Credit: Till Lauer/Economist

Our annual “country of the year” award celebrates improvement. Each December, therefore, we give a hostage to fortune. The places that climb furthest are often those that started near the bottom: poor, ill-governed and unstable. Freshly won democracy and peace do not always last, as Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar (The Economist’s country of the year in 2015) ended up reminding the world when she appeared recently at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and glossed over the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority, by her country’s soldiers.

In 2019 the most striking political trend was a negative one: belligerent nationalism. India has been stripping Muslims of citizenship, China has been locking up Muslims in camps, America has taken a wrecking ball to global institutions. So strong was the global tide that it was a relief to see some countries paddling the other way. New Zealand deserves an honourable mention for its response to a massacre in mosques by a white nationalist. Jacinda […]