Актуальные проблемы Европы №2 / 2014 - страница 18

Instead, I define country governance as the extent to which a state delivers to its citizens the desired benefits of government at acceptable costs (9, p. 3–18). By defining governance in terms of benefits to citizens rather than coordination among units, we can assess the quality of governance by using standard measures, such as the World Bank’s six Worldwide Governance Indicators:

1. Rule of Law (RL) – capturing perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence;

2. Voice and Accountability (VA) – capturing perceptions of the extent to which a country's citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media;

3. Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism (PV) – capturing perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including politically‐motivated violence and terrorism;

4. Government Effectiveness (GE) – capturing perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies;

5. Regulatory Quality (RQ) – capturing perceptions of the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development;

6. Control of Corruption (CC) – capturing perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as «capture» of the state by elites and private interests (10).

All of these indicators are important, but the first, the Rule of Law, is especially important. One scholar writing on the «Euro-Mediterranean partnership» wrote: «At the macro level, donor agencies have increasingly realized that programmes promoting good governance and the rule of law are vital in creating the type of environment in which the benefits of social programmes can reach the most vulnerable» (4, p. 348).

He quotes a United Nations publication that said: «Development is unsustainable where the rule of law and equity do not exist» (8, p. 6).

This study examines how all twenty-two Mediterranean countries differ on the sole Worldwide Governance Indicator, Rule of Law (RL). RL scores for 214 countries in 2011, collected under the auspices of the World Bank, are freely available on the Internet (17). The scores were normed so that the mean (average) for all 214 countries was 0 and the standard deviation was 1. Positive scores above 0 indicated that the nation scored above average on Rule of Law, while negative scores indicated below average scores.

In 2011, Finland had the highest score of +1.96, with seven other nations above +1.8. Somalia had the lowest score at –2.35. For further reference, Russia’s score was –0.78 and the United States scored +1.59. The distribution of scores for 214 nations is given in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Distribution of 214 polities on Rule of Law in 2011

This study focuses on the 22 Mediterranean countries – including Portugal. It compares the 2011 Rule of Law for countries north of the Mediterranean Sea with those to the south and east. It also compares RL scores for Mediterranean countries in the European Union, for those seeking EU membership, for those entirely out of the EU, and for all non-Mediterranean EU countries. The 9 EU Mediterranean countries averaged +0.93 on Rule of Law, below the +1.2 average of the 19 EU countries outside the Mediterranean. The 4 EU applicant countries scored –0.17 on RL, and the 9 countries not in the EU averaged –0.24. The data for all 41 Mediterranean and EU countries are plotted in