Parag Khanna
It may not seem like the best time to publish yet another global ranking of nations. The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) have recently come under fire for being vague and biased. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset, a Swedish academic project, touts an advanced methodology blending surveys with supercomputers, yet its results clearly indicate a greater interest in de jure liberalism than de facto democratic practice. Objectivity seems impossible—yet we try.
We should strive to improve rankings because they shape how we evaluate states and how states behave. For example, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (CGR) series enjoyed decades of success by awakening the competitive spirit among nations seeking to elevate their ranking—knowing full well that investors use the scores in asset allocation.
Today, we have a plethora of indices ranking states according to metrics such as military power, financial wealth, industrial capacity, technological innovation, democracy, economic freedom, sustainability, reputation, and more. But looking at each indicator in isolation doesn’t tell us much about the robustness of the state as a whole. Meaningfully categorizing states requires curating a meta-index of these diverse quantitative and qualitative variables across the strategic, economic, technological, social, and other domains.
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