I find it a bit hard to swallow that "corruption perceptions" is an objective metric. And let's not forget that Norway's wealth - and thus the ease with which the government can improve other factors - is due to its natural resources, i.e. oil. If Switzerland is exemplary, go look up when it allowed women to vote.

There's not much to be said against Sweden and Denmark though: one could sum up their success by saying that they simply never went down the road of screwing the population in order to be able to reduce corporation tax, which is all too common nowdays (see Ireland, USA, even Germany).