World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2012
The World Justice Project, an international not-for-profit organization, publishes an annual index that ranks countries on a number of scales. The 2012 Rule of Law Index came out today.
Canada fares far less well than you might imagine and certainly worse than you’d hope, as the snapshot below of our score on the major scales shows:
We’re down in all but three categories, the biggest drop being from 7th to 15th in “Limited Government Powers.” Last year’s rankings for Canada are here [PDF]. The methodology is described briefly here and in detail here [PDF].
Scandinavia topped most lists, followed closely by Australia and New Zealand. Most of Western Europe was ahead of Canada, which can claim the honour of besting the United States on all counts — but barely.
The whole report, with some explanatory material, can be downloaded here [PDF].
I was interested in the ‘limited government powers’ issue, especially since Canada’s ranking has fallen most notably here. It’s a bit hard to know what’s meant, and the ‘long’ version of the criteria is 120 pages long, so not necessarily an easy search.
Here’s what I find for this idea, though:
Pages 39 and 40 of the ‘long’ version set out in more detail the actual questions asked that are used to measure the responses. Then there is a questionnaire used to survey the countries represented in the study.
There is no actual explanation of how the factors were applied to any particular country to come up with the rating.
Nor is it clear (or maybe somewhere in the 120 pages it is …) whether the ratings take into account subnational governments as well as the national government. They can make a big difference to people’s lives under the law.
Would anyone like to guess why under the Harper government, which loudly preaches the need to limit government and which acts to undercut the power of government to study and regulate things, Canada’s rating has fallen?