Positive Peace Report 2026

What It Is: A September 2026 report from the Institute for Economics & Peace scoring 163 countries on eight Pillars of Positive Peace (the attitudes, institutions, and structures that sustain resilient societies) using more than 20,000 data series, and tracking how each country changed from 2015 to 2024. 

Why It Matters: Positive Peace has measurable business payoffs. Countries that improved grew real GDP at twice the rate of decliners and drew foreign direct investment growing 9.3% a year versus 3.5%. Yet rule of law declined in 60% of countries, and the U.S. posted the second-largest drop of any country (8.8%), evidence for Responsibility a), healthy market rules. 

How to Use It: Use the country rankings and pillar scores to benchmark governance, rule-of-law, and corruption trends in the markets where you operate, starting with the leading-powers section, which profiles the U.S. Feed the results into strategic planning, issue prioritization, and crisis readiness. 

Note: This report names the United States as having the second-largest decline in the Index. The data is empirical index scoring rather than commentary, consistent with how the Atlantic Council and WJP indexes were handled.