Countries by Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism: Standard Error
American Samoa leads all 205 countries with a political stability standard error of 0.398, meaning its estimate carries the widest uncertainty band in the dataset. At the bottom, Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, and India share the narrowest standard error of 0.205. The gap of roughly 0.193 points reflects the difference in how precisely the WGI model can estimate political stability across countries with very different data environments.
Ranking 2023
Analysis
This metric measures the standard error attached to each country's Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism score in the Worldwide Governance Indicators. A higher standard error means greater uncertainty around the estimate, so a higher rank here indicates less precise measurement, not better governance. The source note defines the underlying data as follows: 'The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are a research dataset summarizing the views on the quality of governance provided by a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, mo[nitored, and replaced].' The unit is an absolute value. Coverage is strong: 205 countries have data for 2023, all from the last seven years, and 100% of datapoints are classified as official. The viability check identified 29 extreme outliers beyond the 3-sigma threshold. Year-over-year volatility is low at 2.8%. The full range runs from 0.21 to 0.40, a spread of 93.8%.
The top of the ranking is dominated by small territories and non-sovereign jurisdictions with limited survey coverage. American Samoa ranks first with a standard error of 0.398, well above second-placed Greenland at 0.329 and third-placed Macao SAR, China at 0.312. Bermuda, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands share rank 4 at 0.307. Ranks 7 through 15 form a large tie at 0.278, grouping together countries as varied as Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Micronesia, Comoros, and South Sudan. These high standard errors typically accompany countries or territories where fewer independent data sources are available to the WGI model, resulting in less precise estimates regardless of the underlying governance situation.
A large cluster of 44 countries shares rank 82 with a standard error of 0.227, ranging from Albania and Algeria to Zimbabwe and Ukraine. This cluster includes conflict-affected states such as Sudan, Myanmar, and Haiti alongside stable economies such as Switzerland, Malta, and Uruguay, meaning the same level of estimation uncertainty can coexist with very different governance realities. At ranks 137 and 162, two further large ties appear, grouping major economies including Canada, Germany, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom at 0.223 and 0.219 respectively. The bottom five ranks feature large, data-rich countries: India and Mexico tie at rank 202 with 0.205, alongside New Zealand and Singapore. Brazil, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom appear at rank 191 with 0.208, indicating that countries with extensive survey coverage tend to receive more precise WGI estimates.
The standard error metric reflects estimation precision, not governance quality, so rankings here should not be interpreted as assessments of political stability. Countries with high standard errors may have excellent, poor, or middling stability scores, but the model simply has less data to work with. The high proportion of tied values across ranks 7, 82, 137, and 162 suggests the WGI uses discrete precision levels tied to data availability bands rather than continuous estimation, which limits the interpretive value of small rank differences within ties. Non-sovereign territories such as American Samoa, Greenland, Guam, and the Cayman Islands appear at the very top, but their governance data environments differ substantially from independent states, making cross-comparisons across the full 205-country list potentially misleading.
Methodology
Metric: Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism Standard Error. Indicator code: PV.STD.ERR. Data source: World Bank World Development Indicators, drawing on the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research dataset. Data year: 2023. The source note defines the WGI as 'a research dataset summarizing the views on the quality of governance provided by a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, mo[nitored, and replaced].' Unit: absolute value. Higher values indicate greater estimation uncertainty. Country count: 205, meeting the 80-country coverage threshold. Recency: 205 of 205 countries (100%) have data from the last seven years. Data quality: 100% of datapoints are classified as official, exceeding the 70% threshold. Range: 0.21 to 0.40, a spread of 93.8%. Year-over-year volatility: 2.8%, well below the 50% threshold. Outliers: 29 extreme values were identified using a 3-sigma threshold. No microstates under 1 million population were flagged. The metric captures estimation precision only and does not measure governance outcomes.