The challenge of assessing governance in Asian states: Hong Kong in the Worldwide Governance Indicators ranking

As countries in Asia work towards achieving development, the state of governance emerged as a benchmark for them. Assessing governance is an important exercise because a country’s image is influenced by its position in world rankings which plays a role in decisions by the international community regarding aid and trade. The methodology adopted in preparing the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) rankings underlines the preference for some values that are dominant in Western liberal democratic systems. This places Asian states at a disadvantage as other traditional values are ignored in assessing the state of governance. This article examines the methods and criteria of the WGI with reference to the case of Hong Kong. An overview of the critiques of WGI and analysis of the scores awarded to Hong Kong reveal the challenge of assessing governance across countries with the same instrument without taking into consideration the context of the units. The article argues that there is a need for developing alternative criteria for accommodating indigenous institutional structures, processes, and practices to ensure that Asian countries can benefit from the desired values of governance and help overcome the partial picture of governance that emerges in the WGI.