weden 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.
Read the new edition of the Good Country Index for free here and review the data here.
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.
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Good Country Index: Which Are the "Goodest" Countries?
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo via Unsplash.
March 29, 2022
GCI creator and noted author Simon Anholt breaks down some of the highlights from the latest edition of the Good Country Index, explaining the impacts of recent events on the rankings and discussing patterns in how countries have fared.
S
weden 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.
Read the new edition of the Good Country Index for free here and review the data here.
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.
