The “American brand” features the United States as an incubator of creative goods and services, and of entrepreneurial companies, many of which spread their best practices through their products, trade partnerships and investments around the world.

This program is part of the President’s Young African Leaders Initiative, the Obama Administration’s long-term program to engage Africa’s young leaders who are actively promoting positive change in their communities. The President’s Initiative...has included more than 2,000 U.S. Government-sponsored programs for young leaders across sub-Saharan Africa.

Over the last couple of years, India has been seen stamping its presence in the league of global leaders by the strength of its economic power.

Nonetheless, Austad believes Norwegian design going in a positive direction. He suggests that it has a growing number of young and ambitious designers all eager to identify how Norwegian design should be in the 21st century. He also adds Norwegian design has a strong cultural foundation and hopes that Norway will be able to continue to brand itself as a design nation in the future.

Time and again, though, critics and analysts bring up the same question: What has this accomplished? And how do you even measure accomplishment online in the first place? A new report from the Lowy Institute, an Australian international policy think tank, delivers a remarkably detailed look behind the scenes of State's digital democracy efforts, and ends with precisely that query.