Everything about The Global Peace Index totally explained
The
Global Peace Index 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 list was launched first in May 2007 and then recently in May 2008 and is claimed to be the first study to rank countries around the world according to their peacefulness. The study is the brainchild of Australian entrepreneur
Steve Killelea and is endorsed by individuals such as the
Dalai Lama, archbishop
Desmond Tutu,
Muhammad Yunus and former US president
Jimmy Carter. Factors examined by the authors include internal factors such as levels of violence and crime within the country and factors in a country's external relations such as military expenditure and wars.
Methodology
The research team was headed by
The Economist Intelligence Unit in conjunction with academics and experts in the field of peace. They measured countries' peacefulness based on wide range of indicators, 24 in all. A table of the indicators is below. In the table, UCDP stands for the Uppsala Conflict Data Program maintained by the
University of Uppsala in
Sweden, EIU for The Economist Intelligence Unit, UNSCT for the
United Nations Survey of Criminal Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, ICPS is the International Center for Prison Studies at
King's College London, IISS for the
International Institute for Strategic Studies publication
The Military Balance 2007, SIPRI for the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Arms Transfers Database, and BICC for the
Bonn International Center for Conversion.
#
|
ndicator
|
ource
|
ear(s)
|
oding
|
| 1 |
Number of external and internal wars fought |
UCDP |
2000 to 2005 |
Total number |
| 2 |
Estimated deaths due to external wars |
UCDP |
2004 to 2005 |
Total number |
| 16 |
Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP |
IISS |
2004 |
Cash outlays for armed forces, as a percentage of GDP |
| 17 |
Number of armed services personnel |
IISS |
2004 |
Full-time military personnel per 100,000 people |
| 18 |
Imports of major conventional weapons |
SIPRI |
2001 to 2005 |
Imports of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people |
| 19 |
Exports of major conventional weapons |
SIPRI |
2001 to 2005 |
Exports of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people |
| 23 |
Ease of access to small arms and light weapons |
EIU |
2007 |
Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5 |
| 24 |
Military capability or sophistication |
EIU |
2007 |
Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5 |
Indicators not already ranked on a 1 to 5 scale were converted by using the following formula: x=(x-Min(x))/(Max(x)-Min(x)) where Max(x) and Min(x) are the highest and lowest values for that indicator of the countries ranked in the index. The 0 to 1 scores that resulted were then converted to the 1 to 5 scale. Individual indicators were then weighted according to the research team's judgment of their importance. The scores were then tabulated into two weighted sub-indices: internal peace, weighted at 60% of a country's final score, and external peace, weighted at 40% of a country's final score.
The main findings of the Global Peace Index are:
- Peace correlated to indicators such as income, schooling and the level of regional integration
- Peaceful countries often shared high levels of transparency of government and low corruption
- Small, stable countries which are part of regional blocks are most likely to get a higher ranking.
Statistical analysis was applied to discover more specific drivers of peace. Specifically, the research team looked for indicators that were included and excluded from the index that had high levels of correlation with the overall score and rank of countries. Among the statistically significant indicators that were not used in the analysis were the functionality of a country's government, regional integration, hostility to foreigners, importance of religion in national life, and GDP per capita.
Notably absent from the 2007 study are
Belarus,
Iceland, many
African nations,
Mongolia,
North Korea and
Afghanistan. They were not included because reliable data for the 24 indicators wasn't available.
Criticism and response to criticism
The Economist, in publishing the index, admitted that, "the index will run into some flak." Specifically, according to
The Economist, the weighting of military expenditure "may seem to give heart to freeloaders: countries that enjoy peace precisely because others (often the USA) care for their defense." The true utility of the index may lie not in its specific rankings of countries now, but in how those rankings change over time, thus tracking when and how countries become more or less peaceful.
The Peace Index has been criticised for not including indicators specifically relating to violence against women and children. Riane Eisler, writing in the
Christian Science Monitor, argued that, "to put it mildly, this blind spot makes the index very inaccurate." She mentions a number of specific cases, including
Egypt, where she claims 90% of women are subject to
genital mutilation,
China, where, she says, "female infanticide is still a problem," and
Chile, where 26% of women "suffered at least one episode of violence by a partner, according to a 2000
UNICEF study."
The Index has received endorsements from a number of major international figures, including the
Dalai Lama, archbishop
Desmond Tutu,
muhammad Yunus and former United States President
Jimmy Carter. Steve Killelea, the Australian philanthropist who conceived the idea of the Index and created a definition for the
Peace Industry, argues that the Index "is a wake-up call for leaders around the globe."
2007-2008 Global Peace Index rankings
Nations considered the most peaceful have lower index scores.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Global Peace Index'.
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