Unexpectedly Intriguing!
20 September 2005

The World Bank Institute has developed a checklist (Ref: Daniel Kaufman of the International Monetary Fund Finance and Development organization) that allows various institutions and governments to better determine what steps they need to take to both promote good governance and to reduce corruption. Both these ingredients are vital to promoting beneficial development and to achieving stronger economic growth.

But why let governments have all the fun? Why not allow regular people to assess their own governments, at the local, state or national levels? Political Calculations(TM) offers the following do-it-yourself shortened version of the World Bank Institute's good governance checklist for you to evaluate the government of your choice!

  1. Public Disclosure of Assets and Income for:

  2. Candidates for Public Office
    Public Officials
    Politicians and Lobbyists
    Legislators
    Judges
    Spouses and Dependents of the above.

  3. Public Disclosure of Political Campaign Contributions and Expenditures

  4. By Individuals
    By Organizations
    By Candidates

  5. Public Disclosure of All:

  6. Parliamentary Votes
    Parliamentary Debates
    Draft Legislation

  7. Effective Implementation of:

  8. Conflict of Interest Laws
    Lobbying Reporting Laws
    Freedom of Information Laws
    Public Disclosure Laws

  9. Freedom of the Media

  10. Print
    Broadcast
    Internet
    Individuals

  11. Fiscal and Public Financial Transparency

  12. Central and Local Budgets
    Meetings Held By Public Officials
    Competitive Procurement

Total Boxes Checked:

So, how did the governments that impact you score? Does it provide for full disclosure of the information listed? Does it do it fast enough? Does it let you access the information or does it create barriers to public discovery? Go back over the list, change the answers where appropriate, then judge how good the government you evaluated performed according to the following table:

Political Calculations' Good Governance Ranking
Score Ranking
22 - 23Good
19 - 21Fair
16 - 18Poor
10 - 18Very Poor
0 - 9Exceptionally Poor

If the government scores anything less than "Good," you've got a government that could use a serious kick in the you know what. How hard depends upon how low on the scale it is....

Nick Schulz notes the link between bad governance and poverty at Tech Central Station.... (HT: Instapundit).

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About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

ironman at politicalcalculations

Thanks in advance!

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