ABSTRACT
In Europe, painstaking criteria have been developed for the acceptance of new members to the European Union, including their ‘level of democracy’. Simultaneously, however, the democratic credentials of some of the present member states have been placed in doubt. An enduring state formation has to precede, conceptually and in political practice, any meaningful democratization. In the European context, this is painfully evident in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo, for example. Since 1996, the World Bank has compiled a wide range of data on ‘good governance’ from various sources. These include some quantifiable economic and social performance data, and also perception assessments by public, civil society and business sources such as the Economist Intelligence Unit, Standard and Poor’s Country Risk Review, the Gallup Millennium Survey and Transparency International.
