The World Bank recently published the Worldwide Governance Indicators for 212 countries and territories over the period 1996–2006, for six dimensions of governance:

• Voice and Accountability
• Political Stability and Absence of Violence
• Government Effectiveness
• Regulatory Quality
• Rule of Law
• Control of Corruption

For the Central African Republic, the ratings have improved since 2003 in most dimensions, but overall governance in CAR is still rated as very poor. CAR performs best on the ‘Voice and Accountability’ dimension. There is also minor improvement in the ‘Government Effectiveness’ and ‘Control of Corruption’ values. However, the indicator for ‘Absence of Violence and Political Stability’ deteriorated sharply over the last 12 months.

The individual data sources underlying the aggregate indicators are drawn from a diverse variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations. The Bank has a cool interactive website that lets you analyse and compare the six aggregate indicators and the underlying data sources.

Click here to download the governance fact sheets for CAR