For anyone doing work in comparative politics/economics, you should definitely take a look at the World Bank's Governance Indicators project, the latest version of which was just released this week.

For the press release...

NEW REPORT AND WORLDWIDE GOVERNANCE INDICATORS

As of the afternoon of May 9th, 2005, we are launching the new report containing the updated and expanded set of worldwide Governance Indicators for 209 countries and territories. The research methodology as well as the new data and analysis are contained in the new report, Governance Matters IV: Governance Indicators for 1996-2004, authored by D. Kaufmann, A. Kraay, and M. Mastruzzi. This is the fourth such report in a research series that started in the late nineties.

Salient features include:
-- For 2004, data is drawn from 352 measures from 30 sources, including cross-country surveys of firms and citizens, commercial risk-rating agencies, think-tanks, government agencies, international organizations, and academic insitutions.
-- Through an advanced statistical method, aggregation into 6 Governance Indicators, for the period 1996-2004, for 209 countries.
-- New methodology to address the question: Has real change taken place over time in a country?
-- Thanks to the aggregation methodology and the larger number of sources, improved assessment of governance for countries is now feasible, with higher precision.
-- Yet margins of error still need to be taken seriously; no precise 'horse races' rankings is warranted in any governance, institutional, or investment climate indicator.

Some results include:
-- With the new data, validation of the large 'Development Dividend' of Good Governance, and of the notion that becoming a wealthy country is not a pre-condition for attaining good governance.
-- The enormous impact of corruption on investment climate variables.
-- The satisfactory performance of 'perception-based' or 'subjective' indicators compared with others.
-- Some countries have improved over a relatively short period of time, showing that relatively rapid institutional change, while rare, is feasible in the short-term.
-- Yet other countries have deteriorated, and many have stagnated.
-- Thus, the worldwide average has not improved over the past 8 years
-- Therefore refocusing of governance efforts may be needed by both the rich and emerging worlds, with more focus on Transparency, Voice, Prevention and Incentives.

The full report and appendices, as well as the synthesis, and the user-friendly interactive access to the updated data and graphics is available from the governance homepage at: http://worldbank.org/wbi/governance/