World Justice Project ranks New Zealand highly
New Zealand continues to rank highly in a major international survey that measures countries on the rule of law.
In the World Justice Project(external link)’s latest Rule of Law index, New Zealand rose to 7th out of 113 countries, up from 8th in 2016.
The index measures 8 factors: constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, an open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice.
New Zealand is ranked ahead of Canada (9), Australia (10), the United Kingdom (11) and the United States (19), and has the highest ranking for the East-Asia/Pacific Region.
The top performer in the 2017-2018 Rule of Law Index was Denmark, with a score of 0.89. New Zealand scored 0.83, the same in the previous survey. Venezuela was lowest with a score of 0.29.
Two factors where New Zealand improved were ‘Regulatory Enforcement’ in which we rose from 8th in the world to 6th, and the ‘Civil Justice’, which rose from 11th to 8th.
The index is based on surveys of 110,000 households and 3,000 experts worldwide.
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