(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) Why are some countries governed worse than others? In particular, why is contemporary Russia governed so much worse than one would expect given its degree of socio-economic development? As demonstrated in numerous recent assessments, Russia exhibits many major features of bad governance, including lack and/or perversion of the rule of law, rent-seeking, corruption, poor quality of state regulation, widespread abuse of public funds, and overall ineffectiveness of government. In 2018, for example, Russia ranked 138th out of 180 countries in the annual Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. In 2019, the composite evaluation of the Rule of Law Index by the World Justice Project ranked it as 88th out of 126 countries. According to the World Bank, the average indicator of corruption control in Russia in the period from 1996-2015 was -0.86 on a scale from -2.5 (lowest possible grade) tо +2.5 (highest possible grade).
