A new study from Germany believes that Singapore is the best state in the world while the U.S. is only in 23rd place.
Researchers from the Julius Maximilian University of Wurzburg (JMUW) in Bavaria have come up with a ranking system known as the Stateness Index, which measures the "stateness" and state quality of the world's countries through aggregated and dis-aggregated data to advance performance comparison and policy analysis scenarios.
"We can see the state in everything that surrounds us, for example in the streets, the courts, the police or the schools," said Theresa Paola Stawski, a political scientist from JMUW who has been investigating how well the states of the world function over the past few months.
Stawski's team defined a state as: "An institutionalized social and political order and organization of hierarchical authority that is in exclusive control of the monopoly of law, monopoly of violence and monopoly of administration throughout a given territory and its inhabitants."
She added that a good state – which her index calls a "high functioning state" – can be seen through things like patients immediately receiving a doctor's appointment when they need an X-ray, communities having 24-hour access to electricity and children having plenty of schools to go to. (Related: Survey: The average American has over $54,000 worth of debt and would do almost anything to get rid of it.)
Index claims democracy not always a factor on how well a state functions
The German researchers graded 173 countries according to three categories – monopoly of law, monopoly of violence and monopoly of administration – and how well it could extend the functions of the state through those categories on a scale of zero to one, with a number closer to one being the better mark.
Countries were then further categorized into five kinds of states: A "high functioning state," a "moderate functioning state," a "defective state" a "profound defective state" and a "collapse state." But regardless of categorization, states could still rank higher or lower depending on their ability to exercise their so-called "stateness."
With these grading and classification categories in mind, the researchers ranked Singapore as the best state in the world, ahead of Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Estonia in that order and out of a list of 173 countries.
The U.S. ranks 23rd, right below Japan, France, Spain and Malta and right above the Czech Republic, Austria, Canada and Barbados. Both Singapore and the U.S. still count as a "high functioning state."
Singapore ranked at the top of the list despite the country not being a full democracy, with the researchers noting that nation's government "can insert and uphold the laws enacted by the regime, [possesses] the means necessary to control both territory and populations, and [commands] a bureaucratic infrastructure to implement and exert territorial sovereignty throughout the state territory."
Responding to criticism about the fact that Singapore isn't even a democracy, Stawski said: "Whether a state functions well or not does not always have something to do with democracy."
This claimed understanding of a functioning state is why Stawski and her researchers ranked the United Arab Emirates – a near-absolute monarchy – above countries like Slovenia and Iceland that have generally free and fair elections and other freedoms like freedom of the press and assembly.
Watch this episode of "Brighteon Broadcast News" as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, goes into detail about how governments all over the world routinely terrorize their citizens to maintain control over them.
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