05.08.2014 - 13:50
An independent Catalonia would have a higher development index than it has in Spain today and also higher than a Spanish state without Catalonia. This is what a study made by the Credit Suisse research institute has said, which has just been published with the title ‘The success of small states‘ (pdf). Taking the Human Development Index (HDI), the study makes a ranking of the world states where this is highest and places an independent Catalonia in twentieth place, ahead of the twenty-third place now held by Spain with Catalonia and the twenty-sixth place that the Spanish state would hold without Catalonia.
The study also places an independent Scotland in twenty-third place, above the position currently held by the United Kingdom, twenty-seventh, and that which the United Kingdom would hold without Scotland (thirtieth).
The index used by the authors of the study, the HDI, is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and level of life of a country. It is a standard measurement that gauges well-being that was developed by an Indian economist and a Pakistani in 1990 for the United Nations Development Program.
Unlike the Gross Domestic Product, this indicator includes more factors, and not just ‘physical’, in considering the development index of a country. ‘If we add education, healthcare and intangible infrastructures, we find that the small countries come out proportionally very well’, the report says. ‘Small countries hold more than half of the first thirty positions. Scotland and Catalonia present higher indexes than the United Kingdom and Spain, respectively.’
One of the concepts the study brings in is that of ‘intangible infrastructure’, which includes five elements: education, health, finance, the service for companies and technology, and they consider: ‘Our view is that if developing countries can achieve high growth with investment in physical elements (infrastructures, for instance), they need to cultivate intangible infrastructures to have a high and sustained level of human development’.
They go on, ‘Small countries hold seven of the first ten places on the ranking of intangible infrastructures and 60% of the first thirty. The results are interesting because they suggest that small countries make good use of their resources and get a positive return on their investments.’
To give an example, the authors compare Scotland with Norway. ‘If we compare some of Scotland’s economic, social and political indicators, we will find that it has some similarities with neighbouring countries such as Norway in terms of size, education, healthcare indicators and oil production’. But they add that it is difficult to compare specific cases. ‘The magic potion for the development of a small country,’ they say, ‘is that they should have a sense of strategic planning and awareness of the impact of external forces such as the markets, trade and immigration, and at the same time the institutional skill to implement the policies in these areas.’
The success of small countries
The report starts by remembering that since 1945 the number of member states of the United Nations has increased from around fifty to 193, ‘two-thirds of which can be classified as “small” (with a population of under ten million).’
And that these small states have a better situation in terms of education, health and intangible infrastructures than the medium-sized; that small countries are more open to international trade and have adapted better to globalisation than the larger countries.
However, it also says that, ‘In the case of Europe, the old small countries such as Switzerland and Sweden have got over the crisis in the Eurozone much better. In other words that if small countries generally show more advantages, those that are small and also old are in an even better situation as they have had time to ‘develop a legal and institutional framework’. And it is precisely these small and old ‘Nordic and Alpine’ countries that are a model that the new small states aim to follow, although not all of the elements that have contributed to the success of the former can be fully transferred to the newer.
