Assessing ‘Good Governance’ and Corruption in New Zealand: ‘Scientific’ Measurement, Political Discourse, and Historical Narrative

New Zealand is ranked highly on the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), which assess performance on six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. Moreover, New Zealand has long been rated by Transparency International‘s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) as having the very lowest rates of corruption globally. This paper gives attention to methodological and related arguments about the general validity of both the WGI and the CPI, which are widely accepted as relative fact.