Passport power as usable rights
A strong citizenship gives its holder feasible choices: places to visit, places to make a living, a secure place to return, help when stranded, and rights that can survive changes in circumstances. The unit of analysis is the citizenship category and holder’s circumstances, not merely the country printed on a passport.
Six dimensions to compare
| Dimension | Evidence needed | What should be ranked |
|---|---|---|
| Short-stay mobility | Destination-level visa rules, authorised stay, fees, processing and pre-clearance | Visit options and administrative friction; keep visa-free, ETA, arrival visa and e-visa distinct |
| Residence and work | Enforceable work rights versus conditional visa routes; permits, sponsor and income conditions | Foreign places where this holder can actually live and earn, with conditions visible |
| Quality of accessible options | Destination living standards, safety, employment, affordability and language fit | Access to opportunities, with domestic opportunity reported separately |
| Citizenship security and family | Retention, loss, dual citizenship, transmission and family rights | Durability of the option for a specified citizen and family, not one universal nationality score |
| Protection and fallback | Re-entry rights, consular eligibility, service reach and documented outcomes | Credible alternatives during crises; embassy counts alone do not establish protection |
| Obligations and practical access | Tax/reporting, service duties, renewal cost and processing, exit restrictions | Separate burdens and their conditions rather than arbitrary penalties |
Start from a rights matrix
p identifies citizenship category, d destination, a activity (visit, live, work), h holder circumstances and t review date. Missing data are unknown, never zero. A tourist admission is not a work permission. A right to seek consular help is not a measured probability of rescue.
Three useful comparisons
Opportunity: show the share of foreign population or economic activity in destinations with documented residence/work rights, separately from short stays. GDP-weighted visitor access already exists in Henley Passport Power; it is not a new method and does not establish permission to earn there.
Fallback: show the best feasible destination and the diversity of independent alternatives under explicit scenarios. Ten destinations sharing one legal regime are correlated options, not ten independent guarantees. A crisis stress test is a scenario, not a forecast.
Complementarity: measure what a second citizenship adds to the union of usable rights, rather than adding two headline ranks. Check dual-citizenship compatibility and the holder’s ability to retain both first.
Initial documented routes
The downloadable seed contains 702 directed EU-member routes, 2 UK–Ireland reciprocal routes, and 2 facilitated Australia–New Zealand visa routes. These 706 records are not 706 distinct treaties or individually coded statutes. EU routes are expanded from the general framework; territory, profession and holder-specific exceptions need further review.
EU residence beyond three months has status-dependent conditions. The Common Travel Area attaches rights to British and Irish citizens. New Zealand citizens entering Australia and Australian citizens entering New Zealand use different visa arrangements. These categories are kept separate.
Download rights seed (CSV) · Schema, conditions and sources (JSON)
Why no worldwide power score yet?
The seed is geographically incomplete. Ranking all passports with missing edges treated as prohibitions would reward the places we researched first. We will publish component rankings after auditing comparable coverage, then test disclosed weights rather than invent a precise overall score.
EU consular protection is conditional on being unrepresented outside the EU. US worldwide-income rules distinguish filing/reporting duties from actual liability; exclusions and credits can matter. Citizenship loss, acquisition and transmission require country-specific legal records. These are research summaries of the cited sources, not an eligibility decision for a particular traveller.