Countries by Rule of Law: Percentile Rank, Upper Bound of 90% Confidence Interval

Ranking 2023

Values shown in %.

Analysis

This metric measures the upper bound of the 90% confidence interval for a country's percentile rank on the Rule of Law dimension of the Worldwide Governance Indicators. The unit is percentage (%), where a higher value indicates a stronger perceived rule of law. As the source note states: 'Good governance is essential for development. It helps countries improve economic growth, build human capital, and strengthen social cohesion. Empirical evidence shows a strong causal relationship between better governance and better development outcomes. The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are designed to help researchers and analysts assess broad patterns in perceptions of governance acros.' The indicator code is RL.PER.RNK.UPPER, sourced from the World Bank World Development Indicators for the data year 2023. Coverage is strong: 205 countries are included, all with data from within the last seven years, and 100% of data points are classified as official quality. No extreme outliers were detected at the 3-standard-deviation threshold, and average year-over-year change is 6.0%, indicating relative stability.

The top of the ranking features 14 countries tied at 100%: Andorra, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, San Marino, Singapore, and Switzerland. These are followed closely by American Samoa and the Netherlands, both at 99.53% (rank 15), and Ireland and Sweden at 99.06% (rank 17). Australia, Germany, and Japan share rank 19 at 98.58%, with Canada at rank 22 with 97.17%. The top tier is dominated by Western European nations, Nordic countries, and a small number of high-income economies in Asia and Oceania.

In the middle of the ranking, countries such as India (rank 90, 64.62%), South Africa (rank 94, 58.96%), and Brazil (rank 118, 52.36%) illustrate the broad spread of mid-range scores. Notable placements include China at rank 95 with 57.08% and the Philippines at rank 128 with 47.17%. Toward the lower end, Mexico scores 29.25% at rank 156, while Russia places at rank 178 with 19.34%. The bottom tier includes Syria (rank 202, 3.30%), South Sudan (rank 203, 1.89%), and Somalia and Venezuela tied at rank 204 with 1.42%. One anomaly worth noting is that Hong Kong SAR, China, scores 92.92% at rank 29, while mainland China scores 57.08% at rank 95, a gap of nearly 36 percentage points between two entities under the same sovereign classification.

Several limitations apply to this metric. Because this is the upper bound of a 90% confidence interval rather than a point estimate, it will systematically overstate the central estimate of rule of law performance for every country. Countries with wider confidence intervals will appear more favorably on this measure than their point estimates would suggest, potentially distorting comparisons. The metric captures perceptions of governance rather than direct institutional measures, meaning it reflects how rule of law is perceived by survey respondents and expert assessors rather than verifiable legal outcomes. Territorial entities such as Greenland, Guam, Aruba, and Hong Kong SAR are included alongside sovereign states, which complicates like-for-like comparisons. The wide value range of 1.42% to 100.00%, a spread of 6,966.7%, underscores how sensitive rankings can be at the extremes.

Methodology

The metric is the upper bound of the 90% confidence interval for a country's percentile rank on the Rule of Law dimension, sourced from the World Bank World Development Indicators (indicator code: RL.PER.RNK.UPPER) for the data year 2023. As defined in the source note: 'Good governance is essential for development. It helps countries improve economic growth, build human capital, and strengthen social cohesion. Empirical evidence shows a strong causal relationship between better governance and better development outcomes. The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are designed to help researchers and analysts assess broad patterns in perceptions of governance acros.' The unit is percentage (%), where higher values indicate stronger perceived rule of law. Coverage includes 205 countries, all with data from within the last seven years (100% recency), and all data points are classified as official quality (100%). No extreme outliers were identified at the 3-standard-deviation threshold. Average year-over-year change is 6.0%, indicating low volatility. The value range spans 1.42% to 100.00%, a spread of 6,966.7%. Because this indicator represents the upper bound of a confidence interval rather than a central estimate, values will be systematically higher than point estimates, and countries with wider confidence intervals may rank more favorably than their central estimates alone would indicate.

Sources

• World Bank