Foreign Policy magazine has released a failed states index, which tracks the stability of states using indicators such as demographic pressure, human rights, the number of refugees and so forth. Obviously, New Zealand comes out as "stable" - but interestingly, we come out as more stable than Australia, more stable than the UK, and more stable than the US. As usual, we lag behind the Scandinavian countries - but clearly we are doing something right (and much better than the countries National keeps telling us we lag behind). The full rankings are here.