State Capacity Index

Every year in one file, one row per country per year: state-capacity-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv

Every column in the newest file of State Capacity Index: what it holds, how it is stored, and its range.

Column	What it holds	Stored as	Range, 2015	Distinct	Empty	Spread
CountrycountryName	The country’s name, as this file spells it.	Text	—	166	0
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifier	The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it.	Text · 3 letters	—	166	0
State capacity (latent estimate)capacityHeadline	The headline figure: Latent estimate of state capacity (≈ −2.3 to +3.0, centred near 0); higher = a more capable state.	Number · up to 5 decimals	-2.0960Somalia2.6970Denmarkmiddle 0.4867	165	0
Standard deviation of the estimatecapacity_sdMeasure	The authors' own standard deviation for each estimate, on the same scale as the headline: a larger figure means the model is less certain where that country-year sits.	Number · up to 7 decimals	0.261655Honduras0.378619Qatarmiddle 0.296600	166	0

Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. A higher value is the better result.

The newest 12 of 56 years.

Not in this dataset · 59 places this site covers

Jonathan K. Hanson (University of Michigan) and Rachel Sigman (Naval Postgraduate School) gives no figure for these in any year held here. It is the publisher’s choice of scope, and each place’s profile shows what is measured.

American SamoaAndorraAnguillaAntigua and BarbudaArubaBahamasBarbadosBelizeBermudaBritish Virgin IslandsBruneiCayman IslandsChannel IslandsCook IslandsCuraçaoDominicaFaroe IslandsFrench PolynesiaGibraltarGreenlandGrenadaGuamHong KongIcelandIsle of ManKiribatiLiechtensteinLuxembourgMacauMaldivesMaltaMarshall IslandsMicronesiaMonacoMontserratNauruNew CaledoniaNiueNorthern CyprusNorthern Mariana IslandsPalauPalestinePuerto RicoSaint Kitts and NevisSaint LuciaSaint MartinSaint Vincent and the GrenadinesSamoaSan MarinoSão Tomé and PríncipeSeychellesSint MaartenSomalilandTongaTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUnited States Virgin IslandsVanuatuVatican City

1. 1 · Publisher

   Jonathan K. Hanson (University of Michigan) and Rachel Sigman (Naval Postgraduate School)

   doi.org

2. 2 · Their file

   State Capacity Index 2015

   4103950

3. 3 · Read by this site

   October 3, 2026

   Imported by a script that parses each figure and writes it down unrounded.

4. 4 · Stored as

   56 files, one per year

   Each downloads as a CSV, or every year together as state-capacity-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv

5. 5 · Used on

   Its statistic page, and every profile it measures

   /statistics/state-capacity

From the authors' own Harvard Dataverse deposit, released in 2020 with their 2021 Journal of Politics article and dedicated to the public domain (CC0). Only the authors' estimate and its standard deviation are republished, to the four significant figures the authors deposited; the input series bundled in the same file belong to other publishers and are left out.

• Charted

  State Capacity Index by country

  Who is highest, the map, the spread, who rose and fell, and the records.

• Subjects

  • Governance & Institutions

• Near neighbours

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