ABSTRACT
Attempts to measure narrow aspects of governmental performance in the United States have a long history in the field of public administration, but such efforts were rarely, if ever, described as measuring state governance. As interest in the concept of governance grew in the late 1980s, scholars and practitioners became involved in its measurement across countries. By 2003, interest had spread, leading Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government to sponsor The Conference on Measuring Governance. The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project originated in the Research Department of the World Bank in the late 1990s. Although KKM scored the countries separately on six conceptually distinct qualities of governance, all indicator scores were significantly intercorrelated. In contrast, note the positive governance score for the Latin American country, Costa Rica, mentioned for its environmental record. In the social sciences, measurement error is often more substantial, and error certainly exists in measuring governance.
