Business as Usual?

The Trajectory of Institutional Development in Lower- and Middle-Income Countries

Abstract

Building State Capability by Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock argue that there has been little institutional development in recent decades, in part using Worldwide Governance Indicators to make this argument. However, the mean value of Worldwide Governance Indicators does not change by construction. We use data on state capacity from O’Reilly and Murphy (2022) and find considerably more evidence for improvements in institutions than is found by Andrews, Pritchett, and Woolcock while using their methodology.