Global Justice Index Report

Abstract

The Global Justice Index is a multiyear research project conducted at the Fudan-IAS to conceptualize and measure each country’s contribution to achieve greater global justice. In this study, we intend to provide our first-year achievements with the ranking of nation states at the global level from 2010 to 2017. This study comprises four main sections. In the introduction, we discuss the development of the conceptual framework and evaluative principles to justify our selection of dimensions and indicators for measurement. Next, in the section of methodology, we discuss the production, normalization, and aggregation of the raw data and the generation of the final results. The following section is the main findings, and we present the results through various visualization tools and provide regional comparisons for further analysis. In the last section, we discuss the applications and limitations of the index, and its potential further research trajectories.

1 Introduction

The Global Justice Index is a multiyear research project conducted at the Fudan-IAS to conceptualize and measure each country’s contribution to achieve greater global justice. In this study, we intend to provide our first-year achievements with the ranking of nation states at the global level from 2010 to 2017. This study comprises four main sections. In the introduction, we discuss the development of the conceptual framework to justify our selection of dimensions and indicators for measurement. Next, in the section of methodology, we discuss the production, normalization, and aggregation of the raw data and the generation of the final results. The following section is the main findings, and we present the results through various visualization tools and provide regional comparisons for further analysis. In the last section, we discuss the applications and limitations of the index, and its potential further research trajectories.

Global justice is a broad concept composed of multilevel and multidimensional aspects belonging to both normative and empirical realities. A coherent, integrated theoretical framework that covers the normative basis and various empirical dimensions is, therefore, necessary to address some of the basic and important questions under study. Our study began with the conceptualization of global justice and was completed based on a theoretical paper on “Conceptualizing and Measuring Global Justice: Theories, Concepts, Principles and Indicators,” coauthored by the project leader, Sujian Guo, et al., published in Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences (Vol. 12, No. 4, 2019). The paper discusses theories, concepts, evaluative principles, and methodologies related to the study of global justice.

In the paper above, we attempt to clarify how to conceptualize global justice, how indicators can be selected and theoretically justified, and how those indicators can be conceptually consistent with the concept of global justice. Through the synthesis of multiple theories and intellectual traditions in various cultural and political contexts, we conceptualize global justice from three main approaches—rights-based, goods-based, and virtue-based—to develop a theoretical framework with a normative basis for the following measurement. Rights-based conceptualization focuses on the basic principles, rules, and sources of legitimacy of justice (Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948; Rawls 1971, 1999). Goods-based conceptualization concentrates on the material and institutional supports that the governments or institutions are obliged to provide (Arneson 1989; Freeman 2006; Nussbaum 2006, 2011; Richardson 2006). And virtue-based conceptualization regards justice as a virtue that an individual is willing to pursue rather than a regulation an individual is forced to comply with Mo (2003). The relationship between the three approaches of conceptualization is interdependent rather than separate, which indicates three interrelated components of a holistic whole. Additionally, the three approaches are complementary rather than competing, with the rights-based conceptualization forming the basic structure as the “bones”, the goods-based conceptualization providing substantial material supports as the “muscles”, and the virtue-based conceptualization emphasizing personal motivation and internalized willingness as the “heart” (Guo et al. 2019).

Based on the aforementioned theoretical framework, we propose two evaluative principles to further bridge the gap between theories and practice to determine and justify our selection of issue areas for evaluation. We call the two principles Common but Differentiated and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) and Cosmopolitan but Due-diligent Responsibilities (CDDR). CBDR-RC addresses the issues “for which no single nation state can be held directly accountable or responsible, matters that can only be tackled through the globally concerted efforts of all stakeholders” (Guo et al. 2019). For example, it is the responsibility of all to protect the climate system and ecological balance, and environmental protection is a task that cannot be handled by one country on its own. The principle of CBDR-RC, first adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and reaffirmed in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, combines normative legitimacy and historical rationality. Although it was a principle that first aimed to determine the responsibilities of each country for climate change, it has been expanded to the other global justice areas such as combating transnational crime and global peacekeeping.

The second principle, CDDR, addresses that “all-nation-states are morally obligated to provide cosmopolitan aid, in which context the least advantaged will have a due-diligent responsibility” (Guo et al. 2019). This principle is based on the concept of “mutual accountability” proposed in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, adopted in 2005 at the Second High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to promote a better cooperation between different actors in aid and development. This principle views such obligations as part of domestic affairs, such as anti-poverty and education policy, in the context of which the nation states are expected to provide material and institutional assistance to their citizenry within their territories.

According to the principles of CBDR-RC and CDDR, we determine two clusters of global justice issue areas for practical measurement. Those issue areas that follow the principle of CBDR-RC are (1) climate change (global warming), (2) peacekeeping, (3) humanitarian aid, (4) terrorism and armed conflicts, and (5) cross-national criminal police cooperation, and those belonging to the principle of CDDR are (6) anti-poverty, (7) education, (8) public health, and (9) the protection of women and children. In the following sections, we present the more practical part of operationalization and measurement to assess the performance and contribution of each nation state to promote justice at the global level.

2 Methodology: Construction of the Global Justice Index

In this study, we classify our data into four levels: indicators, dimensions, categories, and issues. The first and the bottom levels of our data provide the information on indicators, which is our raw data. The second level is named dimensions, which usually comprises several related indicators. The third level is categories and comprises several related dimensions. And the last level is the issue index, usually calculated based on two categories: contribution and performance.

The global justice index is calculated as follows.

2.1 First Step: Convert Indicator Indices

To ensure comparability between indicators, we use the following two formulas to convert the raw data into comparable indicators:

$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} {ii_{ij} = \frac{{{\text{actual }}\;{\text{value}}_{ij}\,-\,\text{min}\,({\text{actual value}}_{.j}) }}{{\mathop {\text{max} }\,({\text{actual value}}_{.j})\,-\,{\text{min}}\,({\text{actual value}}_{.j}) }} + 1 } \\ \end{array} $$

(1)

$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} {ii_{ij} = \frac{{\max \,({\text{actual value}}_{.j})\,-\, {\text{actual value}}_{ij} }}{{{\text{max}}\, ({\text{actual }}\;{\text{value}}_{.j})\, - \,{\text{min}}\, ({\text{actual value}}_{.j}) }} + 1 } \\ \end{array} $$

(2)

$$ i \in \left\{ {1,\;2, \cdots 192} \right\} , j \in \left\{ {2010,\;2011, \cdots 2017} \right\}, $$

where ${\text{actual value}}_{ij}$ indicates the actual value of an indicator in country i in year j. $\min\,({\text{actual value}}_{.j})$ is the minimum value of an indicator among all countries in year j, and $\max\,({\text{actual value}}_{.j})$ is the maximum value of an indicator among all countries in year j. If an indicator positively relates to global justice, the first formula is used to convert the raw data; if not, the second formula is used.

2.2 Second Step: Population-Based Weighting

Consciously, countries with various populations should make different efforts to raise the welfare of their people to the same level. If one compares with the efforts that countries make to raise the welfare of their people; therefore, we weight indicators based on population size. Proceed as follows:

First, calculate the weighted average of an indicator as per the following formula:

$$ ii_{mj} = \frac{{\mathop \sum \nolimits {ii} _{ij} \times {\text{population}}_{ij} }}{{\mathop \sum \nolimits {\text{population}}_{ij} }}. $$

(3)

$ii_{mj}$ is the weighted average of an indicator. $ii_{ij}$ is the actual value of an indicator in country i in year j.${\text{population}}_{ij}$ is the population size of country i in year j.

Second, calculate the weight of each country on an indicator as follows:

$$ ss_{ij} = (ii_{ij} - ii_{m} ) \times {\text{population}}_{ij} . $$

(4)

$ss_{ij}$ is the weight of country i in year j.

Third, calculate the score for an indicator in country i in year j as follows:

$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} {{\text{II}}_{ij} = \frac{{ss_{ij}\,-\, {\text{min}}\,(ss_{.j}) }}{{{\text{max}} \,(ss_{.j}) \,- \,{\text{min}} \,(ss_{.j}) }} + 1 } \\ \end{array} , $$

(5)

where ${\text{II}}_{ij}$ is the score of an indicator in country i in year j. We use ${\text{II}}_{ij}$ to further calculate the dimension global justice.

2.3 Third Step: Calculate the Scores of Both Dimension Indices and Category Indices

For each variable, we calculate the score of the variable index as follows:

$$ {\text{VI}}_{ij} = \sqrt[n]{{\mathop \prod \limits_{k} II_{ijk} }}, $$

(6)

where ${\text{VI}}_{ij}$ is the score of the variable index.

Similarly, we use ${\text{VI}}_{ij}$ to further calculate the score of dimension indices as follows:

$$ {\text{DI}}_{ij} = \sqrt[n]{{\mathop \prod \limits_{k} {\text{VI}}_{ijk} }}. $$

(7)

2.4 Fourth Step: Calculate the Score of the Issue Index

We use ${\text{DI}}_{ij}$ to further calculate the score of each issue in county i in year j as follows:

$$ {\text{ISI}}_{ij} = \sqrt[n]{{\mathop \prod \limits_{k} {\text{DI}}_{ijk} }}. $$

(8)

2.5 Last Step: Calculate Global Justice Index

We use the following formula to calculate the score of the global justice index in country i in year j:

$$ {\text{GJ}}_{ij} = \sqrt[9]{{\mathop \prod \limits_{k} {\text{ISI}}_{ijk} }}, $$

(9)

where ${\text{GJ}}_{ij}$ is the score of global justice in country i and year j. ${\text{ISI}}_{ijk}$ is the score of issue k in country i in year j.

3 Findings

In this section, we will report the results of the measurement and country ranking in the identified nine issue areas related to global justice based on available data sources. We will present dimensions, variables, indicators, and data sources, and evaluate and rank the countries in terms of performance and contribution. We then present the results through various visualization tools and provide regional comparisons for further analysis.

3.1 Issue 1: Climate Change

This report studies countries’ efforts to promote global justice from the perspectives of climate change, peacekeeping, and other issues. Climate change and peacekeeping are issues for which no single actor can be held directly accountable or responsible. They are issue areas that can only be addressed through the globally concerted efforts of all stakeholders. Global warming is a real, disastrous phenomenon, with many destructive effects. Scientists have concluded that human influence is most likely the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century. If all countries remain passive about climate change, the situation will worsen, with dramatic consequences globally. Alternately, if countries cooperate and coordinate to combat global warming, the negative impacts of climate change on this plane would be significantly alleviated.

3.1.1 Dimensions and Indicators

Today, countries attempt to resolve climate change problems by, for example, reducing CO₂ emission, planting more trees, and supporting clean and renewable energy. Thus, our dimensions of climate change include CO₂ emission, energy use, forestry, and electricity (Table 1). We have selected more than ten indicators derived from four dimensions. In the energy use dimension, our indicators include energy use per capita, energy use per 1000 dollars of gross domestic product, and fossil fuel energy consumption. In the CO₂ emission dimension, four indicators are used: CO₂ emissions from gas, liquid, solid, and fuel consumption per capita and CO₂ intensity per capita. The forestry dimension has two indicators. The electricity dimension has four indicators: electricity production from hydroelectric sources, oil, gas and coal sources, renewable sources, and nuclear sources. These data are all available for 195 countries from the World Bank. However, the time span is from 2000 to 2014 (2010–2014 is more important for our research purpose). We understand that these four dimensions and the indicators selected for this study may be not the most ideal, but they can to a large extent measure countries’ efforts to solve climate change problems.

Table 1 Data on climate change

3.1.2 Results

In this section, we present the ranking results of the countries’ contributions to global justice from a climate change perspective (Table 2). Table 2 shows 5 years of results from 2010 to 2014 in 195 countries.

Table 2 Country ranking in the climate change aspect of promoting global justice

Table 2 shows the countries’ climate-change ranking from 2010 to 2014. Due to the missing value problem, some countries (e.g., Afghanistan, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Monaco) do not have full data for the year 2014. However, 116 countries in Table 2 have full data. In general, we observe that developed countries have performed relatively better than developing countries in terms of promoting global justice from a climate change perspective. In most cases, countries’ rankings have been stable from 2010 to 2014.

Figure 1 shows that the top ten countries in 2014 are Sweden, Brazil, Gabon, Finland, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, and Cameroon. Sweden and Finland are developed countries and the remaining eight countries are developing countries. Brazil, Costa Rica, and Paraguay are South American countries. Cambodia is an Asian country. Gabon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, and Congo are African countries. China ranks 87th in 2014, and the United States ranks 73rd in 2014. This finding implies that the two largest economies must make more contributions despite the progress achieved prior to 2014.

Fig. 1

2014 index ranking of climate change on a world map

3.2 Issue 2: Peacekeeping

Similar to climate change, peacekeeping has no single actor that can be held directly accountable or responsible. UN peacekeeping is an attempt, after peace has been negotiated or imposed by internal and external players, to address the causes of current hostility and to build local capacity for conflict resolution. A global effort is required to maintain international peace and security. All countries—big and small, developed and developing—can participate and make contributions.

3.3 Dimensions and Indicators

To measure a country’s effort to promote global justice by contributing to UN peacekeeping, our dimensions include personnel contribution and financial contribution (Table 2). The personnel contribution dimension is measured by the troops and police contribution indicator. The financial contribution dimension is measured by the financial donation contribution. Our data source is the United Nations peacekeeping official website and International Peace Institute. Approximately 120 countries are studied in this research. The time span for our study is from 2010 to 2017 (Table 3).

Table 3 Data on peacekeeping

3.3.1 Results

In this section, we present the ranking result of countries’ contributions to global justice from the peacekeeping perspective (Table 4).

Table 4 Country ranking in the peacekeeping aspect of promoting global justice

Table 4 shows countries’ ranking in UN peacekeeping from 2010 to 2017. In general, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Rwanda, the United States, and China have made tremendous contributions to UN peacekeeping; among these countries, China and the United States are UN security council members. Although India is not a UN security council member, it is a regional and rising power. Bangladesh is a small country, but is a top five country in its contributions to UN peacekeeping. Based on these data, countries’ willingness is more important than capacity in terms of determining how much contribution one country attempts to make toward peacekeeping (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

2017 index ranking of peacekeeping on a world map

In 2017, the top five countries are the United States, Ethiopia, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. The United States provided most funding to UN peacekeeping, and Ethiopia provided most troops and police for UN peacekeeping activities. Most of the developed countries are among the top 100, and some developing countries, especially those in Africa, did not contribute much.

3.4 Issue 3: Humanitarian Aid

Humanitarian aid is short-term assistance, including material and logistic assistance, delivered to individuals in need. Usually, humanitarian aid is provided in response to natural disasters and emergencies. In these cases, providing help to save lives, reduce suffering, and maintain human dignity is a vital aspect of the global justice agenda. As a result, we include this humanitarian aid in our global justice index and measure each country’s efforts to provide humanitarian aid by evaluating their financial contribution to global humanitarian affairs.

3.4.1 Indicators

We use ten indicators to measure each country’s efforts toward humanitarian aid. These ten indicators are food, health, water, emergency response, early recovery, coordination, education, protection, agriculture, and others, and indicate the sectors that receive the humanitarian donation of each country. The last indicator, “others,” denotes the part of the donation without a designated use. We count the humanitarian donation from each country to UN departments, nongovernmental organizations, and other relevant organizations such as the World Food Program, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Data are obtained from the Financial Tracking Service database, managed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. It “aims to present a complete picture of all international humanitarian funding flows”, such that it “supports the transparency and accountability of the humanitarian system and facilitates resource mobilization”¹ (Table 5).

Table 5 Data on humanitarian aid

3.4.2 Results

Data of the past 10 years show that the US has always been the nation who contributes the most. The traditional liberal democracies, such as Britain, Germany, Canada, The Netherlands, France, and Australia, have a dominantly high proportion of being one of the top 20 contributors. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, high-income economies with the world’s largest oil reserves, have been in the top 20 contributors as well. China is the nation who contributes the most in Asia and ranks 16 in 2017, followed by Japan, Russia, and India, who have been among the top 50 contributors in the past 10 years. African and Central Asian countries with poor economies rank relatively low (Table 6).

Table 6 Country ranking in the humanitarian aspect of promoting global justice

This regional difference is more obvious on a map. Figure 3 presents a map of the humanitarian assistance contribution from each country in 2017. A darker color denotes a higher rank. On the map, the countries in East Europe, North America, and Australia are covered with a darker color and contributed the most, and countries in Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia are covered with a relatively lighter color.

Fig. 3

2017 index ranking of humanitarian aid on a world map

3.5 Issue 4: Terrorism and Armed Conflicts

Terrorism and armed conflicts are major challenges to global justice. The efforts by global partners to combat terrorist violence and conflict threats are a significant aspect of the global justice agenda. Global justice can improve if nation states increase their efforts to manage cross-national conflicts and domestic terrorist threats. In the past decade, the number of violent conflicts and terrorist attacks worldwide has increased. Thus, the international community and individual countries have a duty to prioritize conflict management and terrorism governance on their agenda and act to resolve the problems identified.

3.5.1 Dimensions and Indicators

Using data from highly respected sources, our project measures each country’s influence on global justice in the issue area of terrorism and armed conflicts by focusing on two categories: performance and contribution. Performance refers to the extent to which a country is involved in armed conflicts and terrorism attacks. This category is measured using five thematic indictors: (1) number of conflicts, (2) number of wars, (3) number of conflict deaths, (4) number of terrorism events, and (5) number of deaths from terrorism events. By contribution, it means how much a country has done to reduce armed violence and to improve global peace. This category is measured on the basis of two thematic indicators: (1) number of agreements and (2) achievements of agreements.

Data on armed conflicts are collected and recoded from the UCDP Armed Conflict Dataset and UCDP Battle-related Deaths Dataset. Data on peace agreements are based on the UCDP Peace-agreement Dataset. Data on terrorism are from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Because these data sources are widely used and respected, we adopt the concepts of “conflict” and “terrorism” defined in the datasets. Admittedly, the current methods of measurement and index construction in this issue area are imperfect; for example, several countries experienced sharp ups and downs in certain years, which call for a closer assessment of the methodological process. Based on the starting point of this project, we are open to insights and suggestions from all sides to further improve our ongoing research (Table 7).

Table 7 Data on terrorism and armed conflicts

All the indicators are calculated in an accumulated count. For example, an observation in the UCDP Armed Conflict Dataset indicates that there was a conflict between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States in 2016 that reached the scale of the war (more than 1000 deaths). According to UCDP Battle-related Deaths Dataset, the estimate of the number of deaths caused by this conflict in 2016 was 2141. Thus, for these three countries, the number of conflicts and the number of wars all increased by 1 in 2016, and the total number of deaths involved in the conflict (number of conflict deaths) increased by 2141 in 2016.

The indicator of agreements is measured according to the specific content of an agreement. More specifically, the UCDP Peace-agreement Dataset includes a series of variables that define the characteristics of an agreement (Table 8). Because countries with different population sizes experience different levels of governance challenges in managing conflicts and terrorism, the following indicators are weighted by population size in the corresponding year: (1) number of conflicts, (2) number of wars, (3) number of conflict deaths, (4) number of terrorism events, and (5) number of deaths from terrorism events.

Table 8 Variable code

The function to measure “achievements of agreements” is as follows:

$$ \begin{aligned} {\text{Achievements of agreements}}\, & = \,{\text{mil}}\_{\text{prov}}\, + \,{\text{pol}}\_{\text{prov}} \\ & \quad + {\text{ terr}}\_{\text{prov}}\, + \,{\text{justice}}\_{\text{prov}} \\ & \quad + {\text{ outlin}}\, + \,{\text{pko}} \\ & \quad + \, \left( {3\, - \,{\text{pa}}\_{\text{type}}} \right)/2. \\ \end{aligned} $$

3.5.2 Results

Using index construction methods (see the methodological section), this sub-index ranks 192 countries from 2010 to 2017 according to their level of performance of and contribution to global justice (Table 9).

Table 9 Country ranking in the terrorism and conflict aspect of promoting global justice

The results demonstrate that the problems of conflicts, tensions, and terrorist threats remain alarming from 2010 to 2017, creating a substantial challenge to global justice. According to the rank in 2017, China becomes the number one country and has the best performance best in controlling conflicts and terrorism and participating in peace agreements. China is followed by Japan, Brazil, Vietnam, the Republic of Korea, Uzbekistan, and Poland. Countries in Europe and North America are ranked in the middle, for example, Germany is ranked 35^th and the United States is ranked 37th. The reason for these two rankings is mainly because European countries and the United States have participated in international peace affairs, but have been involved in international and regional conflicts. Tuvalu and Nauru remain the two countries with the least impact on global justice in the issue area of terrorism and armed conflicts, a position it has held since 2014. Other countries on the bottom include Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palau, and Nauru. Although the ranks fluctuated during the observation period, we observe that the 10-year trend is relatively stable and reflects the general situation on the ground.

Figure 4, a world map of the 2017 index ranking, reveals that countries in the Middle East and North Africa (the MENA region), Central Africa, and South Asia must do more to decrease conflicts and terrorist threats. Most countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia contribute to global justice in a sense that they made progress in governing conflicts and terrorism (except for the Philippines). Many countries in Europe and North America have room to improve in managing terrorism and reducing involvement in global or regional conflicts.

Fig. 4

2017 index ranking of conflicts and terrorism on a world map

3.6 Issue 5: Cross-National Criminal Police Cooperation

Transnational crimes are crimes that involve more than one country in their planning and organization and are always accompanied by effects across national borders. Transnational crimes, because of their suggested cross-national harm on citizens, pose serious challenges to global justice. As a result, fighting transnational crimes has been a major domain of global cooperation to improve global justice. We involved this issue into our global justice index and measure each country’s contributions to fighting transnational crimes, by evaluating their financial contribution to Interpol and their promises to the relevant UN conventions.

3.6.1 Dimensions and Indicators

We used two major categories to measure transnational criminal cooperation, and each comprises several indicators. The first category is the financial contribution to Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization). Because transnational crime involves more than one country, an international organization with a well-established communication system is necessary to connect all of the countries, which is what Interpol does. Interpol is the biggest organization worldwide that provides technical and operational supports to combat transnational crime.² Financial donations to Interpol reflect the determination and contribution of a country to cross-national criminal cooperation. Thus, in addition, we measure the ratification status of each country to the UN treaties in regards to transnational crime cooperation. These treaties include the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its three supplementing protocols.³ Ratification of the treaties denotes compliance with the related requirements and the promise to offer relevant assistance. As a result, the ratification status of each country also shows their contribution to the cross-national criminal cooperation (Table 10).

Table 10 Data on cross-national criminal police cooperation

Data for the past 8 years show that the US has always been the highest contributor. Traditional liberal democracies, such as Germany, Italy, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, and Belgium, have almost dominated the top ten lists. Countries in Latin America with serious problems of transnational crimes, such as Brazil and Mexico, have made substantial contributions to combat transnational crime and are within the top 15 contributors. China is the top contributor in Asia and ranks 10th in 2007. Additionally, China has been one of the top 20 contributors for the past 8 years. Increases in ranking are observed in Japan in 2017 and in the Republic of Korea in 2015, which is after they began to ratify the UN treaties that they had not signed (Table 11).

Table 11 Country ranking in the cross-national criminal police cooperation

The map shows each county’s contribution in 2017. The darker color denotes a higher rank. We observe that countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia made relatively greater contributions compared with nations in Africa and Southeast Asia. In Africa, Algeria, Libya, and South Africa contributed relatively more than did the other countries (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5

2017 index ranking of cross-national criminal police cooperation on a world map

3.7 Issue 6: Anti-poverty

The problem of global poverty constitutes a substantial challenge to maintaining global justice. A widespread concern is that the world becomes increasingly unjust when economic growth is not equitably distributed, and in the past decade, the gap widened between the rich and poor. According to estimates from the Work Bank, at least 10% of the world’s population lives on less than US$1.90 a day. Poverty alleviation is of substantial importance to improving global justice. Although global poverty rates have been largely decreased over the past decades, the performance of reducing poverty has been uneven in different regions and countries. Hence, this anti-poverty index helps to evaluate individual countries’ efforts and performance in poverty reduction, as a means to improve global justice.

3.7.1 Dimensions and Indicators

Based on the goods-based conception of global justice and the principle of CDDR (as elaborated in our concept paper), we assume that efforts to combat global poverty should respect the action of individual countries involved in improving the living conditions for the least advantaged within their respective jurisdictions. Therefore, to assess the contributions made by each country to global poverty eradication, we measure their progress in poverty reduction by focusing on three thematic indictors: (1) Gini index, (2) poverty gap, and (3) poverty rate.⁴

The World Bank is the main source of global information on extreme poverty. However, the global poverty data provided by the World Bank are primarily for developing countries. Moreover, the data of developing countries suffer severe problems of missing values, with data appearing in certain years and missing in other years. Later in this report, we explain the imputation methods which we used to compensate for missing data of this type. To include more observation cases of developed countries, we supplement the World Bank poverty data with related information from the OECD Income Distribution Database. However, substantial challenges remain, because the two datasets use different statistical benchmarks and scales to measure the three indicators we use. To make the data comparable, we calculate the ranking score by measuring the extent to which the country’s performance in reducing poverty in a given year has improved compared with the year before. The data sources available limited our ability to rank all nation states (Table 12).

Table 12 Data on anti-poverty

3.7.2 Results

Due to data limitations, this sub-index currently has ranked 60–82 countries over the period of 2010–2017 (Table 13).

Table 13 Country ranking in anti-poverty aspect of promoting global justice

The results reveal that except for the countries with missing data, the largest improvements in poverty relief were in developing countries, for example, Thailand and Argentina. There are a few clear patterns in the data. No country managed to improve on all three indicator domains—Gini index, poverty gap, and poverty rate. Moreover, the progress made by individual countries is unstable. Because this sub-index is calculated by measuring the improvement in poverty reduction performance compared with the last observation year, we easily understand that there are very rare cases that can make continuous rapid progress over 1 decade (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6

2017 index ranking of poverty reduction on a world map

A world map of the 2017 index ranking of poverty relief demonstrates that countries in Latin America made significant progress in addressing poverty problems compared with their performance in 2016. The countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in North America and Europe show very slight improvements in reducing poverty, because these countries have largely eliminated extreme poverty and suffer from ceiling effects. Russia has much more room for improvement in its anti-poverty efforts. Due to data limitations (especially the missing data), we could not obtain a reliable ranking for many countries in Asia and Africa.

However, it is worth noting that China’s poverty alleviation campaign in recent years has borne outstanding results. However, as data sources differ in statistical criteria, the results were not duly represented on the index, which greatly undermined its rankings. Our poverty index is based on three key indicators: Gini coefficient, poverty gap, and poverty rate. Unfortunately, because of differences in statistical methods and criteria, we have not found well-testified data related to China to replace or complement World Bank’s data for the indicators mentioned above.

1. Gini coefficient

Gini coefficient is a widely used indicator for measuring the income disparity in a country or region. “Gini coefficient is calculated with income data by household or group. It varies with the source and criteria of the basic income data used. For instance, whether the income standards are testified, whether the general income standards or the disposable income standards should be used, whether the income data include in-kind benefits from government, or whether annual CPIs or regional price differences are taken into account, all these have an effect on the coefficient and its changes. One must pay attention to the comparability of basic data when making international or temporal comparisons of Gini coefficients.”⁵

The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics has released China’s Gini coefficients from 2003 to 2016, which range from 0.45 to 0.5. They were calculated based on data from a sample survey of urban and rural household income and expenditure around the country,⁶ whereas the Gini coefficients released by the World Bank were calculated based on data from surveys carried out by national governments and estimates made by agencies under the World Bank.⁷ The two adopt different statistical methods and samples.

From the above line chart, we can see that China’s Gini coefficients calculated by the National Bureau of Statistics are even higher than those of the World Bank. Therefore, they cannot be directly used to replace the latter’s statistics. To ensure that the poverty data are comparable across countries, we chose to use the Gini coefficients calculated by the World Bank.

2. Poverty gap

Apart from the Gini coefficients, a lot of data on China’s poverty gap in recent years are also missing. Available data are particularly lacking in the calculation of each country’s poverty alleviation index.

Poverty gap refers to the average income shortfall in proportion to the poverty line of poor families,⁸ and it is used to measure the depth of poverty in a country. The universally accepted criteria are the following: poverty gap at $1.90 a day (2011 PPP) (% population); poverty gap at $3.20 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population); and poverty gap at $5.50 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population). It means that different poverty lines (e.g., US$1.9 per day, US$3.2 per day, US$5.5 per day, etc.) are defined on the basis of the international purchasing power parity (PPP) of 2011 to measure the size of impoverished population and poverty gap.⁹

Chinese authorities adopt the average disposable income of urban residents, rural residents, and others as criteria. So far, we have not found any shared criterion between them and the World Bank. According to the Working Plan for Archiving Poverty Alleviation and Development Records published by the State Council’s Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development in April 2014, during China’s “targeted poverty alleviation” campaign, “the national rural poverty line—RMB 2736 yuan, the per capita net income of rural residents in 2013 (2300 yuan in constant prices in 2010)—shall be adopted as the identification standard for the impoverished population.”¹⁰ The standard is adjusted every year in accordance with variations in CPI, cost-of-living index, etc., and it is much different from the statistical methods and criteria used by the World Bank and relevant UN organizations.¹¹ For this reason, it is not suitable for direct cross-national comparisons, and is thus not included in the calculation of our index.

3. Poverty rate

We faced the same issue in the poverty rate calculation. World Bank’s poverty headcount ratios are calculated based on the poverty lines determined on the basis of the PPP in 2011 (e.g., US$1.9 per day, US$3.2 per day, US$5.5 per day, etc.): poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population); poverty headcount ratio at $3.20 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population); poverty headcount ratio at $5.50 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population).

In its targeted poverty alleviation campaign, the Chinese government adopted “poverty incidence” as a major evaluation criterion. [Poverty incidence = number of individuals in poverty ÷ total headcount × 100%]. This rate is based on the poverty line of RMB 2300 yuan (per capita net income), which makes it rather different from World Bank’s statistical methods and criteria, and not suitable as a direct alternative to them.

To ensure a plausible and operable comparative analysis of poverty data across different countries, including that on China, we chose one single data source—the World Bank. The downside of this choice is that not all the data of every country in every year are represented by the resulting rankings, as many years’ numbers are missing and the data of recent years are not updated in a timely manner. We believe that the issue will be resolved when new data are released in succession, and we keep improving our calculation methods. There is no doubt that “targeted poverty alleviation” and China’s other agendas for enhancing global justice have borne remarkable results. In the future, our project will be dedicated to the collection of country-specific data and exploration of conversion methods of different poverty lines to improve the comparability of China’s poverty alleviation data with its international counterparts and extend the coverage of the Global Justice-Anti-poverty Index to more countries and years.

3.8 Issue 7: Education

Education is essential for global justice. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights explicitly highlight states’ obligations to take measures toward realizing the right to education, to which the principle of CDDR applies (as elaborated in our concept paper). There is an international consensus as to the protection of rights to education. To improve global justice, steps must be taken by nation states to realize the basic human right of receiving education, using the maximum available resources.

3.8.1 Dimensions and Indicators

Based on internationally recognized components of the right to education, this project measures each country’s influence on global justice in education by focusing on two categories: performance and contribution. We first focus on individual countries’ performance on basic education, by measuring the extent to which an individual’s educational right is adequately protected. Drawing on the literature, this category is measured along three thematic indicators: (1) school enrollment ratio, (2) children out of school, (3) pupil–teacher ratio. For the category of contribution, we assess the government’s effort to improve its basic education nationwide by measuring government expenditure on education per capital while determining if a state is fulfilling its basic obligation. The World Bank is the main source of global information on education (Table 14).

Table 14 Data on education

3.8.2 Results

Using index construction methods (see the methodological section), this sub-index ranks 76–105 countries from 2010 to 2017 (Table 15).

Table 15 Country ranking in education aspect of promoting global justice

The data indicate that most countries take the necessary measures to protect children’s educational rights. The OECD countries including Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Ireland do particularly well in this domain. East Asian countries emphasis on education has been well documented, China and the Republic of Korea score relatively strongly in this issue area. Some rich countries in the Middle East and the Gulf Region such as Qatar and Israel have also invested heavily in education. Except for the countries with missing data, developing countries, including Pakistan, Tanzania, Niger, Mali, Guinea, and Senegal, are at the bottom. This finding largely occurs, because these countries either have insufficient educational resources or are experiencing political instability. Although the country ranking fluctuates slightly, the general pattern is stable over the observation decade.

On a world map (Fig. 7), the 2017 index ranking of countries in the domain of education illustrates that the Nordic countries including Sweden and Finland maintain their good score and are closely followed by other Western European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Notably, Eastern European countries, namely, Cyprus, Slovenia, Poland, and Hungary are also doing well compared with many other countries and regions in the world. Some disparities exist in the implementation of the right to education in Latin America, with Argentina ranked 18th and Uruguay at 46th. Countries in Western Africa and South Asia are in a concerning situation of fulfilling the mandates that the state actively create the conditions necessary for individuals’ enjoyment of education. As shown in this index, significant worldwide disparities are observed in guaranteeing basic access to education, with developed countries substantially outperforming developing countries. According to UN treaties, if individual countries do not have the resources to fulfill this obligation, “the international community has a clear obligation to assist”. Education is linked to another issue area covered by this project, humanitarian aid, which we discuss in another section of this report.

Fig. 7

2017 index ranking of education on a world map

3.9 Issue 8: Public Health

Health is primarily viewed by many as a domestic issue. The connections can be unclear between public health as a domestic public good and public health as a country’ contribution to the global public good. The rational is that when one country progresses in public health, the country improves the whole world’s public health. Notably, the global community, especially the United Nations, has taken many measures (e.g., sustainable development goals) to solve public health problems to promote an equal, just, and prosperous world.

3.9.1 Dimensions and Indicators

Although public health has normally been considered a national public good, its deficit constitutes inequality at the global level, and its improvement has positive implications for global justice. In measuring public health, we first focus on health-related performance by measuring the protection of an individual’s right to health and then focus on a government’s effort to improve its health system. The dimensions we use include life expectancy, health infrastructure, key diseases, and governmental expenditure (Table 16). These data are from the WHO and covers 195 countries from 2010 to 2017. In this study, a major challenge is the missing value problem. Thus, data quality is unsatisfactory. Many countries, especially developing countries, have incomplete public health data.

Table 16 Data on public health

3.9.2 Results

In this section, we present the ranking result of countries’ contributions to global justice from the public health perspective (Table 17). The Table 17 shows 9 years of results—from 2010 to 2017—in 195 countries.

Table 17 Country ranking in the public health aspect of promoting global justice

Table 17 shows that China, Finland, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway have consistently performed the best in of global justice from a public health perspective. India and some African countries do not perform well in this regard and have much more to do to catch up. The general trend is that countries tend to do better when their economy is more developed. Thus, developing countries still have a many improvements to make in public health (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8

2017 index ranking of public health on a world map

In 2017, Sweden, Finland, China, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom are the top five countries in promoting global justice from a public health perspective. China is the only developing country among the top five nations.

3.10 Issue 9: Protection of Women and Children

Protection of women and children is essential for global justice. Each country’s contribution (e.g., finical contribution) to women and children is difficult to distinguish from other issues such as public health, education, and poverty. Thus, we focus on the performance dimension, because it is measurable. Additionally, the protection issue concerns gender inequality and children’s situations. First, we use the ratio of health, demography, economic status, and political empowerment between male and female to measure gender inequality from the perspective of gender-based gaps in resources and opportunities in countries. Second, we focus on the gender difference of children’s situations from the perspective of poverty, health, and education.

3.10.1 Dimensions and Indicators

Table 18 reports the indicators used in protection of women and children. We use two data sources. The information on children’s health and demography is from the WHO, and the remainders are from the World Bank.

Table 18 Data on the protection of women and children

3.10.2 Results

The ranking results of countries’ contributions to global justice from the perspective of protection of women and children during 2010–2017 are presented in Table 19.

Table 19 Country ranking in protection of women and children

Our robust result during 2010–2017 in Table 19 shows that countries such as China, the United States, Russia, Mexico, Germany, and other North European countries are at the top levels for protection of women and children, which suggests that these countries do well in protecting their women and children. However, most African countries (e.g., Nigeria, Congo, Egypt, and Kenya) and South Asian countries (e.g., Pakistan, Indonesia, and Afghanistan) display low levels.

The following map displays the results of the protection of women and children in 2017. The higher the ranking in the protection of women and children, and vice versa. As the map shows, generally, the countries in the south and west and the countries in Africa rank lower, whereas China, the North American countries, and European countries rank high (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9

2017 index ranking of protection of women and children on a world map

Protection of women and children focuses on gender inequality. As introduced in the methodology section, we use a population-based weighed score of indices to construct the score of this issue in the perspective of global justice. Thus, the highest score does not mean the top level of protection of women and children. For instance, China ranks first of all countries in this protection of women and children in 2017. However, this finding does not mean that China performs the best of all countries; by contrast, the finding means that China has made a sufficient number women and children far better off than the world average.

3.11 Global Justice Index: Our Main Results

This study has the limitation of the dilemma of missing values. For instance, for climate change, most notably, the data on carbon emission are unavailable after 2014. Another limitation is that, for anti-poverty, the data for many countries were unavailable. Thus, we provide a global justice index that excludes anti-poverty (Table 20) and climate change (Table 21), respectively. Next, we provide a global justice index that excludes anti-poverty and climate change (Table 22). Finally, we provide a global justice index of all nine issues (Table 23).

Table 20 Global Justice Index (except for anti-poverty)

Table 21 Global Justice Index (except for climate change)

Table 22 Global Justice Index (except for of both climate change and anti-poverty)

Table 23 Global Justice Index (all nine issues)

In Table 20, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, and France rank as the top five in the global justice index that excludes anti-poverty. Other developed countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Canada, and Finland also perform well in the global justice index. Developing countries, by contrast, do not perform well in general. China is an exception, because this largest developing country ranks fourth in the index. Brazil’s ranking is approximately 15th, which is the second-highest country in the developing world. The results in Table 20 imply that the more developed a country’s economy, the higher its ranking in the global justice index. Figure 10 also presents the index of global justice (except for anti-poverty) in 2014.

Fig. 10

2014 index ranking of global justice (except for anti-poverty) on a world map

In Table 21, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, and other developed countries perform well in the global justice index except for climate change. The United States ranks the highest in the index. Among developing countries, China, Slovenia, and Mexico’s rankings are notable. China ranks fourth in the years of 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2015. However, the problem is that we only have ranking results of approximately 40 countries from 2010 through 2017. Figure 11 also shows the index of global justice (except for climate change) in 2017.

Fig. 11

2017 index ranking of global justice (except for climate change) on a world map

Table 22 shows the results of the global justice index without considering climate change and anti-poverty from 2010 to 2017. This table presents approximately 100 countries’ ranking results. Once again, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, and France rank as the top five in the global justice index that excludes climate change and anti-poverty. China performs best in the developing world, followed by Rwanda, another developing country, in 2017. Other developing countries such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Nepal, and Cyprus rank in the top 20, as well. Figure 12 also shows the index of global justice (except for climate change and anti-poverty) in 2017.

Fig. 12

2017 index ranking of global justice (except for both climate change and poverty) on a world map

Table 23 presents the global justice index with nine issues areas covered. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, and France rank as the top five in the global justice index. China is the highest ranking developing country and the United States performs best in the index. Other developed countries that rank among the top 20 include Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Finland, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, and Luxembourg. In the developing world, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Slovenia, and Costa Rica have also done well in the index. We compare Tables 20, 21, 22, and 23, and observe that most countries’ rankings are consistent in these tables. For example, the United States always ranks first in these results. Similarly, China consistently ranks among the top of the developing countries. This comparison implies that our results are robust and scientific. Figure 13 also shows the index of global justice in 2014.

Fig. 13

2014 index ranking of global justice on a world map

4 Conclusion

This paper focuses on a measurement and operationalization of global justice that identifies, evaluates, and assesses the performance of nation states in conducting projects and endeavors to promote justice at the global level. First, we briefly introduced our conceptualization of global justice and our development of the theoretical framework, which provides a basis for the subsequent measurement. Through the synthesis of three approaches—rights-based, goods-based, and virtue-based—embedded in the historical discussion of global justice, we proposed the principles of CBDR-RC and CDDR to further determine nine issue areas of crucial importance: climate change, peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, counter-terrorism, cross-national criminal police cooperation, anti-poverty, education, public health, and the protection of women and children. By collecting, processing, and normalizing the data, we generate ranks for each issue area and aggregate them to create the final index. Through various visualization tools, we provide a visual exhibition of the performance and contribution of each nation state in the areas of global justice, the regional comparisons, and the trends of change over time.

Our result shows that the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, and France rank as the top five in the global justice index. The United States undoubtedly ranks first in the index. China ranks the highest among developing countries. In general, developed countries have performed better than their counterparts in the developing world. This finding implies that the more developed and wealthier a country, the higher its ranking.

The contribution of this paper can be summarized as follows: (1) the global justice index is the first attempt to measure the performance and contribution of nation states to enhance justice at the global level; (2) the index presents a rich, comprehensive picture of global justice that offers a guide to global justice for individuals who want to observe annual achievement and changes over time; (3) the index is a barometer for the international community to implement and monitor global justice in different issue areas, enabling international organizations and policymakers to target resources and design policies more effectively; and (4) the index can be used as an analytical tool to compare relevant global justice issues across nations and included as a dependent variable or independent variable in causal analysis.

Notably, this study has several limitations: (1) based on the previous theoretical research, we used nine issues to measure global justice. We excluded refugees and other issues which might have also been highly related to global justice for various reasons. (2) Because no theoretical research has provided the weight of the nine issues to global justice, we, in practice, assume that the nine issues equally contribute to global justice. How to weight the nine issues is a subject for further theoretical research. (3) Due to data limitations, we did not include all countries in this study. For some issues, such as poverty, climate change, and education, the problem of missing values is more serious. Thus, in further research, we will continue to collect data to overcome this problem. (4) The results of this study only apply to comparisons between countries in each year because of the various numbers of countries each year. Regarding our conclusion, a comparison of the global justice index across years is inappropriate.