Policy Performance and Governance Capacities in the OECD and EU (2018)

The quality of democracy in the OECD and EU has declined in recent years. At the same time, growing political polarization has made the day-to-day work of governance and thus member states’ capacity to reform more difficult. As a cross-national survey of governance, the Sustainable Governance Indicators examine 41 countries in terms of their democratic standards, quality of governance and policy outcomes in the areas of economics, social affairs and the environment. The Bertelsmann Stiftung has used the index regularly since 2011 to analyze the future viability of OECD and EU states.