Measuring institutional respect and State capacities in South America. A relational analysis on four dimensions of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (2017-2018)

Abstract

The measurement of “good governance” has become an object of (e) valuation by international actors. In this regard, it has occupied the attention of investors, donors, private companies, development agencies, academics, journalists, governments, and credit organizations in the last 30 years, accompanied by a greater flow of international investments to under developed economies. Among these indicators, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) produced by the World Bank stand out. Although these numbers are not used directly by the Bank to condition resources, they are used by organizations such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to decide in which countries allocate financial aid based on the results of some of the dimensions of these indicators. For this reason, this work seeks to investigate the relationships networks that exist between the indicators and the organizations that participate in providing data, asking about what type of organizations produce inputs of certain dimensions, what relationships they have with each other and with others, in terms of participation, and where the central houses that produce these inputs are located geographically. For this, we have analyzed and characterized the relationship network of production about four dimensions of the WGI indicators, according to the organizations that provided data for South America during the period 2017-2018. The main results obtained indicate that a small number of international organizations in the Northern hemisphere have greater participation in the supply of inputs, highlighting private companies or organizations linked to them.