Close Enough? Using the WGI as a Proxy for the WJP Rule of Law Index

A practical R analysis testing whether the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) rule of law measure can serve as a proxy for the World Justice Project's (WJP) Rule of Law Index. The WGI covers more countries over a longer period (1996, 199 countries) vs WJP (2012, 97 countries). Cross-country correlations are strong (median 98% by region/year), first-difference analysis shows a pooled correlation of 0.36, and country-level agreement is weaker due to measurement noise dominating the signal. Conclusion: WGI is a serviceable but imperfect stand-in for WJP when longer time series or broader country coverage is needed. Full R code using tidyverse, readxl, janitor, and countrycode is provided.

Source: https://www.r-bloggers.com/2026/07/close-enough-using-the-wgi-as-a-proxy-for-the-wjp-rule-of-law-index. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.