The Good Governance Indicators of the Millennium Challenge Account: How Many Dimensions are Really Being Measured?

Abstract

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Towards responsive energy governance: Lessons from a holistic analysis of energy access in Uganda and Zambia

“…To capture these effects, governance assessments can be guided along a set of different governance indicators which cover a wide range of potential governance-related issues. Importantly, governance indicators do not possess a claim of universal applicability (Kaufmann and Kraay, 2007;Knoll and Zloczysti, 2012), with a meaningful conceptualisation of 'good governance' indicators strongly depending on the empirical context (Andrews, 2008). Consequentially, this paper builds on previous works of (Dunu, 2013;United Nations, 2000) to define an encompassing set of six different 'good governance' indicators, which are specifically related to the context of energy access in this sub-section.…”

Poverty Reduction and Good Governance: Examining the Rationale of the Millennium Development Goals

“…A number of experts have insisted that aid projects are successful only when accompanied by good policies and institutions (Burnside and Dollar, 2000;World Bank, 1998). In the United States, for example, the Millennium Challenge Account has announced that, based on compiled governance indicators, it would provide development aid only to countries that proved to be well-governed (Knoll and Zloczysti, 2012). Such practice can also be found in multilateral agencies, such as the International Development Association, part of the World Bank Group.…”

Policy Evaluation via Composite Indexes: Qualitative Lessons from International Transparency Policy Indexes

“…The Open Budget Index (OBI) serves as one sub-indicator within the World Bank's six Governance Indicators (WGIs), which in turn constitutes a large part of the Millennium Challenge Corporation's (MCC) multi-billion dollar funding decisions (Gisselquist, 2013;Knoll & Zloczysti, 2012). The Aid Transparency Index (ATI) attributes 3.33% of its points to the strength of a country's freedom of information (FOI) law, based on the RTI-Rating.…”

“…514, 518). It is also one of the culprits behind critiques of convergent/discriminant validity -why indexes that purport to assess multiple dimensions of a concept frequently only measure only one or two (among many examples, see Knoll & Zloczysti, 2012).…”

“…"Policy indexes" -those indexes that measure policies or coherent policy frameworks -have received much less methodological scrutiny in the literature on development and governance than the more popularized "concept indexes", which measure multidimensional meta-concepts such as "sustainability", "governance", "corruption", or "development", among others (see for example, Bersch & Botero, 2014;Gisselquist, 2014;Grimm, Harttgen, Klasen, & Misselhorn, 2008;Heywood & Rose, 2014;Knoll & Zloczysti, 2012;Kurtz & Schrank, 2007;McGillivray, 1991;Mitchell, 1996). Whereas concept indexes are subject to contention statistically and have received widespread attention from methodologists, policy indexes are constructed based primarily on the normative judgments (Decancq & Lugo, 2013) of policy experts or advocates.…”