Measuring urban governance using governance and legislation index: a case study of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract

It was recognized that good governance is important to achieve the equitable and sustainable development which secure the common future. This is because active, effective and fair governance helps promotes the business development by putting in place integrated policymaking capacity and ensuring stable and secure societies towards sustainable development. Seeing this, hundreds of governance-indicator datasets have emerged. Stakeholders have relied heavily on these data in making cross-border decisions. Nevertheless, it is argued that most of these data are perception-based indicators; therefore, the decision made is bias and incorrect. On this ground, this paper attempts to identify and explain the quality of governance for the Kuala Lumpur city using an objective data-driven index, the City Prosperity Index (CPI). This paper employed content analysis of secondary data and literature, relying on statistical data from Kuala Lumpur City Hall, Election Commission of Malaysia and The World Bank. Results have shown that governance in Kuala Lumpur is a moderate solid factor (65.0) in contributing to the city’s prosperity. Comparing to other cities, Kuala Lumpur ranked 20 out of 47 selected cities. There is still plenty of room Kuala Lumpur to improve its governance to remain competitive and sustainable. In conclusion, objective data is good as data produced will not be bias. Nevertheless, it should not be generalized to reflect the overall quality of governance. This is because there are many other governance related variables can only be obtained via perception-based data. It is recommended that the GLI measured in this paper should be use together with other subjective data to give a most complete coverage of the overall quality of governance of a city.