330 Int. J. Public Sector Performance Management, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2010 Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. The quality of local governance – ranking local governments in Belgium Steven Van Roosbroek* Acaciastraat 43, 2800 Mechelen, Belgium E-mail: Steven.vanroosbroek@vvsg.be *Corresponding author Wouter Van Dooren Department of Political Science, Universiteit Antwerpen, Sint Jacobsstraat 2, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium E-mail: Wouter.VanDooren@ua.ac.be Abstract: Over the last years, there have been several research efforts to measure the quality of governance of nations (e.g., World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators). These efforts have been criticised by several academics. Less research has been conducted on indicators of the quality of local governance. In this article, we investigate whether different indicators of the quality of local governance in Flanders (Belgium) correlate with each other. Since they all proclaim to measure the quality of governance, we expect strong correlations. We identified 12 rankings based on eight data sources. This resulted in 66 correlations, of which only 17 were significant in the expected the direction. The vast majority of the correlations were insignificant. This suggests policy makers and academics need to be very careful when interpreting rankings of the quality of governance. Therefore, future rankings of governance should be targeted at the micro level of public service delivery, instead of the macro level of the public sector in general. Keywords: quality; local governance; Belgium; Flanders; performance; governance indicator; good governance; validity; reliability; World Bank; ranking. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Van Roosbroek, S. and Van Dooren, W. (2010) ‘The quality of local governance – ranking local governments in Belgium’, Int. J. Public Sector Performance Management, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.330–345. Biographical notes: Steven Van Roosbroek is an Auditor for Local Governments in Flanders and a Former Researcher at the Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Wouter Van Dooren is an Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium and Co-Chair of the EGPA study group on public sector performance. His research interest concerns performance and performance measurement in government.