What about the recent scandal/​invasion/​attack/​war/​policy/​election in country x? Surely they should be at the bottom of the Good Country Index because of that?

The Good Country Index doesn’t react in real time to specific events because there’s usually no objective way of measuring their immediate impact on the world. Many behaviours – such as wars, for example – will, in time, be reflected in the data sources that the Good Country Index is based on (the UCDP-PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset in the case of wars, for example) and so they will be accounted for in future updates. But as yet we have no reliable mechanism for reacting to one-off episodes. We’re working on this, and suggestions are gratefully received.