Challenges and innovations to the rule of law measurement

While the process of digitalization offers new opportunities, politics gets in the way of the already notoriously difficult to measure rule of law. This paper briefly presents the challenges to rule of law measurement and argues that sound measurement is possible only if the measure is narrowed down, or its components are separately examined. It then offers two innovations of such separate measurements on transparency and national integrity at national level developed by the European Research Center for Anticorruption and State-building (ERCAS) in Berlin. Finally, the paper argues that the governance context greatly impacts the quality of data used in public policy evaluation and should be used as controls. For instance, higher transparency predicts higher COVID 19 fatality rates at national level with all relevant controls, while higher corruption predicts more excess deaths, using the new indicators. This shows that the data on COVID 19 fatalities outside the democratic developed countries is likely to be seriously flawed and that it is worth investing in facts and not perceptions when measuring governance. The working paper pleads for the use of directly observable digital tools to move to a generation of more transparent and specific governance indicators, able to provide the evidence needed in public policy evaluation.