Making the Netherlands an example to Zimbabwe is unrealistic; third-world development depends on middle-ground models like Egypt and Zambia.

In international strategizing, as in life, we tend to have a better sense of ideal outcomes than we do of possible, if second-rate, ones. Just as little girls dream of being prima ballerina at the Bolshoi and not members of the corps de ballet at the Kentucky Ballet Theatre, policy-makers tend to hold up the bright lights of Sweden and Denmark when articulating the hopes for crippled states like Zimbabwe and Cote D’Ivoire. With a nudge here and a nudge there, goes the common parlance, Mali can take a cue from prosperous Netherlands and Iraq can democratize in the image of Canada. This is our Bolshoi fixation.

The last ten years have seen the emergence of a number of governance evaluation systems through which we get a clear idea of who are the weakest countries among us and on what grounds. The Fund for Peace’s annual Failed State Index ranks countries according to their ability to cope with destabilizing pressures like internal conflict and societal deterioration. Similarly, the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators evaluates countries in six priority areas of governance including the competency of the bureaucracy, the quality of law enforcement, and the degree of political and civil liberty it affords its citizens.

What’s good about these systems is that they set straight the record of where the most disastrous zones really are. Israel and the West Bank might receive more coverage from the New York Times, but the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo is far more volatile. Mexico is a partner in North American free trade, but high levels of corruption and uncontrolled violent crime mean that on the whole it scores lower than Namibia and Seychelles. And, in case there was any doubt, no countries struggle as deeply and as thoroughly as war-ravaged Somalia and Sudan. From the lowest ranks of the Failed State Index for the second year running, the nudge towards Sweden must seem to them like the grandest mirage.

But while they are designed primarily for monitoring progress and deterioration among the weakest states, governance evaluation indexes like these in fact have amazing untapped practical value.

This value lies in the moderately stable, middle-ranked countries. Not the best or the brightest, these are the Kentucky Ballet Theatres. The countries that do governance “adequately” like Egypt, “decently” like Zambia, even “pretty well” like Trinidad and Tobago. These countries are not held up as beacons of statehood, because they don’t embody ideal expressions of political stability, regulatory quality, or institutional effectiveness. But it is precisely their imperfections that make them useful models for the weakest countries.

The Central African Republic, for example, essentially a phantom state, having existed without any meaningful institutional capacity since 1979, faces the task of building a functioning government virtually from the ground up. This task benefits little from a model like Finland or Australia, whose governments are entrenched in centuries of democratic tradition and a commitment to the welfare state model, and who have had no significant threat to peace for decades. More helpful models would be Senegal or Botswana, both developing, but middle-income, countries that have managed to build formal, transparent governments with functional legal infrastructures, and impressive growth rates (although they each, during the end of the colonial era, could have taken a different trajectory). While Senegal and Botswana are still, relatively speaking, poor countries, they host some of the best governmental institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and could therefore provide important insights for the current needs of the Central African Republic.

Similarly, if any country’s experience can be useful as a model for Sri Lanka, which exists chronically on the brink of civil war as its tenuous peace agreement is threatened by outbreaks of violence, it would be a country like Mozambique. Relatively speaking, Mozambique is far from an exemplar of first-rate governance: its ruling party has been in power for more than 30 years, other political parties have almost no voice in parliament, and civil society groups are essentially mute. Furthermore, its justice system is not yet consolidated, and corruption eats away at economic growth. But Mozambique has achieved remarkable success in sustaining peace after decades of devastating conflict. Since its UN-brokered peace agreement in 1992, there hasn’t been a single relapse into violence. And, unlike most of its neighbours, it does not rank in the bottom 60 weakest states. While Sri Lanka might have bigger dreams for itself than what Mozambique embodies, its first steps can be aided by the example of a decently governed, peaceful country that was, less than twenty years ago, anything but.

Whereas the highest and lowest ranking countries tend to score well and poorly, respectively, across all indicators, there is more variety among the middle-ranking states, which are hodge-podges of good and less-than-good governance. Useful case studies are those, like Bangladesh, that manage to excel in certain areas of statehood despite being severely inept in others.

We know that corruption is a barrier to economic development – the World Bank has a zero-tolerance policy on corruption with the countries it supports. But despite some of the highest corruption rates in the world, Bangladesh has seen GDP growth rates of 6 per cent in the last few years and increasingly impressive human development indicator scores. It’s managed, in other words, to sidestep the consequences of its weakest feature. Sure, it ranks among the 15 weakest countries in the world. But insofar as it has refused to allow complete capitulation to chaos because of its exceptional levels of corruption, it is a highly noteworthy success. Corruption is, of course, never desirable. But for countries looking to abolish bribery and private appropriation of public goods, understanding the secret to Bangladesh’s achievement would be of great value.

The reason to call on the middle countries when imagining the futures of the most broken ones is that the questions most relevant to the 20 or 30 weakest countries can’t be answered through the examples of the 20 or 30 strongest. How can peace be maintained in the wake of a rigged election by a megalomaniacal leader? How can economic prosperity improve despite the presence of outrageous levels of corruption? How much violence is enough violence to declare a power-sharing arrangement dead?

These answers can only come, in practical terms, from places that have confronted civil war, authoritarian leadership, a breakdown of law and order but have still, through various strategies, improved their lot. An understanding of these strategies is an invaluable asset.

So while it is tempting to view the state-building project through an ideological lens (a state after all is an idea, as are its virtues: liberty, equality, etc.), more immediate benefit will come from utilizing a pragmatic one. This is not to advocate for subpar governance. But where a liberal, democratic, prosperous, and stable state might be the ideal goal in every case, it can’t be the proximate one for Sudan, Haiti, or Liberia. Ballerinas, after all, clock thousands of hours in front of audiences before even auditioning for the Bolshoi.

We can place Norway, then, on the ledge of the long-term horizon, and look up at it periodically. But for those of us concerned with nudging Ethiopia, Guinea, and Burma towards better versions of themselves, it is imperative that we introduce Singapore and Uruguay, Mauritania and Tunisia, flawed as they might be, as the role models for the immediate tasks. This will, I think, get us to Norway faster.