Taiwan Governance in Top 1/4 of countries

Taiwan's governance has taken a beating in the blogs lately, and regularly gets lambasted in the local Chinese language media. So the World Bank Institute's recent placement of Taiwan in the 77th percentile in terms of effectiveness of governance ought to count for something.

The report, which the Washington-based WBI has performed biannually since 1996, covered 209 countries and territories from 1996 to 2004 using six comparative indicators based on percentile scores derived from evaluations of over 350 variables by over 30 economic management and forecasting and global civic groups ( for more information, see http://info.worldbank.org/governance).

After noting that the local media had argued that Taiwan had declined in five years, the editorial went on to discuss the reasons for the "slide" to the 77th percentile from -- you guessed it -- the 78th percentile. The Taiwan media, which could hardly locate its own anus with a map, a flashlight, and a pack of hunting dogs, was apparently not capable of grasping the idea of relative ranking. The editorial went on to explain:

The impression of decline was conveyed by taking Taiwan's rankings out of context as well as misunderstanding the basis of the WBI's comparison, which is based on comparative percentile indices instead of a direct ranking.

For example, Taiwan recorded considerable improvement from 2000 to 2004 in "voice and accountability" from 70.2 percentile to 75.7 percentile and "regulatory quality" from 83.4 percentile to 88.7 percentile, showed modest improvement in "government efficiency" from 83.9 to 85.1 percentile and showed declines in "rule of law" from 79.1 to 77.8 percentile and "control over corruption" from 76.9 percentile to 73.9 percentile and a more serious slip in "political stability" from 73.3 to 62.6 percentile.

These findings show that Taiwan now ranks better than 75.7 percent of the 209 countries surveyed in political, civil and human rights, superior to 85.1 percent of all countries in "government effectiveness," better than 88.7 percent in "regulatory quality," ranked over 77.8 percent in "rule of law," and beats out 73.9 percent in "control of corruption."

The news on Taiwan's government ain't all bad, folks. My own experience is that while it can be exasperating to file all the paperwork here, generally, once everything is done, the wheels do grind, even if they grind slowly. I always put government behavior here in the context of my wife's experience with the INS, which, after nine years, seems incapable of even answering a letter, let alone delivering on the simple service we asked them to deliver almost a decade ago.

Technorati: [Taiwan]