A New Tool to Measure Governance

The Berggruen Governance Index Project is a collaborative project between the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Berggruen Institute. The Index examines the performance of 134 countries in key areas over a 20-year period to advance our understanding of why some countries are better managed and enjoy a higher quality of life than others. To this end, the Index analyzes the relationship between democratic accountability, state capacity, and the provision of goods to serve public needs.

The project emerged from a series of conversations between Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, and Dawn Nakagawa at the Berggruen Institute, and Helmut K. Anheier, then president of the Hertie School in Berlin. The Berggruen Institute supported the preliminary exploration of the feasibility of such a governance index. Based on this work, and the publication of the 2019 Index, the project expanded and moved to the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA.

Helmut K. Anheier serves as Principal Investigator of the project at UCLA, with Dawn Nakagawa as project director for the Berggruen Institute.

The project is guided by a board that includes Nabil Fahmy (American University, Cairo), Mohammed Ibrahim (Mo Ibrahim Foundation), Francis Fukuyama (Stanford), Margaret Levi (Stanford), John Micklethwait (Bloomberg), Gary Segura (UCLA Luskin), Anne-Marie Slaughter (New America), Michael Woolcock (World Bank), and Xue Lan (Tsinghua University).

More information about the project and the 2022 BGI: governance.luskin.ucla.edu

When using the Berggruen Governance Index data, please make sure to include a proper citation or reference to this database: “Anheier, Helmut K. 2022. The 2022 Berggruen Governance Index Data. Berlin and Los Angeles: Hertie School and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.”