Governance

The Governance section provides the links to national official portals, international official portals, and legislative databases. While state decision-making lacks transparency in the countries of the region, the ongoing digitalization of governance stimulates the development of official portals and better and more up-to-date databases.

Prior to the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan had been part of the Soviet political and economic system. Since independence, their development paths/trajectories have diverged. They feature differences in levels of political and economic liberalization, relationships between state and society, strength of institutions, and quality of governance.

The 2019 governance indicators compiled by The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators project measures different aspects of governance on a scale between -2.5 and +2.5. According to the Voice and Accountability indicator only Georgia and Armenia have scores above zero with ratings of 0.2 and 0.05 respectively, while Turkmenistan has the lowest score at -2.13. According to the Government Effectiveness indicator and Regulatory Quality indicator, Georgia and Kazakhstan have the best scores at 0.83 and 0.12, but all other countries have scores below 0. Finally, according to the Rule of Law and Control of Corruption indicators, Georgia scores the highest with ratings at 0.31 and 0.67, while all other countries are on the negative end of the spectrum.