Measuring governance performance across countries according to four global databases : a focus on small states

Abstract

The objective of this paper is mainly to assess the governance scores of small states on four well-known global indices, comparing such scores with those of larger countries. In doing so, the paper briefly discusses the meaning of governance and compares the four global indices with each other. In this analysis, small states are considered to be those with a population of 2 million or less. One of the findings of this study is that the four indices show that small states, on average, tend to register higher scores when compared to other categories of countries, but there is a wide dispersion of government scores within each country category, in all four indices. The paper concludes, therefore, that one cannot argue that small countrysize is necessarily a factor leading to better or worse governance simply by averaging the governance across scores.