Time has come to share with you the 2020 version of the State of our State Index (in Arabic, English and French) of the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation. As with every year since 2010, we communicate this index to a limited selection of media outlets & friendly organizations for publishing & dissemination as from January 12th.
State of our State Index compiles, on annual basis, the evaluations of people hailing from diverse backgrounds, all of whom members of the Foundation (activists, former officials and business leaders).
In what follows is a description of the index, its rationale and methodology.
Intro & Goal:
Basic functions of a State are to provide physical security, efficient institutions and a capable administration. The Goal of this index is to evaluate Lebanon’s situation and share results with the Lebanese public in a succinct manner. It also enables us to prioritize initiatives that are to be addressed by our foundation.
Inspired by similar approaches created by various research & analysis groups, 13 criteria have been specifically adopted to reflect the Lebanese conditions. Those same criteria are also evaluated for a model country (Norway) thus enabling the final Lebanese result to be compared to a benchmark or model.
Methodology:
Each of the following 13 criteria is evaluated on a 0 to 10 scale by the evaluators (worst to best) for both Lebanon & Norway and a simple arithmetic average for all evaluators comes out as the index figure for the year under review.
1. Stability over 3 years
2. Citizens’ personal security
3. Government control over territory
4. Capacity to resist foreign influence
5. Rule of law
6. Quality of political leadership
7. Freedom of speech
8. Cultural and religious tolerance
9. Efficiency of civil society
10.Limiting corruption
11.Confidence in public institutions
12.Economic transparency
13.Sovereign debt settlement record
The evaluation process is established on January 2nd enabling release of the index for the year elapsed ,around Mid-January.
Last Year (2019) Result
Lebanon 3.2/10
Norway 8.5/10
2018 Result
Lebanon 3.2/10
Norway 8.4/10
We invite you to discover the 2020 Assessment ( in Arabic, French & English) and remain ready to answer any queries.
The biggest drops in 2020 were on the following criteria.
• Quality of political leadership
• Citizen’s personal security
• Rule of law
• Efficiency of civil society
• Government control over territory
Since inception in 2010 with a score of 4,3/10, the index has dropped 7 times and remained unchanged twice with a single improvement recorded in 2016.
