Publications

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...

Despite a rapidly aging population and alarmingly high levels of public debt, Japan remains one the three largest economies in the world. Its per capita economic growth rate is roughly in line with that of the United States and the EU. However, disposable incomes have risen...

In the current assessment period, governance in Switzerland has sustained considerable continuity with recent SGI assessments. The external shock of the pandemic has been weathered well in terms of maintaining democratic, economic and societal stability. By implication, the...

The period under review was characterized by social unrest, political realignment and economic struggles due to the massive, in some cases violent protests that had taken place by the end of 2019, as well as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, economic growth in Latvia was persistently above the average EU rate, with the economy growing by an average of 3.3.% annually. The 2019 Global Competitiveness Index ranked Latvia 41st among 141 surveyed world economies. This growth created...

Two topics dominated the United Kingdom during the two-year period reviewed in this report: the completion of the process of exiting the European Union and the coronavirus pandemic. The 2019 general election provided Prime Minister Johnson with a substantial majority (80...

Over the course of 2021, Croatia stayed economically and politically stable. The economy staged a swift recovery due to a combination of several factors, particularly the reliance on extensive furlough schemes that had been rolled out in 2020, the policy credibility...

Formal democracy is well developed in Lithuania. Participation rights, electoral competition and the rule of law are generally respected by the Lithuanian authorities. Lithuania has also actively supported the pro-democracy movement in Belarus. Substantive democracy, in...

Spain was one of the countries around the world most affected by COVID-19, both in terms of the number of infections and number of deaths. Available data points to the bulk of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Spain being attributable to structural factors (e.g., demographic...

The sustained course of Cyprus’s economic growth was abruptly interrupted by the COVID-19 crisis, which had a significant impact on the country’s main sectors, tourism and construction, among others. Recovery started at the beginning of and continued through 2021. The...