Dataviz of the Week: Failed States [Other than Ours]
As we brace for the hysterical doom-and-bloom rhetoric of the general election, what better time than now to explore cases of real national failure and success?
The image above is a datavisualization of The Failed States Index, a report co-published by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. It evaluates 177 countries in terms of how close they are to, well, failure. [More on this below.]
As I have confessed repeatedly here, I’m a big fan of “dataviz,” as it’s known in the trade. Data visualizations demonstrate the power of images to illuminate information in ways that words alone cannot. I think journalists, educators and all professional communicators ignore dataviz at their peril.
Anyhow, the Failed States map is pretty simple as these graphic explainers go. The work of a map geek who goes by the handle “Ender,” the dataviz essentially turns each country’s failure index number into a color, allowing you to eyeball the places on the world map where countries are teetering on the edge of national catastrophe.
The visuals force fascinating questions to mind:
- Is it significant that so many states near failure are located near the equator?
- Why do nations seem to be stabler the closer they are to the North and South poles–with the glaring exception of Russia?
- Why makes Ghana so much more stable than Guatemala?
- What measures of national stability rank Portugal above the U.S.?
- Why are China and Russia closer to failure than Cuba?
- What happy sauce do they drink in Chile that makes that nation as stable as our own?
Which brings us back to the underlying data.
The Failed State Index is a calculation based on information about each country regarding 12 criteria, a research-and-analysis process that’s been vetted and validated by multiple layers of academics and globalist wonks.
Measures of national stability accounted for include “Legacy of Vengeance-Seeking Group Grievance or Group Paranoia,” “Uneven Economic Development along Group Lines,” “Suspension or Arbitrary Application of the Rule of Law,” “Widespread Violation of Human Rights,” “Progressive Deterioration of Public Services,” “Rise of Factionalized Elites,” and “Sharp and/or Severe Economic Decline.”
Maybe I’ve been following the presidential race too much, but this sound a lot like the talking points of the guests on both MSNBC and Fox News.
Obviously, people in this relatively stable nation-state of ours are very polarized over the forthcoming presidential election. I’m already hearing people recite the common refrain, “If [the other guy] wins, I’m moving to Canada.”
But why choose our neighbor to the north, which is hardly more stable than Austria, for god’s sake?
Using the handy Failed States datavisualization, it’s easy to see that if you’re looking for a rock-solid haven free of political instablity to sit out an unbearable presidential administration. . . Norway is the place to go.
Web 2.Oh. . .really? 
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