Fiscal strength doesn't guarantee public goods delivery, US study finds21.10.2026 09:28:38 CEST | news aktuell GmbH | Press Release
New York/DNA - A newly released study of US state government performance found strong partisan and regional patterns within three pillars of governance: democratic accountability, state capacity and public goods provision. Yet, the US states’ outcomes differ in important ways from international comparisons, as the three governance dimensions show limited correlation, the researchers found. The report, “The Governance Performance of the Fifty States: The U.S. Berggruen Governance Index”, applies the research team’s “governance triangle” from past global country rankings to the 50 US states. The report has now been presented to the public at Columbia University in New York. “Unlike in the Berggruen Governance Index’s cross-national comparisons, where the three dimensions are broadly correlated, in the 50 U.S. states they often run counter to each other,” the authors conclude. “This may seem counterintuitive, as one might expect a well-governed state to finish high on all three and a poor