Measuring Political Development (DP IB Global Politics: SL): Revision Note

How political development is measured

• Political development refers to improvements in the quality of governance, democratic participation and the rule of law within a state

• Measuring political development is more difficult than measuring economic output

  • Concepts such as trust, accountability and corruption are hard to quantify

• Two of the most widely used tools for measuring political development are:

  • The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)

  • The Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI)

• Trust in public institutions is closely linked to levels of corruption

  • States with high corruption tend to have low public trust in government

Corruption and trust indices

• Corruption is the abuse of power by individuals or officials for personal gain, often through bribery or dishonest actions

  • Corruption is often hidden and not easy to measure but has an enormous impact on all forms of development

  • High corruption indicates a low level of political development, in particular because it is the responsibility of the state to maintain justice

• Trust indices indicate the trust people have in public institutions

  • They are closely related to levels of corruption

The Corruption Perceptions Index

• Transparency International publishes the most widely accepted corruption index

• As corruption itself cannot be easily measured, this index relies on surveys conducted by 13 global institutions, including:

  • the World Bank

  • the African Development Bank

  • the World Economic Forum

• A score between 0-100 is applied to each state based on the public’s perception of corruption

  • Close to 0 means the country is highly corrupt

  • Close to 100 indicates the public do not see much evidence of corruption

The Government at a Glance Report

• The Government at a Glance Report is produced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

  • It measures a variety of factors, including how much trust the public has in state governments

Key findings from 2025

• Only 47% of the world’s governments are transparent with essential data

• Only 37% of global citizens are confident that their government cares about long-term sustainable development

• The greatest concern is economic instability and how state governments manage the economy

Sustainable governance indicators

• The Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGIs) examines 41 states with democratic systems

  • It is produced by German civil society foundation the Bertelsmann Stiftung

  • It examines how well governments implement policies that encourage environmental and political stability and sustainability

  • It is based on the belief that sustainable development is impossible without good governance

How it works

• Experts in a variety of fields provide their own judgements of government policies in areas of

  • Economy and employment

  • Social affairs

  • Security

  • Resources

• In addition the quality of government is considered, such as the electoral process, access to information, civil rights and the rule of law

• Overall, this provides an overview of the status of multiple types of government policies

  • However, as only 41 countries are considered, it does not provide a comprehensive overview of global governance