Publications

The murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in February 2018 continued to impact political developments in 2020 and 2021. The investigations and the trials that eventually started in 2020 revealed the unimaginable size of the corrupt...

With regard to some of the established indicators of political stability, Austrian politics has been marked by major turbulence recently. As in most other countries, this can be partially attributed to the complex and unprecedented challenges that arose due to the...

In 2019, the Irish economy again performed impressively on key macroeconomic indicators. GDP growth was close to 5% and GNP growth was over 4%. Unemployment fell to 5%, a remarkable achievement given that it had been as high as 16% in 2012. Inflation remained at a very low...

From March 2020 to the end of the review period in January 2022, Slovenia was governed by a minority coalition government led by Prime Minister Janez Janša, president of the center-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS). The other political parties of the governing coalition...

Belgium is a country of 31,000 km² located at the heart of northwestern Europe. It is densely populated (11.6 million inhabitants) and very open to the rest of the world. This is a strong asset that the country normally exploits very well, but which turned into a weakness...

Israel has experienced a year full of positive and negative developments. 2021 was characterized by the last of four elections in two years; confrontation with Gaza; the fragility of the education system, with teaching split between in person instruction and online learning;...

In the final stretch of the Moon Jae-in administration – with presidential elections held in March 2022 – several long-term tasks prioritized and set forth by President Moon in his 100 Policy Tasks (2017) and New Deal (2020) remained relevant and important for the future of...

After 2008, Italy experienced one of its most serious economic crises, with negative effects on industrial performance, employment and government budgets. National and international confidence in the economy and in the ability of the Italian state to face big external shocks...

Undoubtedly, democracy in Sweden remains robust; the country continues to score highly across the gamut of sustainable governance indicators, with little change since the previous report. This mundane observation becomes quite salient if contextualized in the second year of...

In terms of sustainable governance, Canada’s performance is, overall, very good. The country’s public policies are generally strong and sustainable. On the economic policy front, the pandemic brought the most severe and rapid economic decline since the Great Depression. An...