The World

Following Sarkozy’s happiness commission, the latest effort to come up with a broader measure of national well-being than mere GDP has been made by the London-based Legatum Institute. Legatum’s  ”Prosperity Index” sounds like it is weighted towards economics. But, in fact, the institute tries to take into account a great many factors in producing its national rankings, these include health, entrepeneurship, democractic governance etc. The Finns are apparently the best-off people in the world, according to this measure. Strange then, that they are so catatonic.  Maybe that is the secret of their success.

In the manner of these reports, Legatum tries to come up with ten “key findings”. These include “freedom cannot be divided”, “good governance is central to life satisfaction” and most sweeping of all, “History is not destiny.” Blimey. Who said it was? And what would it mean if history was destiny?

It seems to me there is an interesting sub-text to the whole Legatum exercise, which becomes clearer when you read this blog by the institute’s director, William Inboden. who is an ex-official in George W.Bush’s National Security Council. The whole report could be seen as a riposte to the “Asian values”, “China will take over the world” crowd. For example, it ranks India as more “prosperous” than China. You clearly would not get this result if you simply ranked countries by GDP-per-capita; but once you put measures like democratic governance into the mix – hey presto.

It’s an interesting exercise, but also slightly circular. First set up a set of criteria that explicitly include liberal political values. Then come up with your “prosperity rankings” which reveal that democracies do better than authoritarian regimes. And then announce as a key finding that “freedom is indivisible” and that “good governance is central”. Makes me almost nostalgic for dodgy dossier.