Abstract
This chapter explains why Global Integrity, an independent non-profit organisation best known for its Global Integrity Report, started working on indicator-based integrity assessments, how its approach and methodology have evolved over the last decade and the linkages to broader developments in the field of governance measurement. In addition, the chapter lays out the reasons why Global Integrity has revised its organisational strategy and the resulting implications for on-going and future data projects. The authors—the former and current directors of research at Global Integrity—walk readers through three main stages in this evolution. The first stage involves Global Integrity’s origins and the gap that the Global Integrity Report came to fill in the governance measurement field in the 2000s. In the second stage, Global Integrity iteratively enhanced its methodology and refocused its aim, effectively shifting from a traditional expert assessment to a “fact-based expert analysis”, and expanded into new regional and sector assessments. In the third stage, Global Integrity’s growing concerns about the overall impact of its data resulted in the organisation re-evaluating its theory of change and revising some of its core assumptions about how governance reform happens and how measurements can contribute. This has resulted in an effort to better understand and support the use and usefulness of data at the country level and to rethink the role that external “best-practice” benchmarks play vis-à-vis locally defined “best-fit” benchmarks, re-orienting the organisation towards exploring how adaptive learning can contribute to supporting domestic stakeholders in driving governance reform.
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- 1.
The full list of indicators is omitted given the large number. However, they are available at https://www.globalintegrity.org/downloads/. Small modifications were made to both the categorisation and wording of the indicators during the various iterations of the Global Integrity Report.
- 2.
The researchers are highly qualified and experienced individuals in each country, usually from the fields of political science, law, journalism or academia. They are required to have significant experience in anti-corruption issues and cannot have had recent contractual engagements with the government.
- 3.
The categories are equally valued, even though some categories are derived from a lengthier series of sub-indicators/questions than others. Similarly, the subcategories are equally valued within their parent category.
- 4.
The scores are: Very Strong (90+), Strong (80+), Moderate (70+), Weak (60+), Very Weak (<60).
- 5.
While there are a number of organisations thinking along the same lines (see, e.g. Reboot 2015; Custer et al. 2016), the vast majority of data-producing organisations still operate, at least publicly, on the assumption that the mere creation of information coupled with basic dissemination models will lead to change.
- 6.
The alliance is a consortium of governance data producers, users and funders working together to strengthen the production, use and impact of governance data. It is currently hosted by the Results for Development Institute and was initially convened by Global Integrity co-founder and then Executive Director Nathaniel Heller in 2014. A major contribution that the Alliance has made is commissioning a first-of-its-kind user survey to explore the use of governance data, conducted by AidData. Among other findings, the report showed data are most useful if and when they are aligned with country priorities and that the political context plays a role in uptake and usefulness. The results—as noted throughout this chapter—accentuate and corroborate our longstanding unease about the real impact of our (and other organisations’) data.
- 7.
Executive director and co-founder Nathaniel Heller left the organisation at the end of 2014 and Alan Hudson took the helm of the organisation in early 2015. Hazel Feigenblatt left in mid-2015.
- 8.
Open and accountable governance has always been at the heart of what Global Integrity does. As set out earlier, our initial hypothesis—or theory of change—revolved around providing data and information for change agents to catalyse reform. Moreover, while we revised various aspects of that logic over time, it was an internal and rather unsystematic undertaking. Starting in 2015, we have pivoted to hypothesising about the value of adaptive learning as the key mechanism in our theory of change and we have established mechanisms to transparently explore this theory and reflect on our actions and learning, committing to showcase both our progress and our failures and to inviting feedback and debate from outside the organisation.
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Feigenblatt, H., Tonn, J. (2018). Measuring the Opposite of Corruption: The Evolution of Governance Indicators at Global Integrity. In: Malito, D., Umbach, G., Bhuta, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62707-6_12
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