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The influence of global governance on the sustainable performance of countries

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Abstract

This study aims to identify the influence of global governance on the sustainability performance of countries. The methodological approach is quantitative, employing descriptive and inferential statistics with multiple regression analysis for a sample of 127 countries. The independent variable corresponds to the governance measured by the world governance indicators. The dependent variables are measurements of sustainability performance, including the SDG Index Score, the Environmental Performance Index, the Human Development Index, and Gross Domestic Product per capita. The main results indicate that the governance indicators Voice and Accountability and Government Effectiveness positively affect the overall sustainability performance of countries. In environmental sustainability, the influence of the voice and responsibility and regulatory quality indicators was identified, while in the social and economic dimensions a positive influence of governmental effectiveness and regulatory quality was observed. On the other hand, the corruption control variable exerts a negative influence on general and social sustainability. In general, it can be concluded that the institutional quality of a country influences the government's ability to achieve sustainable development goals and targets, in addition to attaining favorable results in the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability.

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Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available from The World Bank [https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/ and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD], Sustainable Development Report 2022 [https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/downloads], Yale University [https://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2022/component/epi] and in the United Nations Development Programme repositories [https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI].

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Acknowledgements

This work was conducted with the support of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel—Brazil (CAPES)—Funding Code 001 and the Araucária Foundation.

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Flavia Massuga and Marcos Aurélio Larson. The Methodology and analysis were performed by Marcos Roberto Kuhl. The description of the results was carried out by Flavia Massuga and Marcos Aurélio Larson. Sérgio Luis Dias Doliveira critically revised the text for intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Flavia Massuga.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Massuga, F., Larson, M.A., Kuhl, M.R. et al. The influence of global governance on the sustainable performance of countries. Environ Dev Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03827-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03827-4

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