The Reality of Governance Indicators and their Impact on Economic Growth in Iraq for the Period (1996 – 2020)

Abstract

This study aims to know the impact of governance in achieving economic growth, because corporate governance has become one of the main factors of economic growth models in current studies and research. This study came to show two things: where the first was concerned with identifying the reality of governance indicators as one of the expressive concepts of institutional reforms in Iraq and their role in economic growth through descriptive analysis of data expressing governance. As for the second, it was limited to the empirical evaluation of the impact of these indicators on economic growth through the use of time series data for the period 1996-2020 and based on some econometric tools represented by the Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL), and the study relied on global governance indicators issued by The World Bank, consisting of (government effectiveness, quality of legislation, rule of law, voting and accountability, control of corruption, political stability, and absence of violence). The study achieved the following results: - According to the reality of governance indicators in Iraq, it was found that all indicators fell within the negative performance area, and the worst of them were the indicators of political stability and the rule of law. - In terms of the econometrics model, the study concluded that the two indicators of government effectiveness, voting and accountability have an important and positive impact on economic growth in the short and long terms, while the study showed that the political stability indicator has a negative impact in the long term. One of the reasons that have led to instability is foreign interference, and therefore, work must be done to create harmony between the components of the society of various nationalities and religions, as well as to strengthen the status of security and military institutions and work on theirindependence from political pressures by the influential political parties in Iraq.