When I want to know the nations with the best and worst policies, I peruse Economic Freedom of the World or the Index of Economic Freedom.
But what if you want to know the countries with the best and worst consequences? In that case, the best option might be Professor Steve Hanke’s annual Misery Index.
On that basis, the worst-governed country in 2022 was Zimbabwe, followed by Venezuela and Syria.
What’s the methodology for Professor Hanke’s Index?
Here’s some of his explanation for National Review.
In the economic sphere, misery tends to flow from high inflation, steep borrowing costs, and unemployment. …Comparing countries’ metrics can tell us a lot about where in the world people are sad or happy.
Hanke’s Annual Misery Index (HAMI) gives us the answers. My version of the misery index is the sum of the year-end unemployment (multiplied by two), inflation, and bank-lending rates, minus the annual percentage change in real GDP per capita. Higher readings on the first three elements are “bad” and make people more miserable. These “bads” are offset by a “good” (real GDP per capita growth).
What are the countries with the best outcomes?
The nation with the least misery is Switzerland, which also happens to be the world’s most libertarian nation (needless to say, I don’t think that’s a coincidence).
I’ll share one final excerpt from Hanke’s article. He points out that Switzerland’s spending cap is a big reason for the nation’s success.
Switzerland has the lowest HAMI score in the world. One reason for that is the Swiss debt brake. The debt brake has worked like a charm. Unlike most countries, Switzerland’s debt-to-GDP ratio has been on a downward trend in the last two decades, since it enshrined its debt brake into its constitution in a 2002 national referendum. In 2002, central-government debt stood at 29.7 percent of GDP, and by 2018 had been reduced to 18.7 percent.
I agree with him, but the real benefit of the debt brake is that it restrains spending.
The falling debt numbers should be viewed as a fringe benefit of the spending restraint.
P.S. Needless to say, other nations should adopt a Swiss-style spending cap.
International Liberty 
This same business of government-funded looter campaigns was taken up by Brazil as soon as Atlas Shrugged was translated into the vernacular. Voting became at-gunpoint and candidates tax-financed. WYSIWYG.
Why is Japan so close to Switzerland when it’s that the GDP is over 200?
Why do we call the Swiss that break and the German spending growth limit spending cabs instead of spending gross limits?
Any ideas on a governor or an attorney general? Who would lead the mandamus case against Congress for federal to call the balance budget amendment convention in 1979, when 39 State applications were listed in congressional records.?
As soon as the LP became a debt brake, Nixon signed tax-subsidies for entrenched looter Kleptocracy candidates, thereby doping their horses in the race to disaster.
That’s the same thought I had when reading the chart identifying unemployment as the leading cause of misery in the USA. I would believe that loss of purchasing power in the job market is a major factor for the misery.
Something is off. The unemployment rate in 2022 in the US was extraordinarily low, 3-4%. Is Hanke off?