The new Good Country Channel asks how countries use their resources to minimize the harm they do (and maximize the good)
We have been supporting (and been supported by) Simon Anholt’s Good Country Index (GCI) initiatives since the beginning of the Alternative in the UK. What kind of world would result if the indicators of success for a country was the external good it did for the rest of the globe? Simon has devised a set of criteria, and established flows of data, that can rank “good countries” annually.
We have a chance to revisit his approach with the announcement of a new “Good Country” channel on the geopolitical platform Diplomatic Courier. Here’s how they announce their new association:
For those new to GCI, the index is essentially a balance sheet measuring what individual countries contribute to the world outside versus what they take away. Measurements are taken from UN data across seven categories: Science and Technology, Culture, International Peace and Security, World Order, Planet and Climate, Prosperity and Equality, and Health and Wellbeing.
In this latest edition of the GCI, data is taken from pre-pandemic 2020, the most recent year available. Sweden came out with the highest ranking—the first time a country has been ranked first for a second time—with Scandinavian countries dominating the top ten places.
When Diplomatic Courier began exploring a partnership with GCI, we understandably had questions about the rankings. Most of these questions have been addressed by Simon Anholt over the years, and you can find them here. For us, a couple of the questions were critical so, we are addressing them here.
INTERROGATING THE GCI
We wanted to be clear about the rankings. Why is it that richer, whiter countries place so highly? Are the metrics biased? Everything, again, is taken from UN data and thus was self-reported by UN member states. GCI has scaled those results to coincide with state capacity, measured by GDP (and you can find a discussion of ‘Why GDP?’ in the FAQs.)
Categories are influenced by some structural factors of capacity—for instance you lose points in International Peace and Security if you export violence. Some governments don’t have great control of their borders and groups within those borders could bring violence elsewhere—then there are questions of unsanctioned arms trafficking and so on.
But, to a large extent, rankings have a lot to do with choices. Even extremely poor countries spend hundreds of millions on marketing themselves and may make any number of other suboptimal decisions with the money available to them—either by mistake or design.
We also had questions about the appearance of a sort of paternalistic noblesse oblige. Does the GCI aim to teach poorer countries the “proper” conduct necessary to emulate Western success? This is a tricky one, because it is quite easy for those in a favorable situation to unwittingly adopt this sort of role toward those in a less favorable situation.
First, it’s important to note that there are several non-Western countries with quite different ideas of governance and economic policy that score well; from Japan and Singapore to Georgia and Malaysia to South Africa and Tunisia.
Beyond that, Mr. Anholt’s explanation is that the GCI is not really about pronouncements. Instead, it’s intended to spark conversations. How can governments make the best use of what resources are available to them to minimize harm they do and maximize constructive things they do for what we might term the global commons?
This brings us to a very important question—who cares? Why should governments who are ranked low care that they’re ranked low, and what should our readers take away? Ultimately, the point of the GCI is to combat marginalization, a concept that Mr. Anholt explores in his book Good Country Equation…
This is accomplished, for Good Country, not through Western guilt-motivated aid but through a rethink of attitudes, values, and behaviors that are shown to actually empower governments and improve outcomes.
Rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns to convince tourists and investors that you’re a prime destination, investing in “governmental social responsibility” has a greater dollar-for-dollar impact when it comes to improving image and thus enhancing trade, tourism, investment, diplomacy, cultural relations, and so on.
GCI HELPS THE FUTURE ARRIVE WELL
One of the most reassuring things Mr. Anholt told us about the GCI is that while an argument for a new take on enlightened self-interest is core to the index, there are no claims here on a final answer to anything. The GCI is presented to the world to create new discussions that invite comments and contributions rather than as an attempt to sell its methodology and message as the way forward.
It could—and we think it does—point in the right direction. We hope you think so too, and we hope you’ll help us think about how to navigate more precisely toward a world where states do better for themselves by being better global citizens, even as they compete.
More here. Simon breaks down the highlights of this year’s report:
Sweden is the first country to come top in the GCI twice(1.1 and 1.5). It has always ranked within the Top 6. As there is quite a lot of volatility in the GCI, it really means something if a country manages to get to the top of the list more than once. Based on the available data, Sweden really does contribute more to the world outside its own borders, relative to the size of its economy, than any other country.
What about the pandemic? GCI 1.5 is mainly based on 2020 data so the early effects of the pandemic do feed into the results. Although the average contribution of countries to the world outside their borders has diminished as countries have focused inwards, their negative contributions have not increased on the whole (and in some cases, like CO2 emissions, have decreased), so the overall rank order has remained fairly stable.
As usual, the highest ranking non-European countries are all in the Anglosphere:Canada (6th), Australia (18th) and New Zealand (19th). East Asia doesn’t enter the rankings until 25th (Singapore); Latin America until 33rd (Chile); Africa until 44th (South Africa), and South Asia until 53rd (India). This result, and the question of why European and specifically Nordic countries do so well are addressed in the FAQs:.
What about Russia and Ukraine? Of course, the current invasion isn’t yet reflected in GCI 1.5, nor the worsening situation over the last two years, since the data we use relates to the world in 2020 (and in a few instances 2019). See the FAQ about the reasons for this. Russia’s contributions have remained more or less stable, in the 40s, for the last three editions. Ukraine has typically ranked in the 70s, except that in GCI 1.2 it leapt up to 54th, and it’s done it again in GCI 1.5, to 56th.
What about the USA? There is a longer-term pattern in the USA’s gradual withdrawal from the international community: in GCI 1.0 and 1.1 it ranked 21st, which is remarkably high when you consider the depth and breadth of its engagement around the world, some of which is military. But the U.S. fell to 25th in 1.2, 40th in 1.3, recovered a fraction to 38th in 1.4 and has fallen in the new edition to its lowest point yet, 46th.
The UK since Brexit. The UK’s trend is broadly downwards, but it’s not nearly as steep or as consistent a trend as, for example, the USA. Typically, the UK has ranked around 7-8 or higher—a major contributor to the international community—but in GCI 1.3 it dropped to 15th place, and in the latest edition has dropped again to 14th.
So, it’s not a smooth curve but in the coming years it’ll be interesting to see whether it sticks closer to its upper or its lower extremes—or drops even further. The full impact of Brexit, of course, was hardly visible in 2019/2020.
The overall rankings may be fairly predictable but there are plenty of big surprises in the individual categories: Ukraine ranking #1 in Science and Technology; Belgium #1 in Culture; Morocco #1 in Peace and Security (and Sweden 39th, Switzerland 99th). To understand what these surprising results mean, it’s worth checking the FAQs for further discussion.
The biggest risers: the Dominican Republic has risen from 115th to 60th, a rise of 55 places; Guyana from 125th to 77th, a rise of 48; and the Seychelles from 123rd to 76th, a rise of 47 places.
The biggest fallers: Niger has fallen from 93rd to 143rd, a drop of 50 places; likewise, Qatar drops 50 places from 59th to 109th; Congo from 92nd to 146th, a fall of 54 places; Senegal from 66th to 122nd, a fall of 56 places; Malawi from 67th to 127th, a fall of 60 places, and the furthest fall of all is Oman, from 69th to 131st, a fall of 62 places.
Note that the biggest countries tend to be the most stable from year to year; this is partly because there is more data on them. There tends to be much fewer good data on smaller and poorer countries, and the numbers themselves are smaller, so the rankings that this limited data generates are less robust and more volatile. Quite small changes in the behavior of these countries can produce a big change in their GCI ranking.
Who’s at the bottom? The lowest quartile of the ranking is characterized by very poor and troubled countries predominantly in West Asia and Africa: Mauritania, the Central African Republic, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, and Eritrea.
But having a small economy is not, in itself, a reason to rank low in the index: if these countries did make any positive contribution to the world outside their borders, it would still be picked up by the GCI because most of the data is divided by GDP.
Tunisia, for example, manages to rank a relatively high 47th place, the Dominican Republic and Panama at 60th and 61st. Clearly, countries rank at the bottom not because they are poor but because they are focused entirely inwards, for very understandable reasons.
The question of how, and whether, very poor and weak states could and should contribute to the world outside their own borders, or simply allowed to be free-riders, is another highly controversial question.
It leads directly to the important point that what we’re measuring here is not charity, and actually only a tiny handful of the indicators measure money. A ‘good’ country is not a rich country that hands out spare cash to poor countries: it’s much more complex and interesting than that.
More here. We’d be interested to hear Simon’s assessment on rankings in the year after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Does a clash of forces in the European theatre, or even supporting Ukraine with arms, come under the category of “supporting violence”?