The Local Quality of Government (Lo-QoG) dataset: A hub for local societal indicators across Europe

The objective of the Local Quality of Government dataset (Lo-QoG) is to establish a platform of indicators on local governance and its societal correlates in Europe to be disseminated online to the public.

A range of societal phenomena are best studied on the local level, where there is variation that is not reflected in national averages.

Yet, comparisons across such units are difficult because of lacking data infrastructure: local-level figures are not harmonized the same way as country-level data. This severely limits researchers in answering relevant research questions. Lo-QoG will remedy parts of this problem.

It uses the established structure of Local Administrative Units (LAUs) across Europe, that tend to correspond to the municipalities in each country.

Introducing such a hub will allow researchers to much better understand a range of societal phenomena that is best captured locally. The data will be compilation statistics, mainly collected from national authorities and harmonized by this project.

Lo-QoG will be crucial for corruption scholars because we have access to a novel set of measures that capture corruption risks on the LAU-level – focusing on misuse of bidding in public procurement.

The ambition of Lo-QoG is to become the leading platform on indicators that relates to local governance and its societal correlates, broadly defined. The infrastructure is run by the QoG Institute, which is highly experienced in managing authoritative global databases.