Corrupted Freedom: Our Nations Journey

Mapped: The world's most (and least) free countries

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What are they missing? The island of Socotra for starters, which is known for its distinct flora and fauna 37 per cent of its plant species and 90 per cent of its reptiles are found nowhere else.

Laos has been a mainstay of the backpacker circuit in south-east Asia for decades, but behind its raucous river parties, gilded temples, Unesco-listed towns and vertiginous forests lies a lumbering, autocratic regime that has been in place and ineffectual since President Emomali Rahmon, who has been at the helm for 27 years, has a mandate to rule indefinitely. One of George W. Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil" nations, Libya's ancient treasures have been off-limits for many years due to war and unrest. Muammar Gaddafi may be long gone but the country still struggles in the freedom stakes.

Sudan has some of most abundant marine life in the Red Sea and a few intrepid divers make it out to discover its largely unchartered reefs. However, corruption and violence continues to plague this country and prevent it from capitalising on its natural wonders. He ticked all the despotic boxes, having been accused of nepotism, corruption, election rigging, crushing the press and presiding over human rights abuses. Its economic and technological systems are dazzling indeed, but in order for it to serve the human community, it must be subordinated to an equally spectacular political infrastructure, which we have not even begun to conceive.

It will be objected, inevitably, that any alternative to the nation-state system is a utopian impossibility. But even the technological accomplishments of the last few decades seemed implausible before they arrived, and there are good reasons to be suspicious of those incumbent authorities who tell us that human beings are incapable of similar grandeur in the political realm. In fact, there have been many moments in history when politics was suddenly expanded to a new, previously inconceivable scale — including the creation of the nation state itself.

And — as is becoming clearer every day — the real delusion is the belief that things can carry on as they are. The first step will be ceasing to pretend that there is no alternative. So let us begin by considering the scale of the current crisis. L et us start with the west.

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Europe, of course, invented the nation state: The treaty made large-scale conquest difficult within the continent; instead, European nations expanded into the rest of the world. The dividends of colonial plunder were converted, back home, into strong states with powerful bureaucracies and democratic polities — the template for modern European life.

By the end of 19th century, European nations had acquired uniform attributes still familiar today — in particular, a set of fiercely enforced state monopolies defence, taxation and law, among others , which gave governments substantial mastery of the national destiny. In return, a moral promise was made to all: Spectacular state-run projects in the fields of education, healthcare, welfare and culture arose to substantiate this promise.

The withdrawal of this moral promise over the past four decades has been a shattering metaphysical event in the west, and one that has left populations rummaging around for new things to believe in. For the promise was a major event in the evolution of the western psyche. It was part of a profound theological reorganisation: During the period of decolonisation that followed the second world war, the European nation-state structure was exported everywhere.

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But westerners still felt its moral promise with an intensity peculiar to themselves — more so than ever, in fact, after the creation of the welfare state and decades of unprecedented postwar growth. Nostalgia for that golden age of the nation state continues to distort western political debate to this day, but it was built on an improbable coincidence of conditions that will never recur.

Very significant was the structure of the postwar state itself, which possessed a historically unique level of control over the domestic economy. Capital could not flow unchecked across borders and foreign currency speculation was negligible compared to today.

Governments, in other words, had substantial control over money flows, and if they spoke of changing things, it was because they actually could. The fact that capital was captive meant they Governments could impose historic rates of taxation, which, in an era of record economic growth, allowed them to channel unprecedented energies into national development. For a few decades, state power was monumental — almost divine, indeed — and it created the most secure and equal capitalist societies ever known.

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The destruction of state authority over capital has of course been the explicit objective of the financial revolution that defines our present era. As a result, states have been forced to shed social commitments in order to reinvent themselves as custodians of the market. This has drastically diminished national political authority in both real and symbolic ways. The picture is the same all over the west: We can all see the growing fury at governments that refuse to fulfil their old moral promise — but it is most probable that they no longer can.

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Western governments possess nothing like their previous command over national economic life, and if they continue to promise fundamental change, it is now at the level of PR and wish fulfilment. There is every reason to believe that the next stage of the techno-financial revolution will be even more disastrous for national political authority. This will arise as the natural continuation of existing technological processes, which promise new, algorithmic kinds of governance to further undermine the political variety.

Big data companies Google, Facebook etc have already assumed many functions previously associated with the state, from cartography to surveillance. Now they are the primary gatekeepers of social reality: And, as the growth of digital currencies shows, new technologies will emerge to replace the other fundamental functions of the nation state. The libertarian dream — whereby antique bureaucracies succumb to pristine hi-tech corporate systems, which then take over the management of all life and resources — is a more likely vision for the future than any fantasy of a return to social democracy.

Governments controlled by outside forces and possessing only partial influence over national affairs: But in the west, it feels like a terrifying return to primitive vulnerability. It is an epochal upheaval, which leaves western populations shattered and bereft. There are outbreaks of irrational rage, especially against immigrants, the appointed scapegoats for much deeper forms of national contamination. The idea of the western nation as a universal home collapses, and transnational tribal identities grow up as a refuge: The stakes could not be higher.

So it is easy to see why western governments are so desperate to prove what everyone doubts: The era of globalisation has seen consistent attempts by US presidents to enhance the authority of the executive, but they are never enough. Citizens who have nothing are persuaded that they have a lot. These strategies are ugly, but they cannot simply be blamed on a few bad actors. The predicament is this: Instead, they must arouse and deploy powerful feelings: But let us not imagine that these strategies will quickly break down under their own deceptions as moderation magically comes back into fashion.

Partly because citizens are desperate for the cover-up to succeed: Almost all those nations emerged in the 20th century from the Eurasian empires. The modern nation of Syria looks unlikely to last more than a century without breaking apart, and it hardly provides security or stability for its citizens.

Empires were not democratic, but were built to be inclusive of all those who came under their rule. It is not the same with nations, which are founded on the fundamental distinction between who is in and who is out — and therefore harbour a tendency toward ethnic purification. This makes them much more unstable than empires, for that tendency can always be stoked by nativist demagogues. Nevertheless, in the previous century it was decided with amazing alacrity that empires belonged to the past, and the future to nation states. And yet this revolutionary transformation has done almost nothing to close the economic gap between the colonised and the colonising.

In the meantime, it has subjected many postcolonial populations to a bitter cocktail of authoritarianism, ethnic cleansing, war, corruption and ecological devastation. In the breakneck pace of decolonisation, nations were thrown together in months; often their alarmed populations fell immediately into violent conflict to control the new state apparatus, and the power and wealth that came with it. That scroll can be viewed in the museum now, and I think it should be something that tourists go to see, like the Statue of Liberty.

The country also has generous policies that support single parents, children, students and seniors. View image of Alia Bickson: In fact, Canada comes close to many of the Scandinavian countries in its near-perfect scores, including access to nutrition and medical care, as well as to basic knowledge and personal rights. View image of Japanese schools rank well globally, with elementary and secondary schooling being mandatory Credit: Not only does the island nation rank highest in Asia by the World Bank for overall government effectiveness, rule of law and political stability, it also received the highest marks in Asia from the Social Progress Index for its access to basic knowledge, water and sanitation, and access to nutrition and medical care.

However, a big part also owes to effective and in some cases quite liberal policies, especially in comparison to my home country, the US. Though the aging population and population decline is putting pressure on the solvency of the programme, said Goulston, overall, the system works. Japan also has some of the world's best cancer doctors.

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Though the schools are highly regimented and systematic — which can lead to over-standardisation, according to Goulston — they have prioritised nutrition as a key part of education, with school lunches prepared with locally grown ingredients and paired with lessons on healthy eating and food history. View image of Botswana is known for having strong personal freedoms, such as freedom of the press and personal property rights Credit:

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