The Longitudinal Governance Panel
The Institute of Policy Dynamics (IPD) is building a standing panel survey of governance and socioeconomic life — the same people and institutions measured repeatedly, across years — beginning with a single-division pilot in Bangladesh.
A claim about change over time can only be tested over time.
The convergence claim asserts that trust, civic participation and the governance of scarce resources are moving along a trajectory other societies will later follow. A claim of this form cannot be tested from a snapshot. It can be tested only by observing the same people and institutions repeatedly, across years, under a stable instrument.
We treat longitudinal measurement as the empirical condition of our central thesis. The thesis is scientific to the precise extent that we are willing to collect the data that could disconfirm it.
Pilot first. Then scale as the pilot earns the funding the full panel deserves.
One division, one wave
The divisional pilot: the instrument validated and published openly. Small, rigorous, and honest about what it can and cannot yet show.
Field & fund the full panel
Use the pilot to seek full-panel funding — pitched to infrastructure and longitudinal-research funders on the strength of a validated instrument.
Authority over measurement
The long road by which a measurement institution's standing over the evidence itself eventually becomes statutory — beyond routine political interference.
A fifteen-year record of how governance actually works is something Bangladesh does not yet have.
Anyone can argue about governance; few can measure it across years. IPD is funding the divisional pilot now.