Finland The Upside Safe, happy and free: does Finland have all the answers? Last year, on the centenary of its independence, Finland was ranked, by assorted international indices, the most stable, the safest and the best-governed country in the world. Ruled for almost 600 years by Sweden and a further century by Russia, Finland was “generally and democratically poor”, says Kähkönen. Finland benefited enormously from wise wartime and postwar leaders, insists Holmström: “They thought about the good of the country; took big, sensible decisions. More recently, today’s high-tech, startup-friendly Finland was born of record investment in research and development in the 1990s, nearing 4% of GDP.

Source: The Guardian February 12, 2018 14:00 UTC