One of the critical obstacles to international comparative data analysis is to ensure that data is appropriately matched across sources, to this end the project assigns each country a unique code to match across data sources. Different data providers use different approaches to country naming and coding, sometimes two sources from the same provider can have different approaches.

Country codes and classifications are used within the Blavatnik Index of Public Administration for purely analytical purposes, the inclusion or non-inclusion of a country, territory or geographic entity does not indicate a formal position by the Blavatnik School of Government or the University of Oxford on the legal status of any country, state, territory or geographic feature nor does it indicate an endorsement by the Blavatnik School of Government or the University of Oxford of any claim of sovereignty over any country, state, territory or geographic feature.

Overview of the geographic entities reference list

The geographic entities reference list has two main purposes:

• To provide a code list for the use in the processing of source data, so data from different sources is appropriate matched for each country.
• To provide a standard list of names of countries and territories for use in project outputs.

The project uses the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 standard as the basis for country codes. The alpha-3 codes are preferred as these tend to have a higher degree of visual and linguistic association with the country than the alpha-2 codes.

The processing and assignment of country codes within the source data is made possible by the countrycode R package which provides a comprehensive approach for programmatic assessment and assignment of country codes.

The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 standard defines codes for 249 geographic entities, including all 193 UN member states and 56 other entities (typically overseas/dependent territories).

In addition to the 249 entities defined in ISO 3166-1, the reference list contains 7 user assigned codes to handle geographic entities that appear in some data sources but do not exist in the ISO 3166-1 standard.

• Kosovo (XKK) – Data for Kosovo appears in many of the data sources. While having a large degree of international recognition, Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations and as such is not included in the ISO 3166-1 standard. The code XK has been widely used as a 2-letter code for Kosovo, however, across the data sources several different 3-letter codes have been observed (KOS, XKK, XKS and XKX). The user-assigned code XKK has been used in our reference list, as in addition to being observed in the source data this is also the 3-letter code used in the Unicode Consortium’s Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR; a widely used internet standard for geographic references).
• Northern Cyprus (XNC) – Northern Cyprus does not appear in any sources and is only recognised by Türkyie, it is included in the reference list to aid with processing of cartographic data to produce the basemap in output maps of results. As Northern Cyprus is not included in the ISO 3166-1 standard the user-assigned code XNC has been used.
• Republic Srpska (XRS) – The ISORA data source includes data for the Republic Srpska (one of the two federal entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina). As a sub-national entity, the Republic Srpska does not have an ISO 3166-1 code, the user-assigned code XRS has been used.
• Somaliland (XSL) – The VDM data source includes data for Somaliland separately from the of Somalia. Somaliland is an unrecognised state and is not included in the ISO 3166-1 standard, the user assigned code of XSL has been used.
• State of Palestine, Gaza Strip (XPG) – While the ISO 3166-1 standard includes a code for the State of Palestine (PSE), the VDEM data source provides data separately for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The user-assigned code XPG has been used.
• Zanzibar (EAZ) – The VDEM data source includes data for Zanzibar separate to the rest of Tanzania, the ISO 3166-1 standard includes an indeterminate reservation of the code EAZ for Zanzibar and so this has been used.

Country classifications

To aid in the presentation and analysis of the results two sets of country classifications are used: grouping by geographic regions and grouping by economic classification.

Geographic regions

There are many different approaches for classifying countries into geographic regions, in reviewing the geographic spread of countries included in the Index (see section 5) a bespoke classification has been developed to ensure that each group is of suitable size for comparisons. Our classification assigns countries and territories to one of six groups:

• Americas – 22 countries included in the Index results
• Asia and Pacific – 19 countries included in the Index results
• Eastern Europe – 20 countries included in the Index results
• Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (MENCA) – 14 countries included in the Index results
• Sub-Saharan Africa – 25 countries included in the Index results
• Western Europe – 16 countries included in the Index results

The classification is based on the regional groupings used by the IMF for their periodic regional economic outlook reports, with some modification. A key reason for selecting the IMF grouping over others as the basis for our classification was its inclusion of a “Middle East and Central Asia” grouping and an “Asia and Pacific” grouping. There are several definitions of which countries comprise “the Middle East”, however when using any of these results the number of countries included in the Index results is less than 10. There are only two countries from Oceania included in the Index results (Australia and New Zealand), therefore a grouping which includes these with Asian countries is useful for analytical purposes.

The IMF’s regional groupings have been adapted in the following ways:

• Türkiye is included in the IMF’s Europe grouping, but for our classification has been included in our Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (MENCA) grouping. As a transcontinental country Türkiye has significant economic, social and cultural relationships with both Europe and the Middle East. We have included Türkyie within the MENCA group to ensure the grouping has a suitable number of countries and to reflect that Türkyie is included in some definitions of the Middle East.
• Pakistan is included in the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia grouping, but for our classification has been included in the Asia and Pacific grouping. Pakistan’s administrative traditions are more similar to other countries in the Indian sub-continent (Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka) stemming from the legacy of British colonial rule while other central Asian countries share post-communist traditions. Although a Muslim majority nation it is not commonly included in definitions of the Middle East.
• The IMF’s Europe grouping has been split into two halves, for simplicity these have been labelled as “Eastern” and “Western” Europe. Without being split, a single Europe grouping would have the largest number of countries represented in the Index (36) and a grouping that is notably larger than the other four groups. For the purposes of our grouping, we define Western Europe as the group of countries that were members of the European Union prior to its 2004 enlargement round, the members of the European Free Trade Association and other European microstates. The remaining countries of Europe are included in our Eastern Europe grouping, of these only the Republic of Cyprus is not a post-Communist state and while geographically in Asia it is a member of the European Union and its administrative traditions are more closely associated with other European countries than those in the MENCA grouping.

Economic classification

For our main economic classification of countries, we use the World Bank’s (2023-24)¹ economies by income level classification. This groups countries according to their gross national income per capita into one of four groups:

• High income (GNI per capita > $14,005) – 40 countries included in the Index results
• Upper middle income (GNI per capita $4,516 to $14,005) – 30 countries included in the Index results
• Lower middle income (GNI per capita $1,146 to $4,515) – 31 countries included in the Index results
• Low income (GNI per capita < $1,146) – 12 countries included in the Index results