2. 2. Some EU countries better than others Looking at the evolution of any available indicator of Quality of Government, one can see important differences within the context of EU countries. Figure 1 plots the historical trend of one of the most all-encompassing and quoted measure of QoG – the Political Risk Services’ ICRG indicator of Quality of Government – for a selected group of nine EU countries in the period 1990-2008. States receive a higher score when they are perceived to, first, be able to withstand a change in government without experiencing traumatic disruptions of services and day-to-day administrative functions and, second, when potential corruption in the form of excessive patronage, nepotism, job reservations, ‘favor-for-favors’, secret party funding, and suspiciously close ties between politics and business is perceived as being the exception and not the rule. Although somewhat simplistic, this figure provides a basic preliminary overview of a phenomenon pointed out by many leading economists when they refer to the main political challenges of developed societies. As Dani Kaufmann noted: “if anybody thought that the governance and corruption challenge was a monopoly of the developing world… that notion has been disposed completely” (quoted in Rothstein 2009:2). The general trend that emerges from this extremely simple empirical exercise is far from optimistic. On average, European countries do not show a clear improvement in their levels of quality of government in the past two decades. As a matter of fact, the slope for most EU countries is, if anything, negative. Whether this general downward pattern is due to measurement issues (we discuss these questions below in this document) or really obeys to a true decline in the levels of quality of government needs further investigation. Nevertheless, what can be said is that, at first sight, there does not seem to be empirical support for the arguments that link democratic experience or membership in the EU to better governance.
2. 2. Some EU countries better than others Looking at the evolution of any available indicator of Quality of Government, one can see important differences within the context of EU countries. Figure 1 plots the historical trend of one of the most all-encompassing and quoted measure of QoG – the Political Risk Services’ ICRG indicator of Quality of Government – for a selected group of nine EU countries in the period 1990-2008. States receive a higher score when they are perceived to, first, be able to withstand a change in government without experiencing traumatic disruptions of services and day-to-day administrative functions and, second, when potential corruption in the form of excessive patronage, nepotism, job reservations, ‘favor-for-favors’, secret party funding, and suspiciously close ties between politics and business is perceived as being the exception and not the rule. Although somewhat simplistic, this figure provides a basic preliminary overview of a phenomenon pointed out by many leading economists when they refer to the main political challenges of developed societies. As Dani Kaufmann noted: “if anybody thought that the governance and corruption challenge was a monopoly of the developing world… that notion has been disposed completely” (quoted in Rothstein 2009:2). The general trend that emerges from this extremely simple empirical exercise is far from optimistic. On average, European countries do not show a clear improvement in their levels of quality of government in the past two decades. As a matter of fact, the slope for most EU countries is, if anything, negative. Whether this general downward pattern is due to measurement issues (we discuss these questions below in this document) or really obeys to a true decline in the levels of quality of government needs further investigation. Nevertheless, what can be said is that, at first sight, there does not seem to be empirical support for the arguments that link democratic experience or membership in the EU to better governance.
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