The Washington Post has a new Global Power Barometer on its website. Constructed by the Denver Research Group, Inc., the GPB tracks Global Thought as measured by books, studies, and articles. Surprisingly, views of the United States and Israel are consistently and increaseingly negative while Islamists, China, Iran, and North Korea all trend positive.

Three points to bear in mind with the GPB. 1) The sources are all English-language. 2) The two most negatively viewed powers are the only ones that do not kill or imprison critics. 3) Europe and Russia apparently don’t count.

10:41 AM
UPDATE

DRGI responds: “Tomorrow…will be the last day for the North Korea icon.  We?re substituting Russia, which has shown over the past month to have much more interesting movement.

“Opinion per se is a very small part of the calculation for this chart, which most people do not understand.  This is not an image chart.  We?re viewing both perception of success in using power (actually accomplishing things in line with the player?s goals) and the reality of use of power.  So if we find a lot of people liking or disliking a player that does count because the player is influencing opinion.  However, that?s a certain fraction of the calculation with a certain timing to it.  The major part of the calculation is fact-driven…are they making things happen the way they want.”