Measuring peace

It is hard for me to know what to make of the Global Peace Index (GPI), the 2012 version of which was presented at CSIS this morning by Michael Shank of the Institute for Economics and Peace.  I was originally trained as a scientist (through a master’s degree in physical chemistry at the University of Chicago).  I take measurement and numbers seriously, which means I am skeptical of hodge-podge agglomerations of numbers based on implicit models not well articulated.

It is difficult to reduce a lot of things to numbers, and when you do the results aren’t always interesting. Thus it is with aspects of the GPI.  Western Europe is the most peaceful region, followed by North America as well as Central and Eastern Europe.  Asia Pacific comes in fourth.  Latin America fifth.  The laggards are sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Duh.

The individual country numbers and the changes from last year aren’t any more interesting:  sure the Arab Spring pushed the MENA numbers down a bit.  Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Democratic Republic of the Congo are at the bottom of the heap.  Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe moved in the more peaceful direction.  Syria, Egypt and Tunisia went the other way.

This suggests one big problem with the GPI.  It counts countries undergoing revolutions as less peaceful, even if the overall direction from the perspective of their inhabitants may be positive.  And it perceives the end of war in Sri Lanka and the power-sharing arrangement in Zimbabwe as positive developments, despite the real possibility that they are merely prelude to new violence.

The GPI has a big problem with the United States, which it ranks as middling in peacefulness because of its large military expenditures and arms exports.  But as Lawrence Wilkerson pointed out during the presentation, these are a necessary concomitant of any country with global security responsibilities.  If you play the role of world policeman, whether wisely or unwisely, you are going to need the power projection capabilities required as well as well-equipped allies.  And some of the things you do are likely to contribute positively to peace.  Emily Cadei, speaking from a Congressional perspective, confirmed that America’s politicians certainly do not see defense expenditure or arms exports as negative for American security.

Far more interesting than the country and regional numbers are the twenty-year trends and correlations for components of the GPI, which itself is remarkably unchanged in each region except the Middle East and North Africa since 2007, when it was first calculated.  Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are down everywhere except the United States, battle-related deaths are generally down too, with the notable exceptions of the Balkans in the 1990s, the Rwandan genocide and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Where things really get interesting, as pointed out by Anne-Marie Slaughter in her introduction, is in correlation trends.  To avoid getting it wrong, let me quote:

Both the Corruption Perception Index and per capita GDP have a similar looking relationship with the Global Peace Index. There appears to be a ‘tipping point’ for countries with a score of around 2 on the GPI. This meant that at a score of 2 on the peace index, small positive changes in peace had large positive impacts on corruption or per capital GDP. Similarly once past the score of 2 on the GPI small negative changes in corruption or per capita GDP were associated with large decreases in peace.

The data likewise confirms the relative peacefulness of full democracies.  Of course these are correlations that confirm our fondest beliefs.  There are still big questions about the direction and mechanism of causality.

New this year is the Positive Peace Index (PPI), whicch is intended to measure attitudes, institutions and structures that determine capacity to create and maintain a peaceful society.  It is based on factors like well-functioning government, sound business environment, equitable distribution of resources, acceptance of the rights of others, good relations with neighbors, free flow of information, high levels of education and low levels of corruption.  The difference between GPI and PPI is the “peace gap”:

A surplus means that the institutions, structures and attidudes of the country can support a higher level of peace than is being experienced, while the inverse, a deficit, signifies that the country may be fragile due to weaker than expected institutional capacity.

This is where the U.S. (as well as Israel and Bahrain) are shown to have more potential than they have realized. On the deficit side, there are relatively peaceful countries (mostly in sub-Saharan Africa) that seem to lack the institutions needed to manage “external shocks.”  The PPI will presumably offer more interesting results in the future as trends emerge with time.

I’m not less skeptical of hodge-podge quantification than at breakfast this morning.  But the GPI report is worth a look.