The Geography of Quality of Government in Europe. Subnational variations in the 2024 European Quality of Government Index and Comparisons with Previous Rounds

Abstract

The 2024 European Quality of Government Index (EQI) collects the opinions of 135,227 respondents in a total of 210 NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions in all EU 27 member state countries. This paper, first, presents the 2024 data and highlights some of the main results of this effort to understand citizens’ perceptions, and personal experiences, of regional quality of government. Second, it compares the findings with the previous four rounds of the survey (starting in 2010), highlighting both the regions that are improving and those that show a declining trend in their quality of government. Third, the paper discusses the changes made to round 5 and other trends in the data over time, paying special attention to the comparison of EU citizens’ perceptions and experiences of government before and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Compared to the improvements in corruption levels recorded in the 2021 study, we find that corruption levels have bounced back to more normal levels in post pandemic Europe.