Ankara, September 19, 2006— The World Bank recently launched its new report, entitled “Governance Matters V: Governance Indicators for 1996-2005” which contains updated and expanded set of worldwide Indicators for 213 countries and territories on Governance Issues.
The Indicators are based on hundreds of variables and compilation of more than 120,000 responses from citizens, experts and enterprises worldwide, distilled from 30 underlying sources. The current release of these indicators and their data sources represents the largest publicly available data resource on governance in the world. These evidence-based empirical measures help development stakeholders track the quality of institutions, support capacity building, improve governance, and address corruption. The worldwide governance indicators measure the following six components of good governance:
- Voice and Accountability: the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media.
- Political Stability: perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including domestic violence and terrorism.
- Government Effectiveness: the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies.
- Regulatory Quality: the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations which permit and promote private sector development.
- Rule of Law: the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence.
- Control of Corruption: the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests.
The data related to Turkey in the Report shows that the country’s performance over time has significantly improved in most indicators, including “control of corruption”. These improvements are indicated by higher percentile ranks for Turkey on most of the selected governance indicators, although, given the substantial margins of error, some of these changes may not be statistically significant. Areas of progress, but suggesting the need for further improvements, include “voice and accountability”, “political stability” and “regulatory quality”. On “Government effectiveness”, Turkey’s estimated percentile rank has improved significantly since the mid and late nineties, and particularly since 1998. In terms of “regulatory quality”, Turkey’s estimated percentile rank has slightly improved since 2002, although values for this indicator were stronger in the late nineties (with an estimated unit value of 0.75 in 1998 vs. 0.18 in 2005, and percentile ranks of 77% and 59%, respectively). Finally, after a noticeable decline in 2000/2002, Turkey’s percentile rank for “control of corruption” has significantly improved. The estimated unit value for this indicator went from –0.45 in 2002 to 0.08 in 2005, and estimated percentile ranks went from 40% to 60%, respectively (see Table A). The detailed methodological paper “Governance Matters V: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators for 1996-2005” (p. 15 and p. 38) cites Turkey as one of the countries for which the change in estimated governance over the 2002-2005 period is significant, with respect to improvements in the “Control of Corruption” indicator.
In 2005, Turkey’s position with respect to comparable countries is also impressive, with the exception of the indicators for “voice and accountability” and “political stability”. On “control of corruption” and “Government effectiveness”, Turkey’s percentile rank is the highest, after the OECD average and South Korea.
“Good governance is becoming widely recognized by government reformers, citizens, enterprises, foreign investors and aid donors around the world as crucial for effective development and growth as well as being directly connected to improved living standards”, stated Andrew Vorkink, Country Director for Turkey: “As for Turkey, the data shows on a number of global governance indicators Turkey is making impressive progress and doing even better than some EU candidate countries from Eastern Europe. In most trends Turkey has improved in the past several years. However, other data indicate that for trends such as Regulatory Quality some improvement is needed to bring Turkey up to higher standards. The Report shows there is a clear correlation between improved governance and per capita income levels and social indicators, which means improvements on governance by Turkey today will be translated in better income levels and living standards in the years ahead. We have already seen the effect of these improvements in Turkey’s economy over the past few years.”
