Using data from the World Bank's Operations Evaluation Department, the authors examine the link between the performance of Bank-financed projects and various indicators of country governance. They find that: there is a strong statistical, and possibly casual, link between civil liberties and...

There is a strong statistical link between a country's civil liberties and the performance of its aid-financed govern-ment investment projects. But type of political regime (whether authoritarian or democratic) and the status of more purely political liberties do not appear to significantly...

This article uses a cross-national data set on the performance of government investment projects financed by the World Bank to examine the link between government efficacy and governance. It demonstrates a strong empirical link between civil liberties and the performance of government projects....