Here at the Switchblog we think that more peace is better. But how do you know when you have more? It's easy: consult the Global Peace Index (GPI), whose second edition was released in London and right here in Washington yesterday. The Index ranks countries - 140 of them this year - by 24 indicators of domestic and international peacefulness: military exports; domestic murder rates; political instability; percentage of GNP devoted to military expenditures; respect for human rights, etc. Wherever practical, the Index uses existing data sets from reliable sources. To lend that elusive patina of intellectual rigor and high-class respectability, the GPI hired the Economist Intelligence Unit to develop the data sets, measurements, and weighting used to produce the Index.

Like the Commitment to Development Index launched by the Center for Global Development, the purpose of the GPI is partly to provoke healthy competition among countries. GPI co-founder Clyde McConaghy underscored as well the GPI's role in stimulating debate about what makes nations more peaceful, among practitioners, scholars and students in international relations, conflict resolution, and peace studies.

For me the most appealing feature is the simple re-framing of a familiar problem: founder and visionary Steve Killelea noticed that it was easy to find rankings of the world's most dangerous and violent regimes. We know a lot about drivers of conflict. But there was no list of peaceful nations. And no particularly good research that would permit us to isolate drivers of peaceful behavior. So he created it.

Fun facts:

• The US is ranked 97th out of 140.


• The US is behind 16 countries in our hemisphere alone; but we totally out-peaced Colombia and Venezuela. Woo-hoo!


• Iceland wins! They are absurdly tall and gorgeous; peaceful, too.


• Steve Killelea founded a firm whose software runs 80% of the world's ATMs; he is the second largest source of development assistance funding in Australia, behind only the government, and he likes to surf before breakfast.

We will be hearing more about the GPI in years to come: it's a brilliant idea.