Countries by Government Effectiveness: Percentile Rank

Ranking 2023

Values shown in %.

Analysis

Government Effectiveness measures a country's percentile position among all ranked nations on a composite governance indicator. The unit is a percentile rank expressed as a percentage, where 100% represents the top position and 0% the bottom. According to the source definition, the Worldwide Governance Indicators summarize 'the views on the quality of governance provided by a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries,' and 'governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised,' including 'the process by which governments are selected, monitored.' The dataset covers 205 countries, all with data from 2023, representing 100% recency. Data quality is rated 100% official. No extreme outliers were identified using a 3-standard-deviation threshold, and average year-over-year change is 10.6%, well within the 50% volatility threshold.

The top of the ranking is dominated by small, high-income economies and northern European nations. Singapore (Rank 1, 100%), Switzerland (Rank 2, 99.53%), and Denmark (Rank 4, 98.58%) lead the list. Nordic countries occupy multiple top-10 positions: Norway ranks 6th at 97.64% and Finland 7th at 97.17%. Japan (Rank 8, 96.70%) is the highest-ranked East Asian country. The United Arab Emirates (Rank 11, 95.28%) is the highest-ranked Middle Eastern country, outperforming larger economies such as Germany (Rank 29, 85.38%) and the United Kingdom (Rank 30, 84.43%). The United States ranks 25th at 87.74%.

The middle of the ranking contains notable placements. China ranks 52nd at 73.58%, while India ranks 62nd at 67.92%. Brazil sits at Rank 137 with 32.08%, well below regional peers such as Uruguay (Rank 40, 79.25%) and Chile (Rank 47, 75.94%). Russia ranks 149th at 26.42%. At the lower end, Haiti ranks 203rd at 0.94% and Yemen 204th at 0.47%, just above South Sudan at 0%. A notable anomaly: Monaco ranks 3rd at 99.06%, ahead of Denmark (Rank 4, 98.58%), placing a microstate above large, institutionally prominent democracies. Similarly, Brunei Darussalam ranks 21st at 90.09%, ahead of Austria (Rank 22, 89.62%) and Estonia (Rank 23, 88.68%).

This metric has several limitations specific to its construction. Because scores are percentile ranks rather than absolute measures, a country's rank can shift even if its underlying governance does not change, simply due to changes in other countries' scores. The composite is based on surveys of enterprises, citizens, and experts, introducing potential for perception bias and inconsistent coverage across countries. Smaller territories such as Cayman Islands (Rank 24, 88.21%), Bermuda (Rank 26, 87.26%), and American Samoa (Rank 53, 73.11%) are included alongside sovereign states, which may affect comparability. The indicator does not measure specific policies or outcomes directly, and the source note definition is not fully reproduced in publicly available summaries, meaning the full scope of what is and is not included in the composite may not be transparent to all users.

Methodology

The metric is the Government Effectiveness Percentile Rank (indicator code: GE.PER.RNK) from the World Bank World Development Indicators, using 2023 data. Scores represent each country's percentile position among all ranked countries, expressed as a percentage from 0 to 100, where higher values indicate better performance. Per the source definition, '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].' The dataset covers 205 countries, all with 2023 data (100% recency). Data quality is 100% official. The value range spans 0.00 to 100.00 (a 999% spread). No extreme outliers were found at the 3-sigma threshold. Average year-over-year change is 10.6%, below the 50% volatility threshold. Because scores are percentile ranks, they reflect relative rather than absolute governance quality and can shift due to changes in peer countries rather than changes in the country itself.

Sources

• World Bank