June 29, 2009 ☼ Aside ☼ Bangladesh ☼ Bhutan ☼ Foreign Affairs ☼ Myanmar ☼ Nepal ☼ Pakistan ☼ Sri Lanka ☼ subcontinent
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
In 2005, when Foreign Policy magazine first published a failed state index, The Acorn argued that “rankings by themselves do not convey as much information as the direction of their change. How countries change their position, even by this imperfect measure, will be the thing to watch in future years.”
In fact, the rank on the league table is not so informative as the actual change in the country’s score. For instance, Pakistan’s rank improved this year (from the 9th most failing state in 2008 to the 10th in 2009). Yet, it’s total failure score increased from 103.8 to 104.1 (See the article on the magazine’s website). Assuming that the good people at Foreign Policy have used the same methodology year after year, this doesn’t suggest an improvement in Pakistan—it suggests a worsening of conditions.
Here’s a comparison of the actual score of countries in India’s neighbourhood over the last four years.
It’s generally bad news: other than Bangladesh, state failure is worsening in the neighbourhood. Bhutan does best, but even its score has (surprisingly) fallen.
Related Post: A post on the 2006 index.
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