The Global Peace Index

The Global Peace Index is another very interesting initiative which has attracted a lot of high profile participation and support.  As my old friend Wikipedia explains:

“The Global Peace Index (GPI) is an attempt to measure the relative position of nations’ and regions’ peacefulness. It is maintained by the Institute for Economics and Peace and developed in consultation with an international panel of peace experts from peace institutes and think tanks, together with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Australia with data analysed by the Economist Intelligence Unit.”

The GPI site explains further that:

“The index is composed of 24 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, which combine internal and external factors ranging from a nation’s level of military expenditure to its relations with neighbouring countries and the level of respect for human rights. “

Here are the rankings (you can see both 2008 and 2007, and you can see the direction and degree of change over the two periods) .  And for those of you of a methodological persuasion, the details of the index’s composition can be found here.  You can see that they’ve made a serious effort to include dimensions of both positive and negative peace.

Believe it or not, in an earlier lifetime I did a bit of quantitative research, and I think this is quite well done–though it is, and will probably be for the forseeable future, a work in progress.  There has been, apparently, some criticism of the indicators (have a look toward the bottom of the Wikipedia article), but, that is also potentially positive; and, after all, this is inherently controversial stuff.  Still, I think this is a very useful index to have, and the prestigious support it has received is all to the good.

IGbarb says:  check it out!