Germany has been named the world’s best-regarded country for the fifth-year running in an international soft-power survey that asked 60,000 people to score states on categories including culture, governance and exports.
The UK fell from second place to fifth, dropping below Canada, Japan and Italy, partly because of a small decline in its global reputation for welcoming foreigners and protecting the environment. The US also recovered a little from tenth to eighth following the end of the Trump presidency.
Each year since 2008 Simon Anholt, a British political scientist, and the pollster Ipsos have assessed countries’ “nation brands” by measuring how they are perceived on six different scales.
These range from the friendliness, tolerance and competence of their people to their apparent quality of life and their appeal as a destination for tourism and investment.
In the early years the table was dominated by the US but in 2017 it was dislodged by Germany. This year the Germans defended their title with a slightly improved score of 71.1 per cent, up from 69.1 per cent in 2020.
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Germany received particularly high marks for the quality of its products, its government’s work to alleviate global poverty, and the employability of its people.
It also did well on its reputation for excellence in sport, despite being dumped out of the European football championships in the second round and coming ninth in the medals table at the Tokyo Olympics.
Britain’s overall score also rose from 68.1 per cent to 70 per cent, only a short distance behind Germany and marginally ahead of France. Its achievements in science, technology, sport, education and culture were highly regarded.
However, it was narrowly overtaken by three other countries. Ipsos said its “relative reputation weaknesses” were its governance and its “people”, who were seen as less welcoming than before.
Apart from Britain slipping down the rankings there was little change in the top ten, although the US and Italy each climbed two places.
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Further down the table of 51 countries, China rose four places to 31st and India fell by six to 40th, while the bottom three were Panama, Qatar and the Dominican Republic.
In general there were tentative signs of growing comity between the nations. All 46 countries that featured in both the 2020 and 2021 studies recorded a better total score this year.
Willingness to visit other countries also reached the highest level since the survey began, possibly reflecting a degree of wanderlust as the second anniversary of the pandemic approaches.
