Countries by Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank, Lower Bound of 90% Confidence Interval

Ranking 2023

Values shown in %.

Analysis

This metric reports the lower bound of the 90% confidence interval for each country's Government Effectiveness percentile rank, as estimated by the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators. The source defines governance as consisting of 'the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised,' including 'the process by which governments are selected, mo[nitored and replaced].' The unit is a percentile rank expressed as a percentage, where higher values indicate better-perceived government effectiveness. The 2023 dataset covers all 205 countries included here, with 100% of data points classified as official quality and 100% sourced from within the last seven years. No extreme outliers were identified using a 3-standard-deviation threshold, and the average year-over-year change of 14.5% falls well within the 50% volatility threshold.

The top of the ranking is dominated by small, wealthy economies and Northern European states. Singapore leads at 97.64% (rank 1), followed by Switzerland at 96.70% (rank 2) and Denmark at 93.40% (rank 3). Luxembourg (91.51%, rank 4) and Finland and Norway (both 89.15%, rank 5) round out the top five positions. Japan, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates share rank 9 at 84.43%, showing that high scores are not limited to Western democracies. All top-ranked countries reflect consistently high scores across governance perception surveys of enterprise respondents, citizens, and experts.

The middle of the ranking shows notable variation. India sits at rank 56 with 53.77%, grouping it alongside Botswana at the same value. Poland (52.36%, rank 59) and Hungary (50.47%, rank 60) rank lower than several middle-income economies. China ranks 50th at 60.38%, above several European Union members. At the lower end, Russia scores 10.38% (rank 158), and Belarus scores 6.60% (rank 176). Iraq (rank 186, 2.36%) and Venezuela (rank 191, 0.94%) are among the lowest-scoring countries with functioning central governments included in the dataset.

Because this metric reports the lower bound of a 90% confidence interval rather than a point estimate, countries with greater uncertainty in their underlying data will show a larger gap between their true percentile rank and the value reported here. Countries with fewer survey respondents or less diverse data sources will tend to have wider confidence intervals, potentially deflating their reported lower-bound score relative to better-sampled countries. The metric aggregates perceptions from multiple survey sources and does not directly measure government outputs or institutional quality. Rankings can reflect survey design, respondent composition, and sampling variation as much as actual governance performance.

Methodology

Data are drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code GE.PER.RNK.LOWER, for the reference year 2023. The metric is the lower bound of the 90% confidence interval of the Government Effectiveness percentile rank. As defined in the source: 'The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are a research dataset summarizing the views on the quality of governance provided by a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, mo[nitored and replaced].' The dataset covers 205 countries, all with data from within the last seven years. Data quality is 100% official. No extreme outliers were detected at the 3-standard-deviation threshold. The value range spans 0.00% to 97.64%, a spread of approximately 999%. Average year-over-year change is 14.5%, indicating reasonable stability. Because this is a confidence interval lower bound rather than a central estimate, it systematically understates the point-estimate rank, particularly for countries with sparse underlying survey data.

Sources

• World Bank