Purpose: This study examines how much value national governments worldwide place on political, economic, scientific, artistic, religious, legal, sportive, health-related, educational, and mass media-related issues. This knowledge is critical as governments and policies are typically expected to be congruent with the importance these issues have for society.

Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on theories of polyphonic and multifunctional organization, we recoded and analyzed a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) directory to test the cabinet portfolio of a total of 201 national governments for significant biases to the above issues.

Findings: The results suggest that governments worldwide massively over-allocate their attention to economic issues.

Originality/value: We conclude that this strong pro-economic governance-bias likely translates into dysfunctional governance and development at both the national and supra-national level.