Grading Global Governance

How well are we running this world, anyway?

Everyone argues about what is right or wrong with the world, but figuring out how folks actually justify their opinions is a bit harder. It might be easier to figure out how well we are governing the world, if we had standard metrics for measuring the quality of governance. Many metrics can be devised . What follows is designed to be as simple as possible.

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November 2007 Scorecard

Worsening:

• Meeting at Annapolis freezes out Hamas
• Fatah beats nationalist demonstrators
• Pakistani dictator defeats middle class pro-democracy movement
  & retains power
• Rising war threats on Eritrean-Ethiopian border
• Rising violence by Islamic militants in Pakistan met by rising
  government violence
• Rising violence in Somalia
• Ahmadinejad calls opponents of his nuclear policy
  “traitors”
• Turkey threatens to invade Iraq
• Growth of Iraq militias
• Anti-democracy trend of Russian government
• Burmese repression of democracy movement
  

Continuing:

• Lebanese political crisis
• Israel military attacks on Palestine
• Darfur fighting
• Iraqi political stalemate
• Tensions between Iran and U.S./Israel
• Colombian civil war
• Egyptian government suppression of democracy
  advocates
  

Improving:

• Australia’s new leader pro-Kyoto
• Agreement with N. Korea to Disable Yongbyon

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I will make the simple assumption that all these are equally important, leading to the following

November Global Governance Score: -11/+2

I challenge readers to propose logical, understandable ways to rank them.

I also hasten to note that these are not judgments about the ultimate outcome of anything - just what I see as having occurred this November. Thus, I rate the Annapolis meeting on Palestine negatively because of the way it was convened; leaders may still manage to pull a rabbit out of the hat. I also rate the Colombian civil war as continuing as it was, though there are some occasional signs that the government there may be trying to improve the way poor rural Colombians are treated. I also rate Darfur as continuing because the positive concept of an international peacekeeping force still remains more concept than practice.

Finally, would someone please send me some more improvements that occurred during November?