If a country score on a Washington analyst’s spreadsheet nudges from -0.79 to -0.75, should anyone care? Maybe not. In fact, here’s a case where the appearance of insight provided by functionally hollow numbers is filling up a space that could be used to discuss actual governance issues. Call it governance theater. It’s as staged…
Last week, Radio Australia broke the news that Xanana Gusmão, the Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, approved a multi-million dollar government contract to a company in which the PM’s daughter is a shareholder. This major case of alleged nepotism is catching all the headlines, but Radio Australia reporters uncovered other cases of alleged corruption and favoritism…
The latest round of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) were released today under the auspices of… we’re not entirely sure. Ownership issues aside, the WGI remain the most widely used governance data in the world. Previously an effort of the World Bank Institute under Dani Kaufman’s leadership, “The WGI are [now] produced by: Daniel Kaufmann,…
The fieldwork for the Global Integrity Report: 2009 is underway, and we’re happy to announce our target countries for the upcoming year. The big news this year is that we are splitting our 70 target countries into two groups, which we will alternate on even and odd years in a two-year rotation. You can see…
UPDATE: See the Indaba project website at http://getindaba.org Global Integrity is seeking bids for the design and build of Indaba, a new browser-based research platform. Indaba will be the Global Integrity’s third generation of research software allowing rapid, flexible collaboration on research and reporting. A bit about Global Integrity and technology… Global Integrity works in…
The Center for Public Integrity updates its decade long series on US statehouse legislative disclosures. The data is published in a new report States of Disclosure. Twenty of fifty states get failing grades for their financial disclosures, and three US states — Idaho, Michigan, Vermont — require no financial disclosures whatsoever. They’ve got a nice…