The World Bank's Governance and Anticorruption Agenda in Asia and the Pacific: Measuring Progress and Impact

Since the emergence of the concept of ‘good governance’ as a central element of development assistance in the early 2000‘s, the importance and challenge of measuring improvements in governance, and of evaluating the effectiveness of governance interventions, have become increasingly clear. In recent years, the World Bank has expanded its efforts in helping countries improve their governance environments and strengthen their public management practices. These efforts have been part of a newly launched Governance and Anti-Corruption (GAC) Strategy, supported by programs carried out by each of the Bank’s regional vice-presidencies.

For this project, the SIPA team provided a synthetic overview of the key debates and methodologies existing in the field of governance measurement, among both donors and academics, to assist the World Bank‘s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) East Asia Department in its role of facilitating the transition of the Bank‘s Governance and Anti- Corruption (GAC) Strategy from its first to its second phase.