The analysis of human development levels via multi-criteria decision making methods with different weighting techniques: the case of European Union members, candidates and potential candidates

The measurement of countries’ human development levels goes beyond measuring gross domestic product in recent years. There is not a general concern about the structural expression of human development. United Nations Programme makes researches to measure development with human development index (HDI) based upon the perspective of “enlarging people’s choices”. On the other side, European Union (EU) analysis how to measure human development in European context. There is ahuge necessity of alternative data and methods for the analysis. In this study, it is aimed to develop an approach to measure the human development level with a different method from the United Nations’ human development index and rank the countries of European Union (EU) members, candidates and potential candidates according to their development levels. For this purpose, two of Multicriteria Decision Making Methods (MCDM): TOPSIS and WSA are used. These methods are applied by using three weighting techniques; equal weighted, point method and Saaty’s method separately. The results obtained are compared with the values of HDI.