(Field Museum) A team of anthropologists assembled data on 30 pre-modern societies, and conducted a quantitative analysis of the features and durability of ‘good governance’–that is, receptiveness to citizen voice, provision of goods and services, and limited concentration of wealth and power. The results showed that societies based on a broad, equitable, well-managed tax system and functioning bureaucracies were statistically more likely to have political institutions that were more open to public input and more sensitive to the well-being of the populace.