World Freedom Atlas: A Nice-Looking Tool to Visualize Good Governance Indexes

Posted by Michel Lazare

The time-series dataset (1990-2006) put together by the Quality of Government Institute of the Göteborg University (Sweden) is now available as an interactive mapping application in the World Freedom Atlas.

This data set is a very rich one. It contains dozens of data series and over 300 variables originating from a large variety of sources: World Bank, UNDP, NGOs, academia, etc. These data series cover not only good governance issues but also freedom, human rights, and democracy. Some of them relate to issues faced when reforming PFM systems (e.g., bureaucratic compensation) or could show, over time, the impact of PFM reforms (e.g., government effectiveness).

The World Freedom Atlas was programmed and designed by PhD candidate Zachary Johnson (zach.f.johnson@gmail.com) at the University of Wisconsin. Click here for a link to his blog which discusses many other visualization tools.

The Quality of Government (QoG) Institute was founded in 2004 by professors Sören Holmberg and Bo Rothstein at the Department of Political Science at Göteborg University.

The QoG Institute's website defines the mission of the Institute as follows:

"The Institute conducts and promotes research on the causes, consequences and nature of good governance and Quality of Government (QoG) - that is, trustworthy, reliable, impartial, uncorrupted and competent government institutions.

Our research addresses the questions of how to create and maintain high quality government institutions and how the quality of such institutions influences public policy in a broader sense. While Quality of Government is our common intellectual focal point, we apply a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives in our various studies."