Comparison of countries' socioeconomic governance policies using multi-criteria decision making method

Today, the development level of countries is measured not only by economic growth but also by multi-dimensional factors such as social welfare, the rule of law and environmental sustainability. Scientific methods are needed to objectively evaluate this complex structure. In this study, the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method, one of the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques, and logistic regression analysis were used to conduct a comparative analysis of socioeconomic governance policies across 15 countries for the years 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024. While the SGI(Sustainable Governance Indicators) database contained data for 41 countries in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This number decreased to 30 in 2024. While selecting 15 countries, the countries that were included in the 4-year period were taken into consideration. The research covers Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. In the study, the socioeconomic governance success of the countries was evaluated using various criteria such as social welfare, economic governance, environmental sustainability and rule of law. The TOPSIS method provided comparability of success levels in governance by ranking countries based on their distance from the ideal and negative ideal solutions. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis modeled the effects of specific socioeconomic indicators on governance success, determining which factors are decisive in the decision-making process. Consequently, North Europen countries and Germany with high governance quality ranked at the top, while performance in some Baltic and Eastern Europen countries was relatively lower.