One of nine capability dimensions
Adaptability
How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?
This page puts the country comparison, indicator registry and documented cases together. It shows how much of the capability the current data can see.
52 countries in the frame8 indicators in the registry4 indicators with data52 countries with a score
<iframe src="https://ncb-envisioning.vercel.app/embed/compare/BRA/adaptability" title="Adaptability country comparison" loading="lazy" width="100%" height="300" style="border:0" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>All countries use the same frame
The table opens alphabetically. Sort by score, confidence, coverage or trend. Scores need two observed indicators; trends use indicators observed at both ends.
Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each dot is a country. The box covers the middle half of the field, and the line is the median. Hollow dots have thin evidence.
| Argentina | 50.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +3.8(4) |
| Australia | 81.5 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +7.9(4) |
| Bolivia | 67.3 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +15.2(4) |
| Brazil | 56.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +15.2(4) |
| Canada | 80.7 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +5.1(4) |
| Chile | 59.2 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +1.6(4) |
| China | 81.6 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +11.8(4) |
| Colombia | 53.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +2.9(4) |
| Costa Rica | 54.6 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +7.4(4) |
| Cuba | 42.7 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | -2.6(4) |
| Dominican Republic | 51.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +8.4(4) |
| Ecuador | 52.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +0.5(4) |
| El Salvador | 54.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +10.5(4) |
| Estonia | 64.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | -7.3(4) |
| Ethiopia | 43.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | -7.8(4) |
| Finland | 74.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +5.2(4) |
| France | 76.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +9.0(4) |
| Germany | 85.9 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +5.2(4) |
| Guatemala | 45.6 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | -0.1(4) |
| Haiti | 27.8 | 0.44 | 4 of 8 | -2.6(4) |
| Honduras | 23.5 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | -2.7(4) |
| India | 38.7 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +10.0(4) |
| Indonesia | 56.2 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +5.8(4) |
| Ireland | 73.2 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +10.0(4) |
| Israel | 73.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +2.9(4) |
| Japan | 86.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +8.6(4) |
| Kenya | 36.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | -12.9(4) |
| Malaysia | 60.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +4.2(4) |
| Mexico | 58.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +9.2(4) |
| Netherlands | 90.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +7.0(4) |
| Nicaragua | 42.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +2.3(4) |
| Nigeria | 59.6 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +3.3(4) |
| Panama | 57.5 | 0.46 | 4 of 8 | +5.5(4) |
| Paraguay | 57.4 | 0.46 | 4 of 8 | +1.4(4) |
| Peru | 59.4 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | -1.9(4) |
| Philippines | 50.5 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +2.6(4) |
| Poland | 70.9 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +11.4(4) |
| Rwanda | 30.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +7.9(4) |
| Singapore | 79.0 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +4.8(4) |
| South Africa | 23.6 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +2.0(4) |
| South Korea | 82.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +7.8(4) |
| Spain | 67.0 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +18.4(4) |
| Sweden | 79.7 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +1.1(4) |
| Switzerland | 88.6 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +2.7(4) |
| Thailand | 68.9 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +2.7(4) |
| Turkey | 49.1 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +15.6(4) |
| United Arab Emirates | 85.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +14.2(4) |
| United Kingdom | 76.3 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +0.3(4) |
| United States | 76.2 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +6.0(4) |
| Uruguay | 68.8 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +6.3(4) |
| Venezuela | 34.7 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +4.2(4) |
| Vietnam | 75.2 | 0.47 | 4 of 8 | +5.7(4) |
0 to 100 is a position inside the frame every country builds together. Zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame. It does not mean 10 percent of a capability.
Adaptability indicators
8 indicators define this capability. Gaps and retired rows remain because they lower confidence. Click a heading to sort.
- Cdirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
- Icapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
- Odownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
- Pperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.
Adaptability
| Note | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disaster preparedness and recoveryno dataset | C | index 0-100 | higher is better | INFORM / UNDRR | 0.30 | INFORM is largely a hazard-exposure index, so using it here would measure geography rather than capability. |
| Electricity transmission losses | O | % of output | lower is better | World Bank | 0.40 | Hard evidence of infrastructure condition and of whether the operator can bill what it delivers. |
| Export diversificationno dataset | C | index 0-1 | higher is better | UNCTAD | 0.30 | UNCTAD publishes the concentration index and it is computable. Another good candidate for the next adapter. |
| Fixed broadband subscriptions | I | per 100 people | higher is better | World Bank | 0.60 | Infrastructure that lets a country change how it works. Penalises mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa. |
| Institutional responsivenessno dataset | C | index 0-100 | higher is better | none | 0.15 | No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably. |
| Labour force participation | I | % aged 15+ | higher is better | World Bank | 0.15 | How much of the population can be reallocated at all. Cultural participation norms confound it, especially for India. |
| O | % of unemployed | lower is better | ILOSTAT | 0.20 | Closer to reallocation speed than the headline rate: it asks whether people who lose work find new work. ILOSTAT publishes it; the World Bank API does not carry it. | |
| Unemployment rate | O | % of labour force | lower is better | World Bank | 0.25 | An outcome, and a blunt one. Low unemployment can mean a rigid labour market as easily as a fluid one. |
Documented deliveries add context to the data
These records describe a country doing something this capability should capture. They stay outside the score because one case is not a comparable series.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Plano Real, the 1994 currency stabilisationlinked to Institutional responsiveness, started 1993, delivered and closed
Brazil ended four decades of high inflation with a staged currency reform, taking annual consumer price inflation from 2,075.9 percent in 1994 to 3.2 percent in 1998.
3.2 % per year, annual consumer price inflation, 1998. World Bank, from IBGE, retrieved 2026-08-26.
How it worked: A stable unit of account was introduced alongside the failing currency, prices were re-anchored to it while it was still only a reference, and it became legal tender only once the anchoring had happened.
Limits: Disinflation was held in place with an overvalued exchange rate and high interest rates, and that arrangement broke in the 1999 devaluation and again in the 2002 confidence crisis. One macroeconomic outcome is not a general measure of how fast Brazilian institutions respond to new conditions. The design and the sequencing are the capability here, and no number in this record captures them.
Proalcool, the fuel substitution after the oil shocklinked to Institutional responsiveness, started 1975, still operating
Brazil answered the 1973 oil shock by mandating ethanol blending and building a national fuel alcohol industry, taking production from 580 thousand cubic metres in 1975 to 38,199 in 2025, and from 2003 flex-fuel engines moved the choice to the driver.
38,199.192 thousand cubic metres, ethanol production, 2025. National Petroleum Agency, via IPEADATA, retrieved 2026-08-26.
How it worked: A blending mandate created guaranteed demand, subsidised credit built the mills against it, and flex-fuel engines two decades later moved the choice from the state to the driver.
Limits: The programme was heavily subsidised in the 1980s and nearly collapsed when oil prices fell in the 1990s, so the line is not a story of steady success. Production volume says nothing about land use, cane labour conditions, or how the emissions accounting works out. What this evidences is a state changing an entire fuel system in response to an external shock, which is the construct the indicator asks for.
The Convertibility Plan, and its collapselinked to Institutional responsiveness, started 1991, dismantled
Argentina ended hyperinflation by fixing the peso to the dollar by law in April 1991, taking annual inflation from 4,923 percent in 1989 to 3.9 percent in 1994, and the regime held until it collapsed in the 2001-2002 crisis.
3.9 % per year, consumer price inflation under convertibility, 1994. 4,923.3 % per year, consumer price inflation at the hyperinflationary peak, 1989. Secretaria de Programacion Economica and BCRA, republished by Reed College Department of Economics, retrieved 2026-08-27.
How it worked: Congress fixed the exchange rate one-to-one to the dollar by statute and barred the central bank from printing unbacked pesos, which converted a monetary promise nobody believed into a law that was costly to break.
Limits: The IMF and World Bank series for Argentina do not reach these years, so the numbers come from a teaching case that republishes the official table, and the 1989 figure is a December-to-December change where other publications give 3,079 percent as the annual average. Ending inflation is what the indicator asks for, but the fixed parity that delivered the stabilisation also removed the tools that could have absorbed the shocks of 1999-2001, so the case evidences a response that consumed its own durability. The collapse later cost Argentina its statistical credibility too, which is why the official series is hard to cite today.
Kurzarbeit in the 2008-2009 crisislinked to Institutional responsiveness, started 2008, delivered and closed
Germany answered the 2008-2009 collapse in manufacturing orders by paying firms to cut hours instead of jobs, and short-time work covered 1.44 million workers at the May 2009 peak, about 5 percent of insured employment, while unemployment barely rose.
1,440,000 workers, workers in cyclical short-time work at the peak, 2009-05. IAB, the research institute of the Bundesagentur fuer Arbeit, IAB-Kurzbericht 17/2020, citing Statistik der BA, retrieved 2026-08-27.
How it worked: The employment agency reimburses firms most of the net wage for hours not worked when demand collapses, converting the existing unemployment-insurance fund into a payroll bridge, and the 2009 government lengthened the entitlement and cut the paperwork.
Limits: The count says how many workers were covered, not what the scheme cost, how much of the covered work would have survived anyway, or whether it slowed reallocation to better firms, which are the standard criticisms. The instrument long predates 2008; what the episode evidences is the speed at which an existing legal instrument was expanded inside one year. The same instrument covered over six million people in 2020, so the 2009 number is not its ceiling.
The 2001 stabilisation, and its unwindinglinked to Institutional responsiveness, started 2001, operating below its peak
Turkey answered its 2001 banking collapse with central bank independence, bank restructuring and fiscal rule, taking inflation from 54.4 percent in 2001 to 8.6 percent in 2004, and after 2018 the same framework was overridden until inflation reached 72.3 percent in 2022.
72.3 % per year, consumer price inflation after the framework was overridden, 2022. 8.6 % per year, consumer price inflation at the stabilisation's best, 2004. World Bank, World Development Indicators, series FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG, retrieved 2026-08-27.
How it worked: A crisis government handed monetary policy to an independent central bank by law, recapitalised and closed broken banks through an autonomous agency, and held a primary surplus, which together made the anti-inflation promise credible for fifteen years.
Limits: Inflation is an outcome with many causes: the 2001-2004 fall also rode an IMF programme and a global disinflation, and the post-2018 rise includes a currency crisis and imported energy prices, so neither number isolates the institutions. The record runs both ways by design: the same state that built a working stabilisation framework later demonstrated that the framework had no defence against its own executive. The institutions were not abolished, which is why the status is eroded rather than dismantled.
Telebras, the telecom system that was dismantledlinked to Institutional responsiveness, started 1972, delivered and closed
Created in 1972, Telebras coordinated Brazil's state telecom system until its 1998 privatisation, when 54 concessionaires were split out and the state moved from operating the network to regulating and universalising service.
54 companies, concessionaires controlled before the split, 1998. Telebras, historical financial report, retrieved 2026-08-29.
How it worked: The state first assembled a fragmented telecom sector into one planning and investment system, then dismantled that holding structure when a new regulatory and private operating model was judged more suitable for expansion.
Limits: The number of controlled companies shows the structure of the old system, not whether privatisation delivered affordable, reliable service everywhere. The transition also left a continuing Telebras with a different role, so the record concerns a model that ended rather than a company that disappeared.
Read how the benchmark turns an indicator into a score on the method page. The limits page records where this capability is still poorly observed.