Denmark Tops New Global Ranking of Future Governance

Finland Best Prepared for Climate Change, while Singapore Leads Tech Advancement.

Comprehensive, international index sees Scandinavian nations lead the way for governance quality, while U.S. and China place only 10th and 23rd, respectively  [Singapore, 2 November 2021]. The Future–Moves Group (FMG) today released the Future Governance Index (FGI), an original and independent index
that measures, ranks and examines countries’ quality of governance with a future–focused perspective.

Developed for the first time by FMG, a Singapore–based public policy and strategy consultancy, the FGI
addresses the governance readiness of 65 countries in the face of five profound and complex global
structural shifts, referred to as “Megatrends” in the report, namely: Climate Change & Resource Scarcity;
Technological Advancement; Ageing & Urbanising Population; Shocks & Crises; and Slowbalisation.

FMG was inspired to create the FGI in response to the impact the Covid–19 pandemic is having around the
world, which has simultaneously highlighted the critical importance of effective governance while also
demonstrating that traditional measures of governance – which tend to focus on governments and the
maturity of political processes – needed to be taken further.

With this in mind, the index’s central idea and methodology were specifically designed to not only evaluate
countries’ government performance in the past, but to assess governance readiness for the future, especially with the looming impact of the five megatrends set to change and challenge global governance structures for generations to come.

Among many fascinating results of the overall Future Governance Index rankings, Europe dominates the
top positions, with Denmark placing 1st, Sweden second and Finland third. The index finds that the Scandinavian country’s readiness to keenly address all five megatrends as the overarching reason for its topping of the future governance leaderboard. Switzerland comes fourth and the Netherlands fifth.

Singapore represents the best–in–class for Asia, coming in at 6th, while the United States, in 10th, is the only
other non–European country in the top 10. With its surprisingly low position of 23rd, the FGI warns that China’s journey towards becoming a global superpower looks set to face significant governance challenges – most acutely within the Ageing and Urbanising Population megatrend.

Together with detailed country–specific “policy prescriptions” within the report, the FGI argues that therare
common priority areas for all countries to focus on to improve governance performance, including economic diversification, infrastructure investment, social cohesion, and forward–looking plans.

FMG’s CEO, Devadas Krishnadas, trusts that readers will find the FGI’s rankings, country analyses, and
policy recommendations highly valuable: “The FGI was conceived upon our conviction that for leaders and decision-makers to spearhead a whole-of-nation effort towards better governance, they need to do so with a future-focused outlook in mind. We trust that our index will bring attention to the importance of political, social and economic capital in managing megatrends, and hope that the FGI becomes an indispensable tool
for countries working towards improved governance performance.” – Devadas Krishnadas, CEO of Future-Moves Group.

The full report is available here.