Criticisms

The Worldwide Governance Indicators offer a useful snapshot of some perceptions of a country’s quality of governance but researchers have pointed out significant problems in their construction. These critiques have been extensively rebutted by the WGI authors in several publications. These critics have claimed that users often fail to take into account or are not aware of their limitations. Criticisms include:

Strengths

Despite the above noted limitations and concerns recent econometric research looking at how reliable some of these indicators are, vis-a-vis data collected from natural experiments and other observational surveys, have actually concluded that the Good Governance Indicators do in fact seem to be measuring, albeit imperfectly, levels of corruption and government effectiveness. Concepts like corruption are inherently illicit and therefore difficult to measure. While including multiple sources can make these indicators confusing, it can also avoid the potential for bias or influence over any single source. The weighting process for these indicators attempts to improve on issues of uncertainty present in other indices like the Corruption Perceptions Index. These indicators are also well correlated with other indicators of good governance indicating that any issues present may be present in all governance indicators. These indicators also have credibility due to their wide use in academia, international development, and business. They are used by a range of credit rating agencies such as Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch to determine sovereign bond ratings. A number of bilateral foreign assistance agencies, such as the US Government's Millennium Challenge Corporation condition aid on a country's performance on these indicators. These uses are often justified by reference to the connection between these indicators and development outcomes such as growth and poverty reduction as well as technical features of this dataset such as the broad country coverage and consistent, annual updates.