Special Issue: Advancing Governance Research: The Quest for a New Generation of Indicators

Contributors to this special issue examine governance as the interaction among three dimensions: democratic accountability, state capacity and public goods delivery. This Governance Triangle, operationalised by the Berggruen Governance Index, opens the ‘black box’ of governance at the macro level and promises an improved understanding of how and why countries manage to meet the needs of their populations over time. The issue's articles use the Index to point to possible trajectories of specific countries in terms of governance performance and suggest potential policy implications.

PART I: Toward a New Understanding of Governance and the Need for a New Generation of Governance Indicators

Introducing the Berggruen Governance Index I: Conceptual and methodological framework - Helmut K. Anheier, Markus Lang and Edward L. Knudsen

Introducing the Berggruen Governance Index II: Initial results, 2000–2019 - Helmut K. Anheier, Markus Lang and Edward L. Knudsen

Introducing the Berggruen Governance Index III. Implications for theory and policy - Helmut K. Anheier and Olga Kononykhina

PART II: Country and Regional Reports, Comparative Analysis

A falling star? Origins of declining state capacity and democratic accountability in the United States - Edward L. Knudsen

Lessons and challenges of China's state-led and party-dominated governance model - Yuqing Yang

Debunking the autocratic fallacy? Improving public goods delivery in Russia - Christian Fröhlich

Unfinished revolutions: The post-Soviet crisis of governance in Ukraine - Christian Fröhlich

Stable or stagnant? Political economy and governance in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany since 2000 - Edward L. Knudsen

India: Developmental challenges faced by a dual economy - Yuqing Yang

Escape from the ‘lost decades?’ Governance challenges in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela - Edward L. Knudsen

Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards better governance and sustainability? - Helmut K. Anheier, Christian Fröhlich and Regina A. List

PART III: Advancing Governance Indicator Systems

Advancing governance indicator systems: Lessons learned from the 2022 symposium - Helmut K. Anheier, Regina A. List and Edward L. Knudsen

Advancing governance indicators: Four ways forward - Helmut K. Anheier