After a one-year absence, the nation recaptured the top spot on the list, and the US rose once more in the yearly rankings.
After a one-year absence, Switzerland has recovered the top spot in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Countries rankings, with Sweden and the United States moving up to the top 5 in the analysis’s seventh iteration, which was published on Tuesday. ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking
Canada was replaced by the nation from central Europe, which rose to No. 3 in the 2022 rankings. Switzerland also ranked first in the open for business ranking, which ranks nations according to how welcoming they are to business, and in the top five for quality of life. The performance of a nation in those rankings and eight additional ones affects its overall position in the list of the Best Countries. But Switzerland likely performs brightest in an advantageous business environment.
According to Carlo Bastasin, a nonresident senior fellow in The Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy programme, “from a financial or industrial point of view, some of the major companies intermediating raw materials – oil, for example – are based in Switzerland,” adding that the nation may benefit in perception from its tradition of neutrality amid international conflict.
Switzerland, one of six European nations to make the top 10 of the 2022 rankings, has joined the European Union in sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine but maintains its neutrality. Sweden, which climbed four ranks from the previous year, was the largest gainer towards the top of the list.
Russia experienced one of the biggest year-over-year drops among the top 50 nations in the history of the rankings study.
In accordance with U.S. News & World Report, these are the top 10 ranking nations in the world:
- Switzerland Ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries
- Germany ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries
- Canada
- United States
- Sweden ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries
- Japan
- Australia ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking
- United Kingdom
- France ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking ranking
- Denmark ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries ranking countries
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the BAV Group, a division of the international marketing communications corporation WPP, collaborated to create the Best Countries rankings and analysis from U.S. News. The initiative is based on a global poll in which over 17,000 people assigned different nations various qualities, such as “dynamic” and “a leader” or “cares about human rights” and “dedicated to social justice,” to each nation. The poll covered 85 countries and 73 qualities in all. After reaching baseline standards, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Paraguay, and Zambia—four nations that have never before been featured in the rankings—are on this year’s list.
As part of the rankings package, U.S. News and its partners looked into the return of Switzerland to the top spot overall, as well as opinions of Russia and “brand America” abroad.
The United States, on the other hand, returned to the top 5 this year after rising from No. 7 to No. 6 in the rankings for 2021. The nation comes in first place or very close to it on a number of subranking lists. It is ranked first for power and agility, second for entrepreneurship, and third for cultural influence.
Changes in leadership are probably a factor in America’s better image internationally. Additional survey results support this: According to a poll released in June 2021 by the independent Pew Research Center, a median 75% of respondents from the 12 countries examined said that President Joe Biden would act morally in international affairs. For former President Donald Trump’s final year in office, that figure was only 17%.
With the switch from Trump to Biden, there has been “a pretty substantial swing in terms of views of the United States,” according to Richard Wike, head of global attitudes research at Pew. “Biden is considerably more well-liked than Trump. Additionally, I believe that overall, there is more support for his leadership style and way of handling international issues.
The United States wasn’t the only nation to improve in the rankings; France and Denmark, for example, each climbed two spots from the previous year and entered the top 10. The war in Eastern Europe, which appears to have affected opinions of countries involved both directly and indirectly on a worldwide scale, looks to have contributed to some of the largest upward movers being countries farther down the list, including those with ties to it.
Three of Ukraine’s regional allies, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania, each advanced by at least nine positions, while Ukraine itself rose nine spots to No. 62. Poland, which has long served as a shelter for Ukrainian migrants, moved up the rankings, jumping from 43 to 32 in 2022.
Russia, whose survey the rankings are based on was not conducted this year, and some of its allies, on the other hand, saw significant movement down the list, with the nation that invaded Ukraine in February 2022 dropping 12 ranks from 2021 to No. 36. Additionally, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan—three Russian allies—all fell by at least 10 places, with more than 82% of respondents to the overall survey agreeing that “Russia’s worldwide image is eroding” as a result of the conflict. The analysis’s lowest-ranked nation is Belarus, which fell dramatically.