International Governance Index and the Service Delivery Gap
India's V Sriniwas elected president of IIAS (Image X.com)
With its presidency of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) in Brussels, India is leading efforts to create a more balanced and data-driven International Governance Index, countering Western-dominated measures like Freedom House, V-Dem, and Transparency International.
By P SESH KUMAR
New Delhi, October 4, 2025 — India’s presidency of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) in Brussels has set the stage for an ambitious idea: the creation of a new International Governance Index (IGI). The move is both bold and deliberate. New Delhi has long been irked by Western-dominated perception indices such as Freedom House, V-Dem, and Transparency International, whose scores ripple into the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and, through them, into sovereign ratings. With the IIAS presidency in hand, India has sought to reframe the game-proposing an index that claims to be more scientific, balanced, and reflective of governance realities, especially in the Global South.
Yet as the ink is barely dry on the first announcements, questions loom large: what will this index actually measure, and will it dare to confront the ultimate test of governance-how governments deliver to their people?
The background to this initiative is significant. For the first time in its near-century history, IIAS elected a president by ballot, and India clinched the position.
The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) promptly signaled that an “international governance index” would be floated under its tenure, with a debut penciled in for the 2026 IIAS conference.
Consultations with the IIAS Research Advisory Committee in September 2025 flagged the idea of borrowing frameworks from the World Bank and OECD and perhaps working with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
The early choreography shows intent, momentum, and a multilateral veneer of legitimacy. It also reveals the deeper provocation: India wants to challenge the dominance of indices that reduce governance to elite perceptions and that often place it at a disadvantage in global rankings.
At first glance, the project seems promising. The world already has the WGI, the Chandler Good Government Index, and a host of regional scorecards.
But all of them suffer from familiar ailments: heavy reliance on subjective surveys, opaque weighting, and weak links to service delivery on the ground. If the IGI can fuse performance data-such as case resolution rates, e-service uptime, or audit backlogs cleared-with perceptions of fairness, it might produce something both replicable and genuinely useful.
In theory, an IIAS-anchored index could stand as a parallel signal in global governance debates, open to audit, co-owned by member states, and transparent in its methods. Done well, it could be a global public good rather than a geopolitical gimmick.
The problem, however, lies in what has not been said. Thus far, the IGI’s advocates have spoken of governance, trends, and science, but they have not spelled out whether the index will measure what matters most to ordinary citizens: the quality of public service delivery. Governance cannot be severed from outcomes.
A state that is procedurally elegant but fails to provide safe drinking water, electricity, accessible healthcare, functioning schools, or security in the streets is not a “well-governed” state in any meaningful sense.
Health outcomes, infant mortality rates, female literacy, law and order, poverty alleviation, and progress on the Sustainable Development Goals are not side issues-they are the beating heart of governance.
The Mo Ibrahim Index in Africa recognized this by embedding “human development” as a central pillar, while the WGI skirts around it with proxies. For the IGI to be credible, it must go further, weaving service delivery directly into its fabric.
Ignoring service outcomes would be a fatal flaw. Without them, the IGI risks being dismissed as another technocratic scoreboard designed for ministries and academics, not citizens.
Worse, it risks becoming what critics already fear: a “revenge index,” born less out of scientific curiosity than geopolitical grievance. If it tilts too heavily toward institutional structures, rule-making, or regulatory form, it will reproduce the very distance between measurement and lived reality that has made the WGI so vulnerable to attack.
But if it leans solely on outcomes, it may be accused of punishing fragile or poor states for structural handicaps beyond their immediate control. The balance is delicate, but necessary.
The way forward lies in deliberate methodological courage. IIAS and its Indian presidency must hardwire outcome indicators into the index, but do so with nuance. Health, literacy, drinking water, electricity, and law and order must be included, but contextualized with baseline adjustments and transparency about weighting.
The IGI should not disguise the trade-offs; rather, it should publish its codebook, its aggregation scripts, and sensitivity analyses that allow outsiders to re-weight and replicate results.
Governance must be measured not only in perceptions and paper reforms but in the pulse of real life-whether hospitals heal, schools teach, taps flow, and lights stay on. Only then will the IGI be more than a rhetorical counterweight.
If India’s International Governance Index is to earn its place, it must be braver than its predecessors. That means embedding service delivery alongside procedural governance, fusing perception with performance, and aligning indicators with the SDGs that already command global consensus.
It means shielding the methodology from politicization through an independent board, peer-reviewed protocols, and open data. And it means anchoring the index in transparency so radical that even its fiercest critics cannot call it propaganda.
In short, the IGI must measure governance not as governments wish to be seen, but as citizens experience it. If that standard is met, India’s presidency at IIAS could leave behind not just another index, but a lasting benchmark of what governance in the twenty-first century truly means. How far this is achievable—only time will tell. India has till 2028.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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