(2021:4) Charron, Lapuente, Bauhr: Sub-national Quality of Government in EU Member States: Presentin

The 2021 round of the EQI is the largest survey ever undertaken to measure the perceptions of quality of government, and it collects the opinions of over 129,000 respondents in a total of 208 NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions in all EU 27 member state countries1. [...] We have done so in a double way, looking at both sides of the causal arrow: that is, if indicators of COVID-19 are associated with the quality of government (in 2021), and how previous levels of quality of government (in 2010-2017) relate to the direness of the pandemic in the region. [...] Regarding how previous levels of quality of government have affected the severity of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we observe that regions with higher levels of quality of government (both in previous rounds as in this 2021 one) report lower levels of both health and economic worry compared with regions with lower levels of quality of government. [...] How would you rate the quality of the police force in your area? The next six questions try to capture the extent to which public services are delivered impartially in the regions of Europe. [...] In contrast to 2010 and 2013, where we only inquired about whether a respondent paid a bribe for one of the public service in question, we follow the 2017 survey and inquire whether the respondent was asked to pay a bribe by a public sector employee at one of the services in question, as well as whether they paid, so as to attempt to capture the direction of who is the ‘initiator’.