MAURITIUS is the best-run country in Africa for the second year running, according to the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, published on Monday October 6th. The index ranks 48 sub-Saharan African countries according to governance quality. The Ibrahim Index assesses national governance against 57 criteria. The criteria capture the quality of services provided to citizens by governments. The focus is on the results that the people of a country experience.

All citizens of all countries desire to be governed well. That is what citizens want from the nation-states in which they live. Thus, nation-states in the modern world are responsible for the delivery of essential political goods to their inhabitants. That is their purpose, and has been their central legitimate justification since at least the seventeenth century. The essential political goods form a criteria are divided into five over-arching categories which together make up the cornerstones of a government's obligations to its citizens: safety and security, the rule of law, transparency and corruption, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development. Together, these five categories of political goods epitomise the performance of any government, at any level. No one, whether looking to her village, municipality, province, state, or nation, willingly wants to be victimised by crime or to live in a society without laws, freedom, the chance to prosper, or access to decent schools, well-run hospitals, and well-maintained roads.

The Ibrahim Index measures the degree to which each of these political goods is provided within the 48 African countries south of the Sahara. By comprehensively measuring the performance of government in this manner, that is, by measuring governance, the Ibrahim Index is able to offer a report card on the accomplishments of each government for the years being investigated. The Ibrahim Index will continue to be updated annually. After a few years, preferably five in the first instance, the Ibrahim Index will be able to demonstrate how each of the forty-eight countries has shown progress or has slipped backward.

The Ibrahim Index provides more than an overall ranking of countries. Within each of its five measurement categories, separate evaluations and report cards concerning the attainments of each of the forty-eight countries within each category are offered. Further, within each category there are sub-categories, which can again be compared, country against country. Under each sub-category are additional sub-sub-categories. The Ibrahim Index is, therefore, composed of fifty-eight separate markers capturing the performance of individual countries.

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