Measuring Quality of Governance in Turkey: A Composite Governance Index

Abstract

In this study, we analyze the quality of governance in Turkey by using worldwide governance indicators (WGIs), namely, voice and accountability (VA), political stability and absence of violence (PV), government effectiveness (GE), regulatory quality (RQ), rule of law (RL), and control of corruption (CC) which aggregate 6 dimensions of governance. In that regard, we employ principal component analysis (PCA) to construct a composite governance index (CGI) for Turkey over the 2002-2017 period. We find that the CGI creates proper signals to both economic and political disequlibriums observed in the post-2001 financial crisis era. Our findings underline an effective regulatory framework for monitoring the quality of governance and accordingly suggests the CGI as a policy tool.