Differences in QoG across Countries and Regions in the EU

An interesting question that Charron and Lapuente (2011) posed and answered empirically is why the level of QoG varies so much across the EU, including between regions in the same country. Italy is an example of a consistently low performer on most world government indicators, whereas the Netherlands is consistently a high performer. Also, in Belgium, for example, Flanders is characterized by top performance similar to Scandinavian countries, whereas Wallonia’s low QoG level compares with that of Portugal. In fact, according to the QoG Institute (2010, 11) a close examination of the QoG picture across the EU horizontally and diachronically for the last 20 years in terms of such indicators as lack of corruption, rule of law, and government effectiveness reveals the following:

1. A significant QoG gap exists between the north (Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and United Kingdom) and the south (France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece).
2. The north-south gap has widened in the last two decades, and it is no accident that the recent financial crisis in Portugal, Italy, and Greece threatened the existence of the Eurozone.
3. The level of QoG in ex-Soviet countries like Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria has not changed as one would have expected since they joined the EU.

The University of Gothenburg developed a composite QoG index consisting of four of the World Bank’s indicators of governance (control of corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness, and voice and accountability). QoG can contribute to a country’s economic growth and social development. This analysis not only ranks the countries according to their QoG based on the four criteria already mentioned but clusters the countries in three groups:

• Group 1: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, United Kingdom, and Ireland.
• Group 2: France, Spain, Belgium, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus, Estonia, and Slovenia.
• Group 3: Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania.²⁹

The QoG differences between the countries in the three groupings were still present even when the researchers controlled for standard political, cultural, and socioeconomic indicators. According to Charron and Lapuente (2011), such national and regional differences in QoG are explained by the fact that low-performing countries and regions historically had unconstrained governments/rulers and the executives were unrestrained.

A challenging question posed and answered by the QoG Institute (2010) was how QoG can be improved by utilizing the knowledge gained from high- performing regions of the EU (p. 15). Their study highlighted the following eight “lessons” (pp. 44-54):

• Independent and active media
• Policy of high transparency
• Active civil society organizations
• The advantages of ethnic diversity
• Meritocratic public organizations

• Protection of whistle-blowers
• Adoption of private sector practices
• The importance of self-government with clear chain of accountability

Of the eight lessons, according to the QoG Institute (2011, 54—55), the following three are decisive for achieving a high level of QoG: “protecting whistle-blowing, protecting meritocratic civil servants, and protecting an independent media.”³⁰