Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Poor Showing
Mexico dropped 15 spots in this year's Global Peace Index, landing at 108 out of 144 nations measured. Not so good. Of course, the fact that El Salvador, whose murder rate is between four and five times larger than Mexico's, finished at 93 suggests that perhaps the rankings aren't to be taken so seriously. Another example of this ranking's oddity: Nicaragua, whose murder rate is twice that of the US and whose political situation seems anything but a picture of stability, is nonetheless 22 spots ahead of Gringolandia.
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4 comments:
I dunno. Seems not bad to me. Their methodology makes pretty clear that it's not just about crime and political stability. The US should lose points on factors like external wars and militarization, and so it does. Nicaragua looks a little off due to the potential for political instability, but its ability to maintain a crime rate so much lower than its neighbors actually is rather notable. Ecuador looks a bit screwy.
I don't know, if you're measuring peace and the potential for non-peace, it would seem like the most direct and important factors would be violent crime rates and political stability (which is harder to quantify). The other stuff definitely matters, but I think it skewed it a bit.
If the goal is measuring internal peace, that's correct, but if the goal is to measure the global effect on peace of a nation's policies, you have to take into account military policies outside a nation's borders. There's an argument that you're then comparing apples and oranges, but it's not so far-fetched a concept that it's not worth the effort. All such global indexes (and I run one!) have to strike a balance between a methodology based on discrete, quantifiable information (more the domain of the social sciences) and the desire to actually explain something about how things really go in the world. At least as much art as science. I think the Global Peace Index does a fair job, though a lot depends on how hard they work to get reliable figures from countries that tend to use, um, fuzzy math.
Dear Gancho,
Just to introduce myself, my name's Ellie and I'm writing on behalf of the Global Peace Index (GPI).
First of all we would like to sincerely thank you for previously including the GPI in your blog in the past.
As you'll be aware, the GPI is a ground-breaking piece of research in the study of peace, which not only ranks nations by their peacefulness but also seeks to identify the drivers of peace. Now in its fourth year, the Index is produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a global think tank dedicated to the research and education of the relationship between economic development, business and peace. It is collated and calculated by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
We're getting in touch to alert you to the fact that the next Global Peace Index will be launched on June 8th 2010. We'll be providing you with further information closer to the time - unless you tell us that you'd rather not hear from us again - but thought you might appreciate the heads-up in the meantime.
You might want to join us on Facebook too:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Global-Peace-Index/92288319748?ref=ts
and follow us on Twitter
http://twitter.com/GlobPeaceIndex
If you've got any thought or questions about the Index, our methodology, or our organisation, please get in touch. We hope you find our research interesting and informative, and look forward to sharing this year's findings with you in a few weeks' time.
Best Wishes,
Ellie Kirby - updates@visionofhumanity.org
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