What’s the latest research on the quality of governance?

Editor's note: This blog post was previously published on the World Bank's 'Let's Talk Development' blog platform.
Last week I attended Stanford University’s Quality of Governance conference, expertly organized by a rising star of the field, Saad Gulzar. I thought I’d follow in the footsteps of Dave Evans and others and summarize the findings of the papers presented. They provide a sketch of the frontier of research on state capacity.