The question of whether a government works well or poorly is not just a matter of concern for the citizens of whatever region that government governs; it is also of interest to scientists and analysts in a variety of fields. However, information about a government's performance is of use to the government itself. This article tries to answer the question of how government performance can be measured. It is impossible to come up with a generally acceptable and universal system of performance measurement, but the dozens of ways of measuring government performance can essentially be divided into four groups. The first group of approaches uses indicators of the socio-economic development in the governed area to measure a government's performance. The second group of approaches comprises attempts to measure government performance by means of a subjective evaluation by citizens of the governed territory or by various experts. The third group of approaches includes all attempts at measuring government performance that focus on procedural and institutional effectiveness and the quality of government performance. The last group is made up of attempts to measure government performance with the aid of aggregate indexes, which are mathematical-statistical aggregates of subindicators representing various forms of government activity, the conditions in the territory governed by the government, and a subjective evaluation of government performance by citizens, by the people in government themselves, and by various experts. Individual sub-indicators characterise various types of government activity, and it is their aggregate that measures overall government performance.
The article presents an analysis of the performance of regional governments - the institutions representing the self-governing regions in the Czech Republic. The authors try to answer the question of whether regional governments function similarly or whether they vary in terms of performance, and if they do vary, how structured and how large are these differences. After a review of the position occupied by the regions in the Czech public administration system, and after assessing the ways in which regional government performance can be understood and measured and the accessibility of necessary data, indicators are proposed and used to create an aggregate index of regional government performance. An analysis based on these indicators shows that there are considerable differences between regional governments in terms of the structure and the level of their performance. Based on the performance index it was possible to distinguish regions with above-average, average, and below-average regional government performance. The territorial distribution of these groups and some other factors confirm the validity of these measurements.