Sustainable Governance Indicators

The Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI ) is a project of the Bertelsmann Foundation. The SGI evaluated against 147 individual indicators systematically the need for reform in politics, economy and society and the reform and governance capacity of 31 OECD countries. Approximately 80 experts involved in the current round of the study, covering the period May 2008 to April 2010. The first edition of the SGI extended from 2005 to March 2007.

  • 2.1 Status Index 2011
  • 2.2 Management Index 2011
  • 2.3 Summary of Results

Method

The need for reform of a country is summarized in the Sustainable Governance Indicators in the Status Index, the capacity for reform in the management index. Two senior scientists analyzed the OECD member states. To identify subjective judgments of experts and to reduce both local and international experts are involved. In order to cover interdisciplinary expertise, are among the experts in both political scientists and economists. Scientists with a focus on comparative politics summarized the reports of the experts at a country report.

SGI and the Bertelsmann Transformation Index

The SGI is based on the methodological scheme of the Transformation Index of the Bertelsmann Foundation (BTI ), the 128 transition countries compared in terms of their progress in democracy and market economy since 2003. Unlike in the BTI is however invested with the Sustainable Governance Indicators for the 31 investigated OECD countries other rating scale, since the OECD countries can be considered already as consolidated democracies.

Status Index

In examining the need for reform (status index ) are analyzed in the SGI two basic dimensions:

  • The first dimension of the Status Index reflects the quality of democracy in a country. Here are categories such as " electoral process ", " access to information ", " civil rights " and " rule of law " investigated.
  • The second dimension of the status index refers to the performance level of the OECD countries in various policy fields that hold a central role for the future of a society. Here are the fields of " economy and jobs ", " social ", " security" and " resources " considered, which in turn are based on 15 different policy fields.

Management Index

Also, the Management Index is based on the analysis of the reform capacity of a country to two dimensions:

  • Firstly, the management assesses index in the dimension " performance of the government," the respective strategic control and problem-solving ability of a government; central categories of analysis are here " control capabilities ," " policy implementation " and " institutional learning ".
  • On the other are the management index in the dimension ' participation competence " information as to the extent to which stakeholders beyond the executive - citizens, parliaments and mediating organizations (media, political parties and associations ) - Increase by their respective control and communication services, the problem-solving capacity of governments.

The SGI be re- collected at intervals of two to three years by the Bertelsmann Foundation.

Results

Status Index 2011

The Status Index northern European countries dominate the top group. At the same time, two countries with the Anglo-Saxon New Zealand and continental Europe Switzerland but represented at the top of the rankings, which have a different political and welfare state traditions. The midfield (Canada, Australia, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, USA, Ireland, UK, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, France, Portugal, Japan, Chile, Spain and Poland) and the final group (South Korea, Italy, Slovakia, Mexico, Greece and Turkey) are at least as heterogeneous as the top group in geographical and cultural terms.

Common types of comparative political science can not explain the rankings of OECD countries in the Status section. For example, cut majoritarian democracies neither systematically better yet systematically worse than consensus democracies. The classification of countries into federalist and centralist States also does not help in explaining the different reform activities. Within the top group are represented by the Scandinavians in particular states of the social-democratic type of welfare state. With New Zealand, Switzerland and Canada in the upper middle also rather liberal welfare states show high values. Overall, the look at the results of the status index that the long -standing and established OECD members achieve tend to have higher values ​​- although there are exceptions: Chile as a new member achieved a ranking in the lower middle, and Italy and Greece are placed significantly worse than some the Eastern European countries. The tendency it is rather the small, open economies that pursue a particularly sustainable policy.

Management Index 2011

At the highest level of aggregation of the management index of the overall view is first important clues as to which countries boast the best overall governance performance and which still need to catch up. In-depth background information on the performance of a country provide detailed country reports on the SGI website with in-depth, qualitative information up to the level of the individual indicators.

The SGI Management Index is led quite different from Sweden and Norway. Both countries can claim more than 8 points on average. Behind are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, and Australia. Although the overall excellent performance of the Northern European countries is striking, as in the Status Index, which also shows very good result of the Anglo-Saxon systems of New Zealand and Australia, that is not necessarily a certain political " System Type " is crucial for a successful performance in the Management Index. At this top group, a broad middle joins, which then only in small steps rather changes in the index values ​​shows, so that no clear form of group formation can be observed. However, the unique tail lights of the survey are Greece and Slovakia. Both show nearly a full point behind Italy, which occupies the 29th place. Particularly noteworthy is the new member OECD Chile, which cuts even before some of the established long-standing OECD member countries.

Summary of Results

The results of the SGI show that a strong correlation between the performance levels of a country and its ability is to put reforms into effect. Countries that have a strong executive capacity and a high quality of democracy and must include social actors extensively in the political process are more successful both in terms of sustainability and social justice.

Society (disambiguation)
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