Political governance indicators and small states

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to test the hypotheses that Governance in small states differs from that of larger countries and that this conclusion can be applied to high-income as well as low-income small states. The paper utilizes three international indicators of governance, namely the Worldwide Governance Indicators, the Corruption Perception Index and the Legal System and Property Rights Index (one of the indices of the Economic Freedom of the World Indicators). These particular three indices were used because they cover a large number of countries, including many small states. This subject is important due to the fact that a fifth of politically independent states are small ones, with a population of 2 million or less. Many of these states are also islands, located in the Caribbean region, the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Six of the 28 member states of the European Union are such small states. In addition, the small island states located in the Pacific and Indian Ocean have vast Exclusive Economic Zones under their jurisdiction. The manner in which these states are governed is therefore of utmost importance for global governance. This paper consists of five sections. Following this introduction, Section 2 presents a brief literature review. Section 3 describes the methodology to be used for deriving the results presented in Section 4. The final chapter discusses some implications of the results.