Government performance is often measured by its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness. Key questions related to this include:

• How are decisions made? E.g., which branches of government makes which decisions, to the extent that referenda are used or the decisions that can be made by different levels of government.

• What stages are there in the policy process? E.g., how lengthy or significant are the initiation, formulation, implementation and evaluation stages of the policy process.

• Which stakeholders are involved in decision-making? E.g., which of the three branches of government, the different levels of government, opposition parties, civil society or the electorate involved in decision-making.

• How effective, efficient and economical (the ‘three Es’) are government policies?

• How do we evaluate government performance? E.g., what criteria are used to judge if government performance seen as beneficial or not beneficial.

However, there are also deeper political issues underlie these questions. These are more related to what functions a government should have, rather than how well a government functions.These kinds of questions are not objective. They are based on basic beliefs about the role of government in society. This is related to beliefs about justice, about equality about the balance between freedom and security and as a result vary from person to person.

There are three commonly used sets of standards that governments can be evaluated on these performance criteria are as follows:

• Stability and order

• Material prosperity

• Citizenship