Bringing evidence on governance issues into policy is not an easy task, but broadly sharing the same evidence to enable greater democratic ownership to take root, is even more challenging. International donors are mainly involved in producing evidence on the topic of governance because of their interest in influencing country-based policy by scoring and ranking across countries in order to produce a naming and shaming effect. In the case of developing countries, this evidence is also used as conditionality for foreign aid. Meanwhile, in-country think tanks and research institutes are producing governance evidence. Ruling national elites, however, may question the rigour, ideology and alliances used in generating such evidence.

This paper looks at the production as well as the use of research-based evidence in the field of governance in Nepal and attempts to answer the following research questions: What are existing efforts to generate evidence on governance at the national and sub-national levels, including any home-grown governance assessments that may have taken place in the past few years? What are the existing measurement tools for research on governance (e.g. corruption, public administration, decentralization, etc.) that are used in Nepal by state entities such as ministries and non state entities such as research institutes, think tanks and NGOs?