Country Indicators for Foreign Policy
Tired of playing second fiddle, Canada raises the bar with this site, which is more user-friendly than the CIA's State Failure project (see separate entry) and includes occasional country assessments as a bonus. The base aim is similar: uncover the factors that correlate with violent political conflict, with a view to early warning and prevention.
The CIA did a massive data search and analysis, with results you can read in a quite well-written report. The CIFP, a joint academic-government project, takes an alternative approach, telling us what we need to look out for -- a history of conflict, environmental stresses, ethnic divisions, militarization, etc. -- and offering this data to the public. A well-done interface spits out the base statistics, and irregular risk reports provide country risk ratings as well as dry, detailed country risk assessments including scenarios. Reports on hot topics such as corporate social responsibility also appear on the site.
David Carment writes -- please ask people to reference our work when they use our research, methodology and data.
KEYWORDS: ethnicity, environment, environment statistics, democratization, political violence statistics, political stability, military statistics, country scenarios
Updated May 18, 2004