Belgium

Strongest usable evidence: Coordination, at 93.2. Raise Building first, at 46.8. Experimentation needs more evidence: confidence is 0.20.

Raise, lowest first

Raise, lowest first
Dimension	Confidence	Score
Building	0.57	46.8

Measure before managing

Measure before managing
Dimension	Confidence	Score
Experimentation	0.20	29.3
Shared Purpose	0.30	76.8
Trust	0.34	79.7

These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.

Why this country is included: Added in the 9.0.0 completion, which takes every country of a million people or more that is measurable in all nine capabilities.

Download this country as CSV

Anticipation70.9Confidence0.46usableHow capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?

BelgiumCompare with

Read Belgium beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.

Usable or good evidence
Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.

A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: 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 and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.

Belgium dimension summary

Coordination	Coordination How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.45	3 of 5	0.94	no trend	72.0	-21.2
Trust	Trust How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.34	3 of 7	1.00	no trend	69.0	-10.7
Learning	Learning How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.55	3 of 4	0.81	no trend	77.0	-2.6
Shared Purpose	Shared Purpose To what extent can people imagine themselves as participants in a common project? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.30	2 of 6	0.96	+1.2(2)	56.0	-20.8
Anticipation	Anticipation How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.46	2 of 4	0.96	+10.1(2)	67.0	-3.9
Adaptability	Adaptability How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.62	4 of 6	1.00	no trend	66.0	-4.6
Agency	Agency How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.47	3 of 5	0.83	no trend	62.0	-3.8
Building	Building How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.57	4 of 6	0.90	+0.1(3)	50.0	+3.2
Experimentation	Experimentation How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.20	2 of 9	1.00	no trend	42.0	+12.7

How to read this page

Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.

A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.

direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.

Confidence

very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.

A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.

Anticipation

How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?

+10.1 over 10 years, from 60.8 in 2016 to 70.9 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Scientific articles
Scientific and technical journal articles published, per million people.
Measured in articles per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 16816.32articles per million people
Year: 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Scientific articles
Scientific and technical journal articles published, per million people.
Measured in articles per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
History

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Statistical performance
World Bank Statistical Performance Indicators overall score for the national statistical system.
Measured in index 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 87.259index 0-100
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Statistical performance
World Bank Statistical Performance Indicators overall score for the national statistical system.
Measured in index 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
History

Government foresight capacity

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.

Long-horizon research commitments

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of new grants
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.

Conditions, not scored

What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.

R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2023
3.3 % of GDP, rank 6 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2023
5,990 per million people, rank 10 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
36,732 per million people, rank 24 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.

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.

Belgiumlinked to Government foresight capacitystarted 1959still operating
Bureau federal du Plan
Belgium's Federal Planning Bureau, which produces the government's economic forecasts and long-term demographic, ageing, energy and transport outlooks, published 34 publications in 2025 and employed 91 full-time equivalents at the end of the year, down from 96 at the end of 2023, after it stopped replacing departing staff in 2024 to meet savings targets.
91 FTE, staff, full-time equivalents at 31 december, 2025-12-31. 96 FTE, staff, full-time equivalents at 31 december (earlier level, not shown to be a peak), 2023-12-31. Bureau federal du Plan, Rapport d'activite 2025, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: A statutory, de facto independent planning bureau receives mandates from government, parliament and social partners, and publishes forecasts and long-term outlooks that the federal budget and pension debates rely on; in a savings drive the government cut its grant and it stopped replacing leavers.
Limits: The bureau reports on itself; the 91 FTE (80 funded by the federal grant, 11 by contracts) and the hiring freeze are on PDF page 12, the 34 publications on page 19. The 96 FTE is from the 2023 activity report (https://www.plan.be/sites/default/files/documents/OTH_ACTIV_2023_FR.pdf) and the 2024 report gives 94 (https://www.plan.be/sites/default/files/documents/OTH_ACTIV_2024_FR.pdf). The record is filed as operating, not eroded: the fall is five FTE, about 5 percent, from a 2023 level that is not shown to be a peak (earlier reports were not found at the same address), and output held, with 37 publications in 2023, 45 in 2024 and 34 in 2025. The staff trend and the bureau's statement that it no longer replaces leavers to meet savings targets are a documented squeeze on capacity, and a later report showing a deeper loss would justify eroded. Most of the bureau's work is medium-term forecasting and policy costing, not scenario-based strategic foresight; its long-term population, ageing and sustainable development outlooks are the foresight part. The report says nearly 40 percent of staff will retire within ten years, which is a risk stated by the bureau, not a measured loss. The 1959 start is the Act of 23 December 1959 named on the bureau's legal basis page (https://www.plan.be/en/about-us/legal-basis).

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

69.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.55
Statistics and research are strong. The Federal Planning Bureau is a durable, independent forecasting institution. Fragmentation between federal and regional levels limits joint long-range action. I hold near 70.
67.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.55
Strong statistics and research and an independent Federal Planning Bureau; fragmented federal governance slows joint strategic action.
64.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Strong statistics and research, plus a durable Federal Planning Bureau. Federal-regional fragmentation limits joint long-range action. The profile is largely income-linked.

Agency

How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
New business density
New limited liability companies registered per 1,000 working-age people.
Measured in per 1,000 aged 15-64; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 5.308per 1,000 aged 15-64
Year: 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
New business density
New limited liability companies registered per 1,000 working-age people.
Measured in per 1,000 aged 15-64; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
History

Time to start a business

retired, see notes

Raw value: no datadays
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. Its successor, B-READY, publishes the time and cost to register a firm as a score, and business entry efficiency carries that construct. See D23.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Business entry efficiency
B-READY score for the time and cost to register a new domestic or foreign limited liability company.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.BE.P3), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 91.239score 0-100
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Business entry efficiency
B-READY score for the time and cost to register a new domestic or foreign limited liability company.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.BE.P3), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.BE.P3)
History: one year

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Procedures to start a business
Number of separate official procedures to register a company.
Measured in count; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 5count
Year: 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Procedures to start a business
Number of separate official procedures to register a company.
Measured in count; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
History

Adults doing digital tasks

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of adults
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.

Perceived control over life

missing

Raw value: no datamean 1-10
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
History: no data

Note: A perception: the publisher-weighted mean, on a 1 to 10 scale, of how much freedom of choice and control respondents feel they have over the way their life turns out, from the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. It observes the felt capacity to act, not action. The table prints the mean to one decimal and no top-box share, so the row stores the mean and ties are common. Fieldwork years differ by up to six years: the 37 countries emitted were surveyed between 2017 (eight, the US among them) and 2023 (India), and every value is stamped with the release year 2022. Response style on 10-point scales differs across cultures, and a closed autocracy can read high: Vietnam and Nicaragua sit near the top of the frame. Countries with separate EVS and WVS samples (Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands) are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D127 and A15.

Conditions, not scored

Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2024
95.8 % of population, rank 10 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
98.2 % aged 15+, rank 19 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2024
68.1 % of GDP, rank 37 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

63.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Business entry efficiency is high and procedures are moderate. Business density is mid. I hold near the indicator.
62.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Easy entry and moderate density; perceived control is missing.
58.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Business entry is efficient and density above average, but perceived control is missing. Moderate procedures.

Coordination

How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

Government effectiveness

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.

Regulatory quality

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.

Logistics performance

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataindex 1-5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.

Border compliance time to export

retired, see notes

Raw value: no datahours
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. B-READY trade efficiency carries the construct, the time and cost of border compliance, now reported by firms. See D23.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Trade compliance efficiency
B-READY score for the time and cost firms report to comply with export and import requirements.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.IT.P3), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 89.556score 0-100
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Trade compliance efficiency
B-READY score for the time and cost firms report to comply with export and import requirements.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.IT.P3), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.IT.P3)
History: one year

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Budget execution fidelity
Distance between primary government expenditure and the original approved budget.
Measured in percentage points from approved budget; lower is better. Source: World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 105.846percentage points from approved budget
Year: 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Budget execution fidelity
Distance between primary government expenditure and the original approved budget.
Measured in percentage points from approved budget; lower is better. Source: World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
History

University-industry collaboration

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Global Innovation Index
History: no data

Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Civil society strength
Autonomy, density and participatory reach of civil society organisations.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2x_cspart), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 0.947index 0-1
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Civil society strength
Autonomy, density and participatory reach of civil society organisations.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2x_cspart), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
History: one year

Public-private collaboration

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.

Behavioral check, not scored

Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.

Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2025
5.224 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.

Evidence for missing indicators

Belgiumlinked to Public-private collaborationstarted 2023still operating
De Kade prison in Antwerp, a federal DBFM contract
Belgium's federal Buildings Agency had the new 440-place prison de Kade in Antwerp, part of the federal prisons masterplan, designed, built and financed by the consortium Hortus Conclusus under a DBFM contract, with works from 2023 to 2026 at a construction cost of EUR 195.5 million and an annual availability fee of EUR 23.1 million for 25 years of maintenance, after which the prison returns to the federal state free of charge.
195.5 EUR million, construction cost of the dbfm prison, excluding vat, 2025-09. 23.1 EUR million per year, annual availability fee, including vat, 2023 prices, 2025-09. Régie des Bâtiments / Regie der Gebouwen, Nouvelle prison « de Kade » (project page, updated September 2025), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The federal Buildings Agency tendered a design, build, finance and maintain contract for a new prison, a consortium of an infrastructure investor and contractors built and financed it, and the state pays an annual availability fee for 25 years while the Justice ministry runs the prison.
Limits: The page is the contracting agency's own project sheet. It says the prison 'a été réalisée' under a DBFM contract and that Antwerp 'now has two prisons', but it states the works period as 2023 to 2026 and gives no opening date or planned date, so the record cannot show whether the prison opened on time or on budget; status operating rests on the page's own past tense, updated September 2025. The construction cost and the availability fee are the agency's figures, not an audit; 25 years of fees at EUR 23.1 million in 2023 prices would be about EUR 578 million before indexation (our arithmetic), well above the construction cost, which is the normal shape of a DBFM but means the cost to the state is the fee stream, not the build cost. One project is not a programme: the page places the prison in the federal masterplan for detention and internment, but this record documents only this contract and says nothing about the masterplan's other projects. The consortium's members are named on the page (TINC, Jan De Nul, EEG, with ISS for services).
Belgiumlinked to University-industry collaborationstarted 2006still operating
Wallonia's pôles de compétitivité
The Walloon government labelled 266 collaborative research, development and innovation projects through its six pôles de compétitivité over 24 calls from 2006 to June 2018, each needing at least two firms and two distinct research actors, with forecast budgets of 930 million euros, and 126 of those projects had been completed with final payment by early 2019.
266 projects, collaborative rdi projects labelled by the walloon government, calls 1 to 24, 2006-2018. 126 projects, rdi projects completed with final payment, 2019. IWEPS (Walloon Institute for Evaluation, Prospective and Statistics), Rapport de recherche n°25, La politique des pôles de compétitivité dans le cadre de la Stratégie de spécialisation intelligente, Tableau 2.2, retrieved 2026-10-17.
How it worked: The Walloon government funds research only through consortia that pair at least two firms with at least two research actors, labels projects on an international jury's advice, and pays a higher public rate (the pôle bonus) to projects that pass through a pôle.
Limits: This is a regional delivery, not a federal one: research and innovation policy is a regional competence in Belgium, and the record covers Wallonia only, not Flanders or Brussels. The figures are read from a PDF (Tableau 2.2, page 18) that IWEPS computed from the administration's SIPOLES project database; they stop at call 24 (June 2018) and are seven years old. The 930 million euros is the sum of forecast project budgets at submission, public and private together, not money spent. A research actor can be a university laboratory, an accredited research centre or a haute école, so the count is firm-research collaboration of which university collaboration is a part, not all of it. The same report's causal analysis covers only calls 1 to 16 and is cautious about effects on firm performance. The Walloon government's procedure page, updated 30 September 2026, describes a 47th call with a forecast budget of 20 million euros, which is the basis for the operating status; no later project count was found.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

72.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Civil society, trade compliance and budget execution are high, and the social partner system is a durable institution, which panelist B raises. Six governments and the 541-day formation show weak coordination across levels. I move up two points and stay well under the indicator.
74.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Civil society, social partners and trade efficiency are very strong, but the 541-day formation and six governments show federal coordination failure; I lower toward the panel.
72.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Very strong civil society and trade compliance, but six governments, 541 days without a federal government and a split in delivery justify a mark down from the indicator.

Trust

How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

Rule of law

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.

Control of corruption

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.

Time to enforce a contract

retired, see notes

Raw value: no datadays
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. B-READY dispute resolution efficiency carries the construct, the time and cost to resolve a commercial dispute and enforce the decision. See D23.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Dispute resolution efficiency
B-READY score for the reliability, time and cost of resolving a commercial dispute and enforcing the decision.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.DR.P3), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 70.931score 0-100
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Dispute resolution efficiency
B-READY score for the reliability, time and cost of resolving a commercial dispute and enforcing the decision.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.DR.P3), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.DR.P3)
History: one year

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Bribery incidence
Firms asked for at least one bribe payment across six public transactions covering utilities, permits, licences and taxes.
Measured in % of firms; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 5.719% of firms
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Bribery incidence
Firms asked for at least one bribe payment across six public transactions covering utilities, permits, licences and taxes.
Measured in % of firms; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Government compliance with the courts
How often the government complies with important decisions of the ordinary and specialised courts that it disagrees with.
Measured in scale 0-4 (never to always); higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 2.711scale 0-4 (never to always)
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Government compliance with the courts
How often the government complies with important decisions of the ordinary and specialised courts that it disagrees with.
Measured in scale 0-4 (never to always); higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
History: one year

Intentional homicide rate

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataper 100,000 people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
History: no data

Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.

Generalised interpersonal trust

missing

Raw value: no data% agreeing
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
History: no data

Note: Share answering that most people can be trusted in the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. The adapter uses the publisher-weighted country results, emits only countries with one survey row, and holds countries with separate EVS and WVS samples until the respondent-level weights can be pooled reproducibly. See D57 and D64.

Trust in public institutions

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% expressing confidence
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD Trust Survey / WVS
History: no data

Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.

Cooperation beyond the in-group

missing

Raw value: no data% expressing trust
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
History: no data

Note: The distinction that makes this dimension worth measuring: whether trust reaches a person with no tie to the respondent. Generalised trust asks about "most people", which a respondent can fill with their own circle; this item names the stranger. China is the clearest case, high on most people and low on a person met for the first time. The value is the publisher-weighted share answering trust completely plus the share answering trust somewhat, the one sum of two printed columns the adapter stores, exact to about 0.1, over all respondents including don't know and no answer. EVS and WVS ask the same question on the same four-point scale; where one country has both samples, the WVS share is a median 2.2 points higher. Trust in people of another nationality (G007_36_B), which the row once also named, is left out because it reads attitudes to foreigners as much as trust. Fieldwork runs from 2017 to 2023 and every value carries the release year 2022. Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D140.

Court case clearance rate

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of incoming cases
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
History: no data

Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

68.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Dispute resolution is efficient and bribery is low. Court compliance is mid-high, and the Brussels court backlog is a known problem. I hold.
69.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Efficient dispute resolution, low bribery and court compliance; no survey trust data, and the linguistic divide lowers cross-group cooperation.
69.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Efficient dispute resolution, low bribery, courts largely comply. Interpersonal trust is missing and linguistic divides lower cross-group cooperation.

Learning

How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Human Capital Index
Expected productivity of a child born today relative to full health and complete education.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 0.76index 0-1
Year: 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Human Capital Index
Expected productivity of a child born today relative to full health and complete education.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
History

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Firms offering formal training
Share of firms that provide formal training to permanent employees.
Measured in % of firms; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 62% of firms
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Firms offering formal training
Share of firms that provide formal training to permanent employees.
Measured in % of firms; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
History

Adult learning participation

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of adults
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
History: no data

Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Research citation impact
Share of a country's articles and reviews that are in the top 10% most cited for their subfield and year, as a ratio to the same share across all country-affiliated works.
Measured in ratio to world average; higher is better. Source: OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 1.71ratio to world average
Year: 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Research citation impact
Share of a country's articles and reviews that are in the top 10% most cited for their subfield and year, as a ratio to the same share across all country-affiliated works.
Measured in ratio to world average; higher is better. Source: OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
History: one year

Conditions, not scored

Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2023
82.1 % gross, rank 19 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2022
6.3 % of GDP, rank 13 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 2018
43.3 % of secondary, rank 4 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

79.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.55
HCI, firm training and citation impact are all high, and universities are strong institutions. I hold near 80.
77.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.55
High HCI, firm training and citation impact.
72.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
High HCI, firm training and citations. This is a standard rich-country profile, but firm training is an observed behaviour, so I hold close to panelist B.

Experimentation

How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident patent applications
Patent applications filed by residents, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 647per million people
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident patent applications
Patent applications filed by residents, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
History

Resident trademark applications

missing

Raw value: no dataper million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
History: no data

Note: Cheaper and more frequent than patents, so it tracks the many-small-experiments idea better than patent counts do.

Resident industrial design applications

missing

Raw value: no dataper million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
History: no data

Note: A filed design is a registered attempt at a new product form: cheaper and more frequent than a patent, so it reads as many small experiments (D126). Three traps. China subsidised design filings, as it did patents, so its count runs ahead of the attempts behind it. EU applicants increasingly file at the EUIPO rather than nationally, and resident counts at a national office miss those filings, so EU members read low. The Netherlands has no series because designs there go to the Benelux office. Read it beside resident trademarks, which it partly duplicates.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New public software repositories
Growth over one year in the public GitHub repositories located in the country, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 180734per million people
Year: 2026. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New public software repositories
Growth over one year in the public GitHub repositories located in the country, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
History: no data

Venture deals

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataper million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD / national VC associations
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.

Early-stage entrepreneurial activity

missing

Raw value: no data% aged 18-64
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
History: no data

Note: From the GEM Adult Population Survey, entered by hand because GEM has no open API. TEA counts every new business, so necessity self-employment scores the same as a funded startup, which is why Chile and Argentina sit above the United States here. Read it as how many people are trying, not as how much value the attempts create. GEM does not run every economy every year: Singapore last took part in 2014 and the recency term marks that value down hard.

Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure

missing

Raw value: no data% not deterred
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
History: no data

Note: Stored as 100 minus the published GEM fear of failure rate, so the direction matches the rest of the registry. GEM measures that rate among adults who already see good opportunities, not among all adults, so the denominator differs from the label. Attitudinal: bankruptcy law and time to discharge would be the observable substitute and are still worth wiring beside it.

Firms through regulatory sandboxes

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no datafirms per million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: national regulators
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.

University spinouts

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataper million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: national TTO associations
History: no data

Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.

Business share of R&D

retired, see notes

Raw value: no data% of R&D
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD MSTI / RICYT
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.

Evidence for missing indicators

Belgiumlinked to Firms through regulatory sandboxesstarted 2020delivered and closed
BRUGEL derogation framework for innovative energy projects (projets innovants)
BRUGEL, the Brussels-Capital energy regulator, granted derogations from market and tariff rules to energy-sharing pilot projects under article 90 of the Brussels electricity ordinance as amended on 23 July 2018, and states that six such pilot projects started from 2020 until the derogation framework ended when the ordinance of 17 March 2022 entered into force.
6 pilot projects, energy-sharing pilot projects that started under the derogation framework, 2020-2022. BRUGEL (Commission de régulation de l'énergie en Région de Bruxelles-Capitale), Projet d'étude BRUGEL-Etude-20230425-45, Coûts-avantages relative aux communautés d'énergie et au partage d'électricité, retrieved 2026-10-16.
How it worked: The regional energy regulator used a statutory derogation clause to let named energy-sharing projects operate outside market and tariff rules for a limited time and area, studied the results with the grid operator, and the regional parliament then wrote energy sharing into ordinary law.
Limits: The count is of pilot projects, not of firms: the participants are energy communities, a business incubator, a social housing building and co-ownership associations, with the distribution system operator Sibelga metering each one. The regulator reports on its own programme. The number is read from a PDF: the regulator's cover note (page 4) says six projects started, while the consultant's annex in the same file (page 21) describes five, so the figure is uncertain by one. The study is a consultation draft dated 25 April 2023. Six projects in about two years in a region of about 1.2 million people is a small flow, and the framework covered energy sharing and the connection of decentralised production only. The derogations ran for two years, some with an extension, and the source does not say how each project exited. The framework ended because the 2022 ordinance transposed the EU directives and put energy sharing into ordinary rules, so its end is a rule change and not a documented failure. It covers one region: the Flemish regulatory-free zone for energy (Thor Park, recognised 2020) and the Walloon pilot projects under article 27 of the electricity decree are separate regimes that this number does not include.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

43.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Trademarks and designs are missing because Belgium files through the Benelux office, which is an artefact. Patents are mid. Leuven and Ghent spinouts support a higher reading than two indicators give. I move down two points because the evidence is thin.
42.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Only patents and repositories are observed; missing trademarks and designs are a Benelux filing artefact, and the biotech spinout record suggests more than the reading.
38.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.30
Only patents and repositories observed, both middling. Trademarks and designs are missing because Belgium files through the Benelux office. Leuven and Ghent spinouts suggest slightly above the reading.

Adaptability

How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Unemployment rate
Unemployed as a share of the labour force, modelled ILO estimate.
Measured in % of labour force; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 5.906% of labour force
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Unemployment rate
Unemployed as a share of the labour force, modelled ILO estimate.
Measured in % of labour force; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Long-term unemployment share
Unemployed for 12 months or more, as a share of total unemployment.
Measured in % of unemployed; lower is better. Source: ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 31.9% of unemployed
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Long-term unemployment share
Unemployed for 12 months or more, as a share of total unemployment.
Measured in % of unemployed; lower is better. Source: ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
History: one year

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Export diversification
Concentration of the merchandise export basket across products: the normalised Herfindahl-Hirschman index over SITC Rev.3 3-digit lines, 0 when exports are spread evenly and 1 when one product is everything.
Measured in index 0-1, lower = more diversified; lower is better. Source: UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 0.11index 0-1, lower = more diversified
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Export diversification
Concentration of the merchandise export basket across products: the normalised Herfindahl-Hirschman index over SITC Rev.3 3-digit lines, 0 when exports are spread evenly and 1 when one product is everything.
Measured in index 0-1, lower = more diversified; lower is better. Source: UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
History: one year

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New export products
Share of the products a country did not export competitively in 2009-2011 that it exported competitively in 2022-2024.
Measured in % of products not exported competitively at the start; higher is better. Source: Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ)), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 3.82% of products not exported competitively at the start
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New export products
Share of the products a country did not export competitively in 2009-2011 that it exported competitively in 2022-2024.
Measured in % of products not exported competitively at the start; higher is better. Source: Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ)), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
History: one year

Disaster preparedness and recovery

no dataset exists, 2 records

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: INFORM / UNDRR
History: no data

Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.

Institutional responsiveness

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.

Conditions, not scored

Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
71 % aged 15+, rank 58 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
44.2 per 100 people, rank 9 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS), 2025
4.5 % of output, rank 13 of 117. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT), 2025
2.4 % of employment, rank 6 of 102. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).

Evidence for missing indicators

Belgiumlinked to Institutional responsivenessstarted 2020delivered and closed
Chômage temporaire corona, 2020
Belgium's National Employment Office treated every COVID-19 work stoppage as temporary unemployment for force majeure and paid allowances to 939,532 workers for March 2020 and 1,117,133 for April, when 1,221,412 workers, 35.3 percent of private and contractual employees, were declared temporarily unemployed; almost 1.4 million received at least one payment during 2020.
1,117,133 workers, workers paid a temporary unemployment allowance for april 2020, 2020-04. 939,532 workers, workers paid a temporary unemployment allowance for march 2020, 2020-03. Office national de l'emploi (ONEM), Chômage temporaire en chiffres (press page, May 2020); annual report figures in Rapport annuel ONEM 2020, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The employment office widened an existing rule, temporary unemployment for force majeure, to cover every corona stoppage and simplified the employer procedure, so firms could suspend contracts without proving economic grounds and existing payment bodies paid workers within the month.
Limits: The monthly counts and the 35.3 percent share are on the ONEM press page; the 1.4 million for 2020 and the monthly average of 504,657 are on the annual report page (https://www.onem.be/espace-presse/rapport-annuel-onem-2020). The press page gives no date for the rule change itself, so the record shows speed only as payment for the first month of the crisis, not as days from shock to rule. ONEM does not pay most allowances itself: the payment bodies (the trade union funds CSC, FGTB and CGSLB, and the public fund CAPAC) do, and the press page splits the amounts between them. The 35.3 percent is computed on 3,458,136 salaried employees excluding civil servants. A worker counted in April was unemployed for 14 days on average, and only 20 percent for the whole month, so the head count overstates lost hours. The cost was large: ONEM's annual report records EUR 4.042 billion of extra temporary unemployment spending in 2020. ONEM later ran controls on corona temporary unemployment; their results are not reflected here.
Belgiumlinked to Disaster preparedness and recoverystarted 2006dismantled
Federal strategic stock of protective masks, and its dismantling
The Federal Public Service Public Health held a strategic stock of masks for pandemic influenza in military warehouses in Namur from 2006, sized at 32 million surgical masks when the Bioethics Committee reviewed the pandemic plan in 2009. It destroyed the expired masks in operations in late 2015 and late 2018 without replacing them, so Belgium entered the COVID-19 crisis in early 2020 with no strategic mask stock.
0 masks, federal strategic stock of masks at the start of the covid-19 crisis, early 2020. 32,000,000 surgical masks, strategic stock of surgical masks referred to in the 2009 review of the pandemic plan, 2009. Chambre des représentants de Belgique, Rapport de la Commission spéciale COVID-19, DOC 55 1394/002, 13 September 2021, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: From 2006 the federal health administration stored a national reserve of masks under its pandemic plan, then destroyed expired stock in 2015 and 2018 without a replacement contract, so the reserve ran down to nothing between two pandemics.
Limits: The zero is not a counted figure. It is our reading of the committee's prose statement that no strategic mask stock existed when the crisis began. The 32 million is the stock named in the 2009 bioethics advice and the plan's target; the report never gives an audited count of masks actually held in any year. Some of the stock was probably unusable before it was destroyed: the report records that the Namur warehouses lost their heating in 2012 and the masks stayed in unheated storage. The dates of destruction (late 2015 and late 2018) come from a chronology entry built from hearing testimony, which the committee marks as contradicted by other witnesses, not from a finding of its own. Responsibility for the decision not to replace the stock is disputed in the report itself between the former health minister and the experts heard. A mask stock is one narrow input to pandemic preparedness. It says nothing about the pandemic plan, testing, hospital surge capacity or the later rebuilding of a stock.
Belgiumlinked to Disaster preparedness and recoverystarted 2017still operating
BE-Alert
The National Crisis Centre of the Federal Public Service Interior has run BE-Alert, the national system that lets municipalities and provinces alert the population by SMS, including location-based SMS, and information screens, since 2017. By 1 September 2025, 537 of 565 municipalities, covering 95 percent of Belgian territory, were affiliated, 1,369,659 citizen addresses were registered, and the system had been used 273 times in 2025.
537 municipalities of 565, municipalities affiliated to be-alert, September 2025. 1,369,659 addresses, citizen addresses registered in be-alert, 1 September 2025. Centre de Crise National, SPF Intérieur, 'Toutes les communes flamandes sont affiliées à BE-Alert', 16 September 2025, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The federal crisis centre built one national alerting platform and offered it to municipalities and provinces, which keep the legal power to warn. It added channels over time (registered SMS, location-based SMS, screens) and runs an annual national test.
Limits: This is the crisis centre's own news release, not a statistic or an audit. Affiliation means a municipality can send alerts, not that it does so well or in time: the release gives no measure of how fast or how accurately any alert reached people in a real emergency. The 273 uses in 2025 mix real alerts, vigilance messages and tests, and the release does not split them. One person can register up to five addresses, so the count is not people. Location-based SMS reaches unregistered phones, but this page gives no reach figure for it. Coverage took eight years to reach 95 percent of territory, and 28 Walloon municipalities were still outside it in 2025. The page says nothing about the July 2021 floods in Wallonia, the largest recent test of national warning, so it cannot show that the system works when a major shock arrives. A warning channel is one part of preparedness and says nothing about recovery.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

66.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Exports are diverse and long-term unemployment is moderate. Regional labour markets differ greatly, and Wallonia adjusts slowly. Wage indexation slows adjustment, as panelist C says, so I move down two points.
66.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Diversified exports and moderate labour outcomes; wage indexation and Walloon labour market rigidity slow adjustment.
64.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Highly diversified exports and moderate unemployment, but new export products are modest, wage indexation is rigid and Wallonia adjusts slowly.

Building

How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?

+0.1 over 10 years, from 51.2 in 2016 to 51.3 on 3 indicators seen in both years.

Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Manufacturing value added
Manufacturing value added as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 11.171% of GDP
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Manufacturing value added
Manufacturing value added as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
High-technology exports
High-technology exports as a share of manufactured exports.
Measured in % of manufactured exports; higher is better. Source: World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 19.828% of manufactured exports
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
High-technology exports
High-technology exports as a share of manufactured exports.
Measured in % of manufactured exports; higher is better. Source: World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
History

Logistics infrastructure quality

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataindex 1-5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Electricity connection speed
Doing Business score for the days a business waits for a permanent electricity connection.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 33.478score 0-100
Year: 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Electricity connection speed
Doing Business score for the days a business waits for a permanent electricity connection.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Economic fitness
Diversity and ubiquity-adjusted sophistication of the export basket.
Measured in index; higher is better. Source: World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 3.289index
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Economic fitness
Diversity and ubiquity-adjusted sophistication of the export basket.
Measured in index; higher is better. Source: World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
History

Large project delivery

no dataset exists, 2 records

Raw value: no data% overrun
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.

Firm scale-up rate

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of firms
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD DynEmp
History: no data

Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.

Conditions, not scored

Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
147,482 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 6 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).

Evidence for missing indicators

Belgiumlinked to Large project deliverystarted 2001operating below its peak
Brussels regional express rail network (GEN/RER) infrastructure works, and their stall
Belgium's federal state and three regions agreed in 2001 to fund the infrastructure for a regional express rail network around Brussels through the RER Fund, with every work due by the end of 2012. The Court of Audit told the Chamber in February 2017 that the cost of the works charged to the fund had risen by more than 27 percent over 2001 to 2016, that all but one project ran six to 17.5 years late, that the works were largely at a standstill and that full four-tracking of lines 124 and 161 had been postponed with no date.
27 % (more than), 2001 to 2016, increase in the cost of the infrastructure works charged to the rer fund, 2016. 17.5 years, longest delay of an rer fund infrastructure project against its planned completion date, 2017-01. Belgian Chamber of Representatives, integral report CRIV 54 COM 602 of the joint committee hearing of 21 February 2017 on the Court of Audit report 'Het GEN-Fonds / Le Fonds RER' of 25 January 2017, retrieved 2026-10-16.
How it worked: The federal state and the three regions ring-fenced a closed envelope for RER works in a cooperation agreement, paid it into a fund managed by the railway holding company, and left the infrastructure manager Infrabel to build four-track upgrades on existing lines under permits issued separately by each region.
Limits: The figures are the Court of Audit's own, but they are read from the Chamber's transcript of the auditors presenting their report, not from the report itself, which sits on the Court's website behind bot protection; the transcript is a PDF whose text a plain download is refused, though it opens in a browser. The 27 percent is the Court's cost growth for the fund as a whole, which an auditor says is understated, because the least advanced projects (lines 124 and 161) show the smallest increases only because most of their cost is still to come; individual items rose far more, 53 percent for Watermael-Schuman-Josaphat and 100 percent for stations and car parks. Part of the increase is indexation and part is a financing effect that Infrabel puts at just under 200 million euros, which is Infrabel's calculation rather than the Court's. The minimum shortfall of 800 million euros to finish the works in the pipeline is in current euros and is also called a floor. The delays are attributed to late regional permits, repeated appeals (three Brussels permits for line 124 were annulled by the Council of State on language law grounds), the 60/40 regional spending key and the suspension of the 2013 to 2025 investment plan, so much of the loss lies in Belgium's multi-level permitting and budget rules rather than in project management. The figures date from early 2017. What happened after, including later federal funding and the phased reopening of sections, was not verified at an official source here, so the record documents the stall and the abandoned 2012 target, not the final outturn. The 2003 RER convention's service targets were themselves replaced in 2012 by a less ambitious intermediate scenario adopted only at ministerial level. The started year is the cooperation agreement that set the fund up, not the first construction contract.
Belgiumlinked to Large project deliverystarted 1994operating below its peak
Automated voting, and its withdrawal from Wallonia
Belgium extended electronic voting after a 1991 trial in two cantons until 44 percent of the electorate voted on machines in 1999, when 22 percent of polling stations in Wallonia were equipped; the Walloon Parliament abolished automated voting for French-speaking communes by a decree of 9 March 2017, the Constitutional Court rejected a challenge in September 2018, and the FPS Interior now lists the 252 communes in Wallonia as voting on paper while 152 Flemish, all 19 Brussels and the nine German-speaking communes vote electronically.
252 communes, communes in wallonia voting on paper, 2024. 22 % of Walloon polling stations, share of polling stations in wallonia equipped with voting machines at the 1999 peak, 1999. FPS Interior (SPF Intérieur), Elections directorate, voting mode by commune, retrieved 2026-10-17.
How it worked: A 1994 federal law let the government designate volunteer communes for machine voting, so coverage grew where communes asked for it. After regionalisation of local elections, the Walloon Parliament used its competence to abolish the system for French-speaking communes, and the Constitutional Court upheld that choice.
Limits: The two numbers are in different units and come from different publishers, so the loss cannot be read as one falling series. The 1999 figures, 44 percent of the national electorate and 22 percent of Walloon polling stations, come from a comparative study by the French Senate (Législation comparée LC 176, 2007), read from a PDF. The FPS Interior pages for paper and electronic voting carry no date and no electorate figures; their commune counts match the municipal map after the 2024 local elections, which is why the record dates them 2024, and the current national share of voters on machines is not published there. The decree and its date are taken from Constitutional Court judgment 115/2018. The loss is regional: Brussels, the German-speaking communes and about half of the Flemish communes still vote electronically, and 49 percent of Flemish polling stations were equipped in 1999, so the national system eroded rather than ended. Wallonia had never equipped more than a minority of its polling stations.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

50.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Economic fitness is very high and pharmaceutical production strong. Electricity connection is slow, and Oosterweel and the Brussels RER took decades. I move down two points.
50.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
High economic fitness and strong pharma production, against slow electricity connection and decades-long projects such as Oosterweel and the Brussels RER.
46.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Very high fitness reflects a complex export mix, partly pharma. Electricity connection is slow and Oosterweel and RER delays count against delivery.

Shared Purpose

To what extent can people imagine themselves as participants in a common project?

+1.2 over 10 years, from 75.6 in 2016 to 76.8 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

-1.6 over 20 years, from 78.4 in 2006 to 76.8 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

-2.2 over 30 years, from 79.0 in 1996 to 76.8 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.

Voice and accountability

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_VA.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Artefact A5: it measures the democratic channel while Shared Purpose asks whether people can see themselves in a common project. Singapore scored 20.9 while being one of the most effective collective actors in the set. Volunteering and civic participation are the observable replacements and are declared gaps; voter turnout is published beside Shared Purpose as a check, because it reads the same democratic channel and compulsory voting (D129). See D23 and A5.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Tax revenue
Central government tax revenue as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 22.96% of GDP
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Tax revenue
Central government tax revenue as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Income inequality
Gini index of disposable income.
Measured in Gini 0-100; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SI.POV.GINI), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 26.8Gini 0-100
Year: 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Income inequality
Gini index of disposable income.
Measured in Gini 0-100; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SI.POV.GINI), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (SI.POV.GINI)
History

Sense of national belonging

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% expressing belonging
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (G006)
History: no data

Note: A declared gap again since 2026-10-02 (D151, which supersedes the retirement in D143). The project still wants to know whether people count themselves members of the community whose common project this capability asks about, so the row stays even though no series can fill it. The only cross-national item aimed at it, national pride (G006) in the Joint EVS/WVS, is not wired: pride is not belonging, and it fails the regime test of artefact A13, with electoral autocracies at 75 percent very proud against 47 in liberal democracies. ISSP 2023 asks about closeness to the country in 16 countries. Wireable on an item that reads the same in every regime class, or on a behaviour of belonging, for half the frame or more. High national pride must never be read as the capacity for collective action.

Volunteering

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of adults
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Gallup World Poll / CAF
History: no data

Note: CAF publishes country figures but the underlying Gallup microdata is proprietary, so it fails the inspectability rule.

Political polarisation

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataindex 0-4
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: V-Dem
History: no data

Note: V-Dem political polarization (v2cacamps) is published beside this dimension as a behavioral check and is not scored, because a regime with no organized opposition reads as calm (D121, A13). The gap stays open for a measure that can tell calm between competing camps from calm where no camp may compete. Pluralism is the target, so only hostile polarization should count against a country.

Civic participation

missing

Raw value: no data% mentioning
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (A080_01)
History: no data

Note: A reported behaviour: the publisher-weighted share of respondents mentioning membership of a humanitarian or charitable organisation, the membership item closest to acting for strangers, in the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. Religious membership is left out because it reads religiosity, and a count of any membership is not published in the aggregate table. The two programmes ask differently: EVS shows a list and asks which the respondent belongs to, WVS reads each type aloud and asks about active or inactive membership, and the joint file counts both kinds of WVS member as mentioned. Where one country has both samples, the WVS share is higher in eight of ten, so part of the spread is question format. Membership is not activity. China reads 2.7% and Vietnam 9.4%, so state mass organisations do not inflate this item. Fieldwork runs from 2017 to 2023 and every value carries the release year 2022. Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D128 and A15.

Behavioral check, not scored

Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.

Political polarizationV-Dem (v2cacamps_osp), 2025
1.447 index 0-4, lower is better. Whether supporters of opposing political camps generally meet in a friendly or a hostile manner, rated by V-Dem country experts from 0, friendly, to 4, hostile.
The question counts hostility and leaves disagreement alone, which is what pluralism asks for. It is not scored because a low reading has two causes the number cannot tell apart. Where camps compete openly, a calm reading means people who disagree still meet as fellow citizens. Where no opposition may organize, it means there is no camp left to be hostile to. In 2025 the five closed autocracies in the frame average 2.18 and the liberal democracies 1.67, while electoral democracies and electoral autocracies sit near 2.8 and 3.3. Scored, the reading would have lifted the United Arab Emirates about 11 points on this capability for a uniformity the benchmark does not count as shared purpose. Income is not why it is left out: richer countries read only somewhat calmer, at about -0.41 against log GDP per capita.
Voter turnoutV-Dem (v2eltrnout), 2024
87.42 % of registered voters, higher is better. Share of registered voters who cast a vote in the latest national election up to 2025, according to official results, as coded by V-Dem from IDEA, IPU and IFES sources. Where executive and legislative elections fall on the same day, the executive turnout is coded.
Turnout is the one act in which a whole population takes part in a common decision, so it is the closest behavioral reading of shared purpose the benchmark has. It is not scored for three reasons the number cannot separate. It reads the democratic channel, which is why voice and accountability was retired from this capability (A5): a country with no competitive elections cannot score well for reasons unrelated to whether its people see themselves in a common project. Compulsory voting turns it into a reading of the law: Brazil enforces it, and the eight countries that enforce sanctions average 83 percent against 65 where voting is voluntary. And closed and electoral autocracies manage it: Vietnam reads 95.6, Rwanda 98.2 and Singapore 92.8, which is mobilization, not participation (A13). The year shown is the latest national election, because elections are coded only in the year they happen.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

52.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Low inequality and high tax lift the indicator. The language divide splits politics into two party systems, which weakens a common national project. Panelist B's associational life is real, so I move up two points but stay well below the indicator.
58.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Low inequality and a strong tax contract; the Flemish-Walloon divide weakens a national project, and dense associational life keeps it above middle. I trim toward the panel.
56.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Low inequality and a solid tax contract, but the Flemish-Walloon divide puts strain on a common project. Associational life keeps it above middle.

🇧🇪Belgium

Government foresight capacity

Long-horizon research commitments

Time to start a business

Adults doing digital tasks

Perceived control over life

Government effectiveness

Regulatory quality

Logistics performance

Border compliance time to export

University-industry collaboration

Public-private collaboration

Rule of law

Control of corruption

Time to enforce a contract

Intentional homicide rate

Generalised interpersonal trust

Trust in public institutions

Cooperation beyond the in-group

Court case clearance rate

Adult learning participation

Resident trademark applications

Resident industrial design applications

Venture deals

Early-stage entrepreneurial activity

Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure

Firms through regulatory sandboxes

University spinouts

Business share of R&D

Disaster preparedness and recovery

Institutional responsiveness

Logistics infrastructure quality

Large project delivery

Firm scale-up rate

Voice and accountability

Sense of national belonging

Volunteering

Political polarisation

Civic participation

Belgium