A followup on Failed States Index

Being that my last post on the Failed States Index has gotten a fair amount of Google traffic, here's a quick followup.

The Fund for Peace has the data on the rankings. The article on the index was released by Foreign Policy magazine. Looking through the data is actually an interesting exercise and I'm looking forward to digging down a bit more.

An op-ed in today's Miami Herald discusses the Latin American states on the index and how it relates to democracy (this writer from Inter-American Dialogue, like Oppenheimer, says the positions of Colombia and Cuba are misleading). I think the final line captures the correct attitude about this index:

Generalizations are often helpful in seeing the forest. Knowing the trees in their own uniqueness is, however, a must.

Placing countries onto a ranking system is always a bit misleading. Anyone who is interested in the topic of failed states should look beyond the initial index, but definitely study the data behind it.