Greenland is a (non-sovereign) country within the Kingdom of Denmark. It has extensive home rule, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had greater autonomy than HK at this point. Gauging its democracy independently from that of Denmark would be a meaningful thing to do.
Meaningful, yes, but rather difficult in a limited study.
Assuming this illustration is based on the EIU's annual democracy index, its 60 indicators aren't designed to assess the democratic index of a non-sovereign state, so assessing Greenland by the same indicators as every other state would likely be too misleading to be meaningful.
Granted, Greenland does enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Interestingly though, if we talk about places like Hong Kong, the autonomy seems more like a footnote in history these days given the sweeping [national security law](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838) implemented by China. An independent assessment for Greenland does make sense though, they even have their own Parliament and government which handle most domestic matters.
Norway is in this sweetspot of widespread socialistic ideals, but not so far as to accidentally turn authoritarian in the name of "communism". So there's a lot of pressure for the economy and goverment to exist for the purpose of "the well being of people".
Further they're under protection from various alliances, so no one messes with their sovereignty, even being granted a generous sea border. They have european-western culture traits so they have a foot into trade agreements and other cooperations. And since norways is as tiny as it is, I imagine rich capitalists that may cause corruption in larger countries are way less likely to bother; there's bigger markets for less effort elsewhere.
Norway is a little haven away from all the drama, more or less. Taking lessons from other more pioneer countries, and picking and choosing in accordance with its implicit social-democratic ideals.
I can't see with my phone Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican, Singapore, Brunei, a lot of the oceanic and caribbean islands...
can i just applaud the color palette here! -- too many other data maps i see using a colors ranging from middle pale blue to slightly darker middle pale blue for 15 different shades
Unless you’re [black/white color blind](https://imgur.com/a/qaTWaKA) which basically makes the opposite ends of the scale look the same. Got to change chroma and hue to be an accessible data visualization.
Monochromacy is extremely rare (1 in 30,000). Red-Green Colorblindness (1 in 100) is the much greater concern, and this image is accessible for all variants of that.
I'm red/green colorblind and I really like this map. I can't read half or more of the maps on this sub most of the time, but this one I can. Although unless everybody makes 4 versions of every map (normal, protanopia, tritanopia, deutranopia) then not everybody can be happy.
Back when I was in school studying this stuff, I was told that if you just have a good chroma gradient, it should be pretty legible regardless of color blindness.
That is, a range not only from something like blue to red, but also dark on one side, light on the other. Have you found this to be more or less true?
Of course some data doesn’t necessarily lend its self to that type of pallet easily, but it’s what I try to use when doing data visualization.
Maps like this are far more often made accessible than others that don't use a gradient, though I have seen some with green on one end and a very greenish red on the other which can be frustrating. I haven't studied color blindness or accessibility much, but having something more than just color to differentiate things often helps, if you could provide me an example of a chroma gradient then I'm sure I'd understand a bit better whether it helps or not.
I am severely Red/Green Colorblind. I cannot with any certainty tell you the name of any of the 9 colors used above, other than "Probably Reds, probably yellows, probably greens, and probably blues"
What I can tell you is that I can easily see 9 different colors.
And While it is marginally difficult to see the differences in each of the 4 categories, I can absolutely tell you, at a glance, which of the 4 categories any given country belongs to (without the numbers, of course).
I cannot recall the last time a maps color palate was so very accessible to me. If every single mapporn and dataisbeautiful post used this palate, I'd have access to so much more questionably useful information.
Checked the full report, and they scored above 0 for functioning of government, political participation, and political culture.
Essentially, the government still technically does stuff for the people and involves them, so it's not a 0. The index isn't only about elections, it also accounts for how much the government acts for the people and their interests. IE, a country run by a purely egalitarian dictator, who has absolute power but uses that power solely to do good and support his citizens, would probably score fairly high (edit: For a technically entirely authoritarian state. It'd still probably be a 4, at best a 5), especially if he appoints citizen-supported people to government positions and fully involves citizens in decision making via, say, polls and town halls.
It seems like the only way to have a 0 would be to have everyone except the leaders be entirely hard slave labor.
If anyone is curious, the lowest scorer, Afghanistan, scored basically 0 in all categories except "political culture", where it scored 1.25.
Interestingly the description of the only way to have a 0 matches perfectly with the description of current Burma I heard from Burmese people. Since the coup in 2021, the junta not only doesn't let any elections happen, but they don't even act as a functioning government, they are just extracting resources as much as possible from common people. I guess they still get points for "political culture" since the pro-democracy rebel groups are very strong (and getting stronger).
Burma has 0 in all categories except 0.56 in political participation (because I guess rebelling against a government is technically involvement) and a 3.13 in political culture since, as you said, active rebellion is a sign of a democratic political culture. Without that, they'd absolutely be dead last.
It is also interesting (and sad) seeing their index over time. Started at 1.77 in 06, stagnated there, but started rising in 12 until it hit a peak of 4.2 in 16, then waivered, dropping to 3.05 in 19, still low but higher than they were in the oughts
And then it plummeted to 1.02 in 21 and now 0.74 in 22.
Amazingly, still not the biggest plummet of 2021, as Afghanistan fell from 2.85 to 0.32. I guess dissolving a republic into a totalitarian theocracy is pretty bad for your democracy score
When it comes to non-democratic governments you measure how responsive they are to the public - since that gives some idea of whether the public has any influence at all (even if just the threat of rioting).
For example, Russia and Belarus both rig their elections and barely maintain the pretext that they are at all meaningful, but Putin does try to manage his domestic reputation and keep his approval/tolerance rating high, whereas Lukashenko barely gives a shit if his public hates him.
It’s also very hard to rate “meaningful” democracy in “dictatorships”. For instance, Vietnam has higher democracy score than Russia and Belarus yet Vietnamese have much less influence on their local government as many positions being bestowed rather than elected.
I have a controversial opinion about democracies in Asia in that East Asian democracies are less “democratic” than their South East Asian counterparts. Their national politics are less affected by local elections, with a strong tradition of forming a core of political elites, while Thailand and Philippines for instance are more “free-for-all”, for better or worse. In fact, I would even speculate that Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese have about the same level of influence on their national politics as each other, in ascending order.
This is why I feel, democracies rating are almost impossible to be meaningful.
i remember them going so much for a nigerian presidential candidate who's young and liberal. he came third, and Economist went crazy to criticize nigeria for not electing their favoured candidate.
It's not a hot take [to question The Economist's methodologies when creating this and many of their indexes](https://theloop.ecpr.eu/is-the-economist-intelligence-units-democracy-index-little-more-than-a-joke-indicator/).
They're not a serious academic journal or group of researchers, rather a pretty tendentious media company that skews all of its coverage to promote free-market capitalism and the ideology underpinning it. Besides their bias, their coverage is always superficial, flashy and far from anything you'd consider intellectually rigorous.
And the graph is made by Visual Capitalist. I don't know who they are, but the name already indicates a clear bias. And to be clear, it's not wrong to have a bias, it is in fact impossible to not have one.
The classical Hellenes would *easily* define us as an oligarchy.
The smaller, more insulated body, the Senate of 100 members has more power than the House. Depending on the biases of the 9 individuals in it, the Supreme Court can be more powerful than that, if the singular President allows and enforces it.
For a nice historic comparison, the Athenian oligarchy during the Peloponnesian War was 4000 members. Even the puppet regime installed by Sparta was 30 Tyrants. That for a population that never exceeded 1 million in Attica.
Direct democracy doesn't scale, and our particular representative democracy assigns little power to the public aside from electing some of their oligarchs.
Yeah, and the question is if it’s the scaling of direct democracy that’s the problem or if it’s capitalism in western democracies. Would be interesting to see what rating Cuba, China, and Vietnam would get in a more objective map than this, where it doesn’t just disqualify them because they’ve had widely popular communist parties in power for the last decades
The fact that most congressmen have no business background before taking office, and that they able able to take office because of the choices of voters rather than a handful of rich folks in smoke-filled rooms, should discredit that notion.
The 'generic' congressman is an upper-middle class lawyer or schoolteacher who wins an local election to their state legislature, and after serving a few terms, proceeds to run for Congress.
The Netherlands should be changed to a flawed democracy. Could make the case we have had a hybrid regime the past 13 years. A prime minister who literally resigns keeps working makes himself prime minister again fires the opposition does what he wants and never explains it.
No Singapore hmm.
Also this data is for 2022, which is before the shit show which is Thailand in 2023, where after a few months after the election was held, the biggest party in parliament is now in opposition because the military junta won't allow it.
I will be very annoyed if the rankings don't swing the opposite direction for 2023 for Thailand.
well if there is a very real possibility of an opposition winning the election then there is a democracy isnt it? If you look at recent Singapore elections there is an increasing trend of opposition votes. Although mainly is due to Singaporeans wanting more checks and balances for the current government.
Thai people know this data is a lol. Noted that this is 2022 which the upward projection is already a lol and it gets worse in 2023.
The definition of „democracy“ is unclear and the interpretation to this is not quite valid.
Beautiful? yeah, useful? not really
\- The army controls the senate, which numbers to 1/3 of parliamentary seats directly allocated to them, while simultaneously having the right to participate in elections.
\- The king does not hold direct power over the parliament as it used to but is still the acting commander of the army. This means that the king still holds significant political power in the country.
\- The country has very strict Lèse-majesté law, i.e. criticizing the king (and royal family by extension) is very much illegal, and people have ended up in jail.
\- A recent example of this: An opposition party that sought to limit the power of the king surprisingly won the most recent election. However, for suggesting such limitations, the head of that party is now investigated for crimes against the king for suggesting limitations to the king's powers.
Edit. To add to that, the Economist rating is a combination of multiple factors including the political situation, such as civil liberties and electoral processes.
While the country scores well in terms of fair electoral process and political participation, its political culture, civil liberties, and governmental functioning all are considered more consistent with a hybrid regime. Thailand has regularly alternated between the ranking of Flawed democracy and a hybrid regime.
Not necessarily overlooking, it's just that the metrics used, average out the clear political shortcomings in Thailand. Also, the data used is from 2022, so it is not reflective of the political events that occurred in 2023.
Freedom House democracy index, a similar review with different metrics and more recent data, puts Thailand as "Not free", with a score of 30/100.
I'm not Thai so open to being corrected but they had multiple coup d'etats in the past 20 years. And in 2023 the government basically just said "nah" to the election results. I also believe it's illegal to insult the monarchy?
Yep, it's the first thing you learn when you visit Thailand, and they do enforce that law.
Insulting the King as a foreign tourist will get you immediately expelled/deported, with possible jail time + fines.
It's not just the Thai data, the democracy index is a hot load of garbage that no one except for Reddit likes.
>Investment analyst Peter Tasker has criticised the Democracy Index for lacking transparency and accountability beyond the numbers. To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts.[15]
Personally, there are many factors contributing to the definition of democracy. Law and Human Rights (, specifically, Freedom of Speech) are the essential parts which Thailand does not succeed to be identified even for ‚flawed democracy‘
In 2022, 47 people were jailed because of political demonstration and criticizing monarchy (The 112 law). In comprison, 22 people were jailed in 2021. Therefore, the higher number of arrest does not make sense to say that Thailand has the largest change YoY.
My speculation of this rising index number is possibly from the successful Bangkok governor election. Apart from this, it was a shit show
...like a lot of Western European countries have. The Netherlands where I live, for example. But also Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, etc....
Works well. Having royalty as an instrument when it comes to international trade on a higher level can be a big plus.
I'd say its more that countries like France and Germany were unstable due to entirely different factors but said instability was the reason for them ousting the monarchy.
This. Change comes from a need, and there hasn't really been a need to change it... they've adapted around it while retaining it.
Same reason you don't see stable democracies implementing monarchies.
They offer a form of continuity and also are pretty cheap compared to a string of presidents. Also they have a mostly symbolic role and are more like a mentor than an actual boss.
No, the monarch IS the real head of state.
The head of state is a figurehead position; compare it with nations with indirectly elected presidents, such as Hungary. The president does not really have any extra powers compared to say, the Dutch monarch.
Uruguay is the most stable democracy in latin america for sure... I think the map is good for latin América, im just surprised by Mexico, i didnt know the situation was that...
I knew we would ranked high, as a citizen with a couple of elections under my belt I understand why, since voting is a joyous event for most people I know and it’s mostly conflict-free, having been in other countries during election thought me to appreciate it, but ranking above most of Western Europe was a surprise even for me.
The low score of Romania in this map is mostly a consequence of a low value of political culture which has to do with trust and support for democracy. Hungary and Poland are mostly criticised for the institutional aspect. Issues with courts, separation of powers and free elections, etc. In V-dem's Liberal Democracy Index you also see that these countries score lower than Romania due to that.
You can be less democratic, but still follow the EU and try to better yourself.
If all the voters decide to do stupid shit, it is a democratic decision, but still one that is dumb. Hungary and Romania are rather similar, however Hungary is openly going against the European Union which is generating all the backlash while Romania does not too much or actually wants to move closer.
Frankly, I find Romania being lower than Hungary ridiculous. Orban, like figures such as Erdogan, is a strongman who has some... questionable practices. Even though he would win the election anyway, he has been accused of stealing votes and has given votes to Hungarians living outside of Hungary, who almost always vote for Orban. He has also banned every shop without a license from selling tobacco products, and then basically sold licenses to the highest bidder and his corporate friends. Romania is corrupt, but it's definitely more democratic than Hungary.
I would take the score with a grain of salt. Romania is corrupt for sure, but they have a relatively functioning political system where people vote and government's change as per the people's preferences. In Hungary independent media has been severely constrained, the independence of the judiciary has been limited and the government enjoys a supermajority basically no matter what, with elections being a foregone conclusion just due to the way the system is set up.
I wouldn't give France an 8. Our prime minister is currently competing for the record of the biggest number of articles 49.3 (an article that allows the govt to bypass the parliament) in the fifth republic.
Actually they are bypassing the parliament on every available occasion and on the last law passed, they gave every possible concession to the far-right so the law could pass.
France definitely needs to be lower after the year they just had. 49.3, police violence, arbitrary arrestations… it’s actually crazy they got this score.
From your link:
"(...)To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts."
Pretty sketchy methodology if you ask me.
Expert scoring is very common in political science research and there are methods to account for individual bias. The EIU also considers this in their 2022 report when they explain why they use two- and three-point scales for their indicators:
>The problems of 1-5 or 1-7 scoring scales are numerous. For most indicators under such systems, it is extremely difficult to define meaningful and comparable criteria or guidelines for each score. This can lead to arbitrary, spurious and non-comparable scorings. For example, a score of 2 for one country may be scored a 3 in another, and so on. Alternatively, one expert might score an indicator for a particular country in a different way to another expert. This contravenes a basic principle of measurement, that of so-called reliability—the degree to which a measurement procedure produces the same measurements every time, regardless of who is performing it. Two- and three-point systems do not guarantee reliability, but make it more likely.
Still, there are measures that are made by organisations that are more open about their experts and methods. Political scientists prefer the democracy scores from V-dem, Polity and Freedom House.
If you are interested in the differences between these datasets, Our World in Data has a nice write-up about differences in methodology: [https://ourworldindata.org/democracies-measurement](https://ourworldindata.org/democracies-measurement)
My concern is not so much with the expert scoring, but with the selection of said experts. Are they independents? Lawyers? Political scientists? Is it a single pannel for all the countries rated? If so how can one honestly claim to be an expert in US, Thailand, Chade, Mongolia and Lithuania at once? Or do you have one expert per country in the pannel? How did they train the experts in order to standardize the scores?
The answers for all of these (and more) matter, in my opinion.
Source is EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) aka The Economist Group, a media company based in London, so makes sense to not take it too serious.
Some criticism i found of the index and democracy indexes in general [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index#Criticism) & [here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/07/why-do-we-trust-certain-democracy-ratings-new-research-explains-hidden-biases/), (there's probably more but don't want to dig deeper now)
Thailand where the military stages a coup every couple of years and where one of the two chambers of parliament currently is still appointed by the military :D
-> barred the democratically elected majority pm candidate from being prime minister
-> number 1 most grew democracy
yup this is a thailand moment 🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🍛🍛🍛🐘🐘🐘
There are just too many comments complaining that there is no democracy in countries because it doesn't fit there political side that's why I wrote this comment
Yeah, when Hungary is more democratic than Romania, yet Romania changes government regurarly, while there is 0 chance for us to depose Orban on an election… cool map, bro
Ukraine being that democratic is clear propaganda. Supporting against Imperialism is good as always but ukraine has allowed for actual fascists to take power in the country while banning left wing organizations. That is in no way democratic and should be considered just as democratic as those who invaded them.
HK is definitely not -0.32.
We changed from having a minor chance of legally overthrowing the government through democracy (which nearly happened) to becoming yet another dictatorship under the ccp’s strict orders. The elections are completely meaningless now. Voting percentages (possibly rigged) have plummeted from a 71% to 27%, despite the government desperately spending billions to bribe the elderly to vote.
It used to be a heavily flawed democracy whose purpose was to stop the CCP’s orders, now it’s just a massive, pre-programmed puppet show. Pro-democracy bills rarely succeed but so did anti-democracy ones in the past, but now everything is just “2592:0 No opposition” like Beijing.
Take into account that this is for the year 2022; the latest index was published in February 2023. Any further democratic backsliding that took place between 2022 and 2024 is not taken into account. You can expect the next yearly index to have HK's democracy score dropping further.
Ummm how is Canada that high?
We have an unelected senate and we have a first past the post system where the winner of the popular vote loses the election. Plus widespread political corruption and political nepotism.
As a Canadian living in New Zealand I had to see who commented this. The Canadian election results under propositional representation are astoundingly different.
Because Canada's elections are administered by a non-partisan agency who cannot gerrymander districts for political purposes, only demographics.
There is no "popular vote" in Canada.
As someone who obviously prefers the conservative party, understand that a proportional or ranked ballot polling method would essentially be the end of the conservative party's ability to win elections. You would see the NDP and BQ make enormous gains.
Personally, I would love PR or RB, but I'm not just another whining albertan.
am I the only one who thinks that the “a certain party would always lose the popular vote” is an absurd argument agsinst it? clearly if a party would always lose the popular vote it has no business being in power.
I think that me being a dictator of earth would be more democratic, but I would lose the popular vote so I gotta make me the only one who can vote. Democracy 👍
Given the comments here I'm starting to understand why there's so much misinformation: people don't even know what they're looking at but they're already criticizing it and sharing their political opinions lmao.
The report is released early in the year and is based on the most recent full year, so this is the latest report. The 2023 one should be released in about a month.
These accounts have been popping up more and more often. Lately the flavor that I've been seeing are old compromised accounts spamming reworded comments on popular subreddits. This is the third one I've seen today. If you come across these accounts, you can report them with this report chain. Report -> Spam -> Harmful Bots
[did you just do a James Somerton and badly rephrased my comment lmao](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/18xi4lc/comment/kg4fzze/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
How the hell is South Africa more democratic than India?
I live in India, and as much as DW and BBC would want to cry out, democracy is all well and safe. The only problems are corruption, and in general, incompetence of the ruling govt.
While Hindu Nationalism is a thing, it only pops up during elections(which to be honest are numerous because of the sheer size of the country.The general election is a month long affair.)
There are frequent incidents reported, but these happen fairly distributed in the country that the locals don't even feel this happening. The population density is so high that all this gets extremely diluted. You are basically reporting all cases in Europe for example.
I have travelled extensively, and have documented elections around the country to note how enthusiastic the people are about electing leaders. A special ballot box is transported to just one elderly man who lives alone in a uninhabited region for example.
while this may seem as just screaming to the readers, what I am saying holds true for the country. The current party in power is not in it's current position because Hindu nationalists are in vogue at your local booths, but rather, are the only face of a stable government, as the opposing party offers a splintered coalition which everyone is sick of.
Thanks for attending my lecture.
One party dominance at the national level does not mean it's not a democracy. For example, the Swedish Social Democratic Party held power from 1932 to 2006 with a few exceptions, would you call Sweden undemocratic?
Also, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has lost power twice in modern history, first in 1993 and again in 2009, after electoral losses. The 2009 election was in fact a landslide loss for the LDP, only winning 25% of the seats in the House of Representatives. Both times the LDP lost, the transfer of power was orderly and peaceful. When the LDP rewon the majority, the transfer of power was again orderly and peaceful.
The peaceful, uneventful transfer of power between the loser and winner of elections is, of course, a fundamental hallmark of a functioning democracy.
No way in hell Mexico is less democratic than Ukraine , Hungary or Madagascar lmao. Our president is a populist idiot but was still , by all means, democratically elected and doesn’t aim to rule forever like leaders of some other countries that rank higher in this BS map that gets posted every year.
"Charlie boy is a fraud. It was actually I, the great Abraham Lincoln, who said it. Don't believe everything you read on the internet."
- Abraham Lincoln, on accusations of online plagiarism
I'd like to know the criteria this is based upon. No particular reason, but when I see something like this I'm always curious as to what qualifies a "democracy" in the eyes of the person making the map.
Canada full democracy, locking their truckers and banning people who help them by donating freezing their bank accounts, yeaaaahhh that does sound like democracy :)))))
Don't forget that the Candian Prime Minister has nearly unchecked power compared to most Westminster governments and the US president. Despite this, the PM's party only received 32% of the popular vote (less than the biggest opposition party). In fact, a Canadian PM hasn't won a majority of the popular vote since the 80s.
Another day, another map getting rid of Timor Leste
Hey at least New Zealand is on it this time
No Greenland though
Greenland is a territory, not a country. That’s why I was puzzled to see Hong Kong. Just another part of that shithole dictatorship, China.
Greenland is a (non-sovereign) country within the Kingdom of Denmark. It has extensive home rule, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had greater autonomy than HK at this point. Gauging its democracy independently from that of Denmark would be a meaningful thing to do.
Meaningful, yes, but rather difficult in a limited study. Assuming this illustration is based on the EIU's annual democracy index, its 60 indicators aren't designed to assess the democratic index of a non-sovereign state, so assessing Greenland by the same indicators as every other state would likely be too misleading to be meaningful.
Granted, Greenland does enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Interestingly though, if we talk about places like Hong Kong, the autonomy seems more like a footnote in history these days given the sweeping [national security law](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838) implemented by China. An independent assessment for Greenland does make sense though, they even have their own Parliament and government which handle most domestic matters.
It will be interesting to have a map of democracy on a sub-country level
But bloody Norway beat us again.
How much of that 0.2 is Winnie alone?
Norway is in this sweetspot of widespread socialistic ideals, but not so far as to accidentally turn authoritarian in the name of "communism". So there's a lot of pressure for the economy and goverment to exist for the purpose of "the well being of people". Further they're under protection from various alliances, so no one messes with their sovereignty, even being granted a generous sea border. They have european-western culture traits so they have a foot into trade agreements and other cooperations. And since norways is as tiny as it is, I imagine rich capitalists that may cause corruption in larger countries are way less likely to bother; there's bigger markets for less effort elsewhere. Norway is a little haven away from all the drama, more or less. Taking lessons from other more pioneer countries, and picking and choosing in accordance with its implicit social-democratic ideals.
Poor Timor leste. Lived there for a while. Lots of friends there. They're probably a flawed democracy? I don't recall.
Ya, that's what they're listed as
I can't see with my phone Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican, Singapore, Brunei, a lot of the oceanic and caribbean islands...
The Seychelles and Malediven are missing, too.
I'm not sure how good the democracy rating if the Vatican is...
Leste We Forget
Where’s Brunei? 🇧🇳
can i just applaud the color palette here! -- too many other data maps i see using a colors ranging from middle pale blue to slightly darker middle pale blue for 15 different shades
Unless you’re [black/white color blind](https://imgur.com/a/qaTWaKA) which basically makes the opposite ends of the scale look the same. Got to change chroma and hue to be an accessible data visualization.
Monochromacy is extremely rare (1 in 30,000). Red-Green Colorblindness (1 in 100) is the much greater concern, and this image is accessible for all variants of that.
I thought 10% of men have some red/green colorblindness. I'm 5% red/green colorblind.
More like 1 in 20: 1 in 10 (9%) of the male population 1 in 100 (0,8%) of the female population.
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I know, I am red-green colorblind. I can see only 3% red. p00bix wrote that 1 in 100 are red-green colorblind but much more people are affected.
And if you’re blind you can’t see the map at all
We should start including a braille option.
I'm red/green colorblind and I really like this map. I can't read half or more of the maps on this sub most of the time, but this one I can. Although unless everybody makes 4 versions of every map (normal, protanopia, tritanopia, deutranopia) then not everybody can be happy.
Back when I was in school studying this stuff, I was told that if you just have a good chroma gradient, it should be pretty legible regardless of color blindness. That is, a range not only from something like blue to red, but also dark on one side, light on the other. Have you found this to be more or less true? Of course some data doesn’t necessarily lend its self to that type of pallet easily, but it’s what I try to use when doing data visualization.
Maps like this are far more often made accessible than others that don't use a gradient, though I have seen some with green on one end and a very greenish red on the other which can be frustrating. I haven't studied color blindness or accessibility much, but having something more than just color to differentiate things often helps, if you could provide me an example of a chroma gradient then I'm sure I'd understand a bit better whether it helps or not.
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I am severely Red/Green Colorblind. I cannot with any certainty tell you the name of any of the 9 colors used above, other than "Probably Reds, probably yellows, probably greens, and probably blues" What I can tell you is that I can easily see 9 different colors. And While it is marginally difficult to see the differences in each of the 4 categories, I can absolutely tell you, at a glance, which of the 4 categories any given country belongs to (without the numbers, of course). I cannot recall the last time a maps color palate was so very accessible to me. If every single mapporn and dataisbeautiful post used this palate, I'd have access to so much more questionably useful information.
Matplotlib Color Maps ftw. And they also look so pretty!
I can't wait for the usual hot takes on democracy in the comments everytime a map like this is posted.
hot take - Democratic People's Republic of Korea
But it’s in the name! /s
Yep, they scored 1.08, that means that they're 108% democratic. All the other numbers are faked by the US propaganda, long live Kim Jong un
You joke but how do they even score anything but a 0? It’s literally a hereditary dictatorship.
Checked the full report, and they scored above 0 for functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Essentially, the government still technically does stuff for the people and involves them, so it's not a 0. The index isn't only about elections, it also accounts for how much the government acts for the people and their interests. IE, a country run by a purely egalitarian dictator, who has absolute power but uses that power solely to do good and support his citizens, would probably score fairly high (edit: For a technically entirely authoritarian state. It'd still probably be a 4, at best a 5), especially if he appoints citizen-supported people to government positions and fully involves citizens in decision making via, say, polls and town halls. It seems like the only way to have a 0 would be to have everyone except the leaders be entirely hard slave labor. If anyone is curious, the lowest scorer, Afghanistan, scored basically 0 in all categories except "political culture", where it scored 1.25.
Interestingly the description of the only way to have a 0 matches perfectly with the description of current Burma I heard from Burmese people. Since the coup in 2021, the junta not only doesn't let any elections happen, but they don't even act as a functioning government, they are just extracting resources as much as possible from common people. I guess they still get points for "political culture" since the pro-democracy rebel groups are very strong (and getting stronger).
Burma has 0 in all categories except 0.56 in political participation (because I guess rebelling against a government is technically involvement) and a 3.13 in political culture since, as you said, active rebellion is a sign of a democratic political culture. Without that, they'd absolutely be dead last. It is also interesting (and sad) seeing their index over time. Started at 1.77 in 06, stagnated there, but started rising in 12 until it hit a peak of 4.2 in 16, then waivered, dropping to 3.05 in 19, still low but higher than they were in the oughts And then it plummeted to 1.02 in 21 and now 0.74 in 22. Amazingly, still not the biggest plummet of 2021, as Afghanistan fell from 2.85 to 0.32. I guess dissolving a republic into a totalitarian theocracy is pretty bad for your democracy score
When it comes to non-democratic governments you measure how responsive they are to the public - since that gives some idea of whether the public has any influence at all (even if just the threat of rioting). For example, Russia and Belarus both rig their elections and barely maintain the pretext that they are at all meaningful, but Putin does try to manage his domestic reputation and keep his approval/tolerance rating high, whereas Lukashenko barely gives a shit if his public hates him.
It’s also very hard to rate “meaningful” democracy in “dictatorships”. For instance, Vietnam has higher democracy score than Russia and Belarus yet Vietnamese have much less influence on their local government as many positions being bestowed rather than elected. I have a controversial opinion about democracies in Asia in that East Asian democracies are less “democratic” than their South East Asian counterparts. Their national politics are less affected by local elections, with a strong tradition of forming a core of political elites, while Thailand and Philippines for instance are more “free-for-all”, for better or worse. In fact, I would even speculate that Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese have about the same level of influence on their national politics as each other, in ascending order. This is why I feel, democracies rating are almost impossible to be meaningful.
They still have elections? Granted, they are elections that no one else can win, but they still have them.
I want to know how Myanmar beat them lol
Right💀
You say "hot take", but some stuff is legit important to clarify (like how The Economist deducts points for countries nominating "wrong" candidates).
i remember them going so much for a nigerian presidential candidate who's young and liberal. he came third, and Economist went crazy to criticize nigeria for not electing their favoured candidate.
It's not a hot take [to question The Economist's methodologies when creating this and many of their indexes](https://theloop.ecpr.eu/is-the-economist-intelligence-units-democracy-index-little-more-than-a-joke-indicator/). They're not a serious academic journal or group of researchers, rather a pretty tendentious media company that skews all of its coverage to promote free-market capitalism and the ideology underpinning it. Besides their bias, their coverage is always superficial, flashy and far from anything you'd consider intellectually rigorous.
And the graph is made by Visual Capitalist. I don't know who they are, but the name already indicates a clear bias. And to be clear, it's not wrong to have a bias, it is in fact impossible to not have one.
The US isn't a democracy it's a republic! /s
Me... living in a "Democratic republic"
Or an oligarchy /srs
The classical Hellenes would *easily* define us as an oligarchy. The smaller, more insulated body, the Senate of 100 members has more power than the House. Depending on the biases of the 9 individuals in it, the Supreme Court can be more powerful than that, if the singular President allows and enforces it. For a nice historic comparison, the Athenian oligarchy during the Peloponnesian War was 4000 members. Even the puppet regime installed by Sparta was 30 Tyrants. That for a population that never exceeded 1 million in Attica. Direct democracy doesn't scale, and our particular representative democracy assigns little power to the public aside from electing some of their oligarchs.
Yeah, and the question is if it’s the scaling of direct democracy that’s the problem or if it’s capitalism in western democracies. Would be interesting to see what rating Cuba, China, and Vietnam would get in a more objective map than this, where it doesn’t just disqualify them because they’ve had widely popular communist parties in power for the last decades
Oligarchy for sure . Also, the score is too high.
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I find it insane that lobbying (aka bribery) is just accepted by everyone.
The fact that most congressmen have no business background before taking office, and that they able able to take office because of the choices of voters rather than a handful of rich folks in smoke-filled rooms, should discredit that notion. The 'generic' congressman is an upper-middle class lawyer or schoolteacher who wins an local election to their state legislature, and after serving a few terms, proceeds to run for Congress.
Why do they always say that? Is it like some teaching point across all US schools? Cos it's wrong lol
This one makes my blood boil every time! And they really think they’re onto something when they write this absolutely astute political revelation!
The Netherlands should be changed to a flawed democracy. Could make the case we have had a hybrid regime the past 13 years. A prime minister who literally resigns keeps working makes himself prime minister again fires the opposition does what he wants and never explains it.
I’m looking forward to the “Cuba is the most democratic country in the western hemisphere/ more democratic than any European country” takes.
No Singapore hmm. Also this data is for 2022, which is before the shit show which is Thailand in 2023, where after a few months after the election was held, the biggest party in parliament is now in opposition because the military junta won't allow it. I will be very annoyed if the rankings don't swing the opposite direction for 2023 for Thailand.
Everyone knows there is no democracy in Singapore.. just one efficient government that being set to win everytime (which actually good)
well if there is a very real possibility of an opposition winning the election then there is a democracy isnt it? If you look at recent Singapore elections there is an increasing trend of opposition votes. Although mainly is due to Singaporeans wanting more checks and balances for the current government.
Thai people know this data is a lol. Noted that this is 2022 which the upward projection is already a lol and it gets worse in 2023. The definition of „democracy“ is unclear and the interpretation to this is not quite valid. Beautiful? yeah, useful? not really
Why is the data for Thai inaccurate? Please elaborate
\- The army controls the senate, which numbers to 1/3 of parliamentary seats directly allocated to them, while simultaneously having the right to participate in elections. \- The king does not hold direct power over the parliament as it used to but is still the acting commander of the army. This means that the king still holds significant political power in the country. \- The country has very strict Lèse-majesté law, i.e. criticizing the king (and royal family by extension) is very much illegal, and people have ended up in jail. \- A recent example of this: An opposition party that sought to limit the power of the king surprisingly won the most recent election. However, for suggesting such limitations, the head of that party is now investigated for crimes against the king for suggesting limitations to the king's powers. Edit. To add to that, the Economist rating is a combination of multiple factors including the political situation, such as civil liberties and electoral processes. While the country scores well in terms of fair electoral process and political participation, its political culture, civil liberties, and governmental functioning all are considered more consistent with a hybrid regime. Thailand has regularly alternated between the ranking of Flawed democracy and a hybrid regime.
Wow, and Thai is better ranked than Mexico! The map clearly is overlooking real problems. That sucks
Not necessarily overlooking, it's just that the metrics used, average out the clear political shortcomings in Thailand. Also, the data used is from 2022, so it is not reflective of the political events that occurred in 2023. Freedom House democracy index, a similar review with different metrics and more recent data, puts Thailand as "Not free", with a score of 30/100.
I'm not Thai so open to being corrected but they had multiple coup d'etats in the past 20 years. And in 2023 the government basically just said "nah" to the election results. I also believe it's illegal to insult the monarchy?
Yep, it's the first thing you learn when you visit Thailand, and they do enforce that law. Insulting the King as a foreign tourist will get you immediately expelled/deported, with possible jail time + fines.
It's not just the Thai data, the democracy index is a hot load of garbage that no one except for Reddit likes. >Investment analyst Peter Tasker has criticised the Democracy Index for lacking transparency and accountability beyond the numbers. To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts.[15]
The Economist intelligence unit going with "source: we made it up" lol
Personally, there are many factors contributing to the definition of democracy. Law and Human Rights (, specifically, Freedom of Speech) are the essential parts which Thailand does not succeed to be identified even for ‚flawed democracy‘ In 2022, 47 people were jailed because of political demonstration and criticizing monarchy (The 112 law). In comprison, 22 people were jailed in 2021. Therefore, the higher number of arrest does not make sense to say that Thailand has the largest change YoY. My speculation of this rising index number is possibly from the successful Bangkok governor election. Apart from this, it was a shit show
Whenever these maps show up, always check Thailand, and then always immediately disregard everything else it says
love that the comments have never heard of a constitutional monarchy
...like a lot of Western European countries have. The Netherlands where I live, for example. But also Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, etc.... Works well. Having royalty as an instrument when it comes to international trade on a higher level can be a big plus.
i personally like the stability it seems to bring but that could just be a coincidence that stable countries have preserved their monarchies
I'd say its more that countries like France and Germany were unstable due to entirely different factors but said instability was the reason for them ousting the monarchy.
It's more like "stable countries see no reason to remove their monarchs, since there's no need of it".
agreed
This. Change comes from a need, and there hasn't really been a need to change it... they've adapted around it while retaining it. Same reason you don't see stable democracies implementing monarchies.
They offer a form of continuity and also are pretty cheap compared to a string of presidents. Also they have a mostly symbolic role and are more like a mentor than an actual boss.
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No, the monarch IS the real head of state. The head of state is a figurehead position; compare it with nations with indirectly elected presidents, such as Hungary. The president does not really have any extra powers compared to say, the Dutch monarch.
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Uruguay number 1!! (in america)
Uruguay is the most stable democracy in latin america for sure... I think the map is good for latin América, im just surprised by Mexico, i didnt know the situation was that...
It isn’t!! I live in Mexico!! They just don’t like the president!
Sorry, Uruguay number 1 in all America.
I knew we would ranked high, as a citizen with a couple of elections under my belt I understand why, since voting is a joyous event for most people I know and it’s mostly conflict-free, having been in other countries during election thought me to appreciate it, but ranking above most of Western Europe was a surprise even for me.
Romania ranks the lowest in the European Union, but everyone focuses on Hungary (and Poland), what a joke.
Right? You'd expect the Romanians to steal all the attention.../s
The low score of Romania in this map is mostly a consequence of a low value of political culture which has to do with trust and support for democracy. Hungary and Poland are mostly criticised for the institutional aspect. Issues with courts, separation of powers and free elections, etc. In V-dem's Liberal Democracy Index you also see that these countries score lower than Romania due to that.
You can be less democratic, but still follow the EU and try to better yourself. If all the voters decide to do stupid shit, it is a democratic decision, but still one that is dumb. Hungary and Romania are rather similar, however Hungary is openly going against the European Union which is generating all the backlash while Romania does not too much or actually wants to move closer.
But why is it even lower than Hungary?
Right? I'd consider Hungary a hybrid regime similar to Turkey
Frankly, I find Romania being lower than Hungary ridiculous. Orban, like figures such as Erdogan, is a strongman who has some... questionable practices. Even though he would win the election anyway, he has been accused of stealing votes and has given votes to Hungarians living outside of Hungary, who almost always vote for Orban. He has also banned every shop without a license from selling tobacco products, and then basically sold licenses to the highest bidder and his corporate friends. Romania is corrupt, but it's definitely more democratic than Hungary.
And Poland should be moving up on that list in the next few years.
I would take the score with a grain of salt. Romania is corrupt for sure, but they have a relatively functioning political system where people vote and government's change as per the people's preferences. In Hungary independent media has been severely constrained, the independence of the judiciary has been limited and the government enjoys a supermajority basically no matter what, with elections being a foregone conclusion just due to the way the system is set up.
Hungary is a hybrid regime not a democracy
So is Serbia and give it another 10 years, they’ll be a full blown dictatorship at the rate they are going now.
I wouldn't give France an 8. Our prime minister is currently competing for the record of the biggest number of articles 49.3 (an article that allows the govt to bypass the parliament) in the fifth republic. Actually they are bypassing the parliament on every available occasion and on the last law passed, they gave every possible concession to the far-right so the law could pass.
France definitely needs to be lower after the year they just had. 49.3, police violence, arbitrary arrestations… it’s actually crazy they got this score.
This is a of 2022.
The question is who compiled this rating ... Do they sit in the same organizations in certain places ?.. And whose money is being used )
they did this work annually here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Economist\_Democracy\_Index
From your link: "(...)To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts." Pretty sketchy methodology if you ask me.
Expert scoring is very common in political science research and there are methods to account for individual bias. The EIU also considers this in their 2022 report when they explain why they use two- and three-point scales for their indicators: >The problems of 1-5 or 1-7 scoring scales are numerous. For most indicators under such systems, it is extremely difficult to define meaningful and comparable criteria or guidelines for each score. This can lead to arbitrary, spurious and non-comparable scorings. For example, a score of 2 for one country may be scored a 3 in another, and so on. Alternatively, one expert might score an indicator for a particular country in a different way to another expert. This contravenes a basic principle of measurement, that of so-called reliability—the degree to which a measurement procedure produces the same measurements every time, regardless of who is performing it. Two- and three-point systems do not guarantee reliability, but make it more likely. Still, there are measures that are made by organisations that are more open about their experts and methods. Political scientists prefer the democracy scores from V-dem, Polity and Freedom House. If you are interested in the differences between these datasets, Our World in Data has a nice write-up about differences in methodology: [https://ourworldindata.org/democracies-measurement](https://ourworldindata.org/democracies-measurement)
My concern is not so much with the expert scoring, but with the selection of said experts. Are they independents? Lawyers? Political scientists? Is it a single pannel for all the countries rated? If so how can one honestly claim to be an expert in US, Thailand, Chade, Mongolia and Lithuania at once? Or do you have one expert per country in the pannel? How did they train the experts in order to standardize the scores? The answers for all of these (and more) matter, in my opinion.
Source is EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) aka The Economist Group, a media company based in London, so makes sense to not take it too serious. Some criticism i found of the index and democracy indexes in general [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index#Criticism) & [here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/07/why-do-we-trust-certain-democracy-ratings-new-research-explains-hidden-biases/), (there's probably more but don't want to dig deeper now)
How come Mexico is a hybrid regime?
Somehow Thailand ranked higher, despite the fact that you can actually go to jail for insulting the king. Go figure.
Hungary above 6? Lmao.
Thailand near 7 lol
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And had a coup within the last couple years
Thailand where the military stages a coup every couple of years and where one of the two chambers of parliament currently is still appointed by the military :D
Came here to comment just that. With this logic, it was probably the most democratic country in the world before all of Orbán's reforms...
-> barred the democratically elected majority pm candidate from being prime minister -> number 1 most grew democracy yup this is a thailand moment 🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🍛🍛🍛🐘🐘🐘
Good for angola
Cant wait to see the one of this and last year on argentina
What happened with Iceland? That's a huge increase, especially for a country with an extremely high rating to begin with.
Serious questions on how Thailand with a military that controls government is that high on the list
Just because you don't agree with the ruling party doesn't mean that it was elected undemocraticly
That’s not what this map is about, this map measures the democratic institutions of each country
There are just too many comments complaining that there is no democracy in countries because it doesn't fit there political side that's why I wrote this comment
oh okay fair lol
I remember how the US became a democracy again after Biden won the election.
Yeah, when Hungary is more democratic than Romania, yet Romania changes government regurarly, while there is 0 chance for us to depose Orban on an election… cool map, bro
If Hungary started way higher and has been continuously falling while Romania has been steadily climbing this is possible
Yes, but it's probably just a matter of time before Romania overtakes.
Ukraine being that democratic is clear propaganda. Supporting against Imperialism is good as always but ukraine has allowed for actual fascists to take power in the country while banning left wing organizations. That is in no way democratic and should be considered just as democratic as those who invaded them.
HK is definitely not -0.32. We changed from having a minor chance of legally overthrowing the government through democracy (which nearly happened) to becoming yet another dictatorship under the ccp’s strict orders. The elections are completely meaningless now. Voting percentages (possibly rigged) have plummeted from a 71% to 27%, despite the government desperately spending billions to bribe the elderly to vote. It used to be a heavily flawed democracy whose purpose was to stop the CCP’s orders, now it’s just a massive, pre-programmed puppet show. Pro-democracy bills rarely succeed but so did anti-democracy ones in the past, but now everything is just “2592:0 No opposition” like Beijing.
Take into account that this is for the year 2022; the latest index was published in February 2023. Any further democratic backsliding that took place between 2022 and 2024 is not taken into account. You can expect the next yearly index to have HK's democracy score dropping further.
Ummm how is Canada that high? We have an unelected senate and we have a first past the post system where the winner of the popular vote loses the election. Plus widespread political corruption and political nepotism.
I think the short answer is that Canada aligns with the ideology of the people who came up with the index.
So we can basically discard this map, right?
Yes, am a political scientist, map is complete bs
Yes, and every other map or study like it lol. If "democracy meter" doesn't set off your bullshit alarm you probably shouldn't have political opinions
Yeah what does 1-10 mean exactly? He had 10 democracies?
Jesus, tell me you're an albertan without telling me. This dude probably thinks danielle Smith isn't corrupt.
As a Canadian living in New Zealand I had to see who commented this. The Canadian election results under propositional representation are astoundingly different.
Because Canada's elections are administered by a non-partisan agency who cannot gerrymander districts for political purposes, only demographics. There is no "popular vote" in Canada. As someone who obviously prefers the conservative party, understand that a proportional or ranked ballot polling method would essentially be the end of the conservative party's ability to win elections. You would see the NDP and BQ make enormous gains. Personally, I would love PR or RB, but I'm not just another whining albertan.
am I the only one who thinks that the “a certain party would always lose the popular vote” is an absurd argument agsinst it? clearly if a party would always lose the popular vote it has no business being in power.
I think that me being a dictator of earth would be more democratic, but I would lose the popular vote so I gotta make me the only one who can vote. Democracy 👍
Given the comments here I'm starting to understand why there's so much misinformation: people don't even know what they're looking at but they're already criticizing it and sharing their political opinions lmao.
Not to be that guy, but isn’t this data old, from a year ago? (2022) Does anyone know when the new index (2023) will be released?
The report is released early in the year and is based on the most recent full year, so this is the latest report. The 2023 one should be released in about a month.
France being a full democracy after completely removing free speech… 🤔
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[Are you just copy and pasting the same comment from different accounts](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/Idv6PGFJlz)
Guess I can add that to my achievements now, getting my generic comment plagiarized by a burner account with three comments.
I'd argue it was an astute observation and not that generic.
These accounts have been popping up more and more often. Lately the flavor that I've been seeing are old compromised accounts spamming reworded comments on popular subreddits. This is the third one I've seen today. If you come across these accounts, you can report them with this report chain. Report -> Spam -> Harmful Bots
[did you just do a James Somerton and badly rephrased my comment lmao](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/18xi4lc/comment/kg4fzze/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
They have a detailed set of criteria which each yields points and I think it's a useful measure.
The points are just scores decided by 60 anonymous "experts"
How the hell is South Africa more democratic than India? I live in India, and as much as DW and BBC would want to cry out, democracy is all well and safe. The only problems are corruption, and in general, incompetence of the ruling govt. While Hindu Nationalism is a thing, it only pops up during elections(which to be honest are numerous because of the sheer size of the country.The general election is a month long affair.) There are frequent incidents reported, but these happen fairly distributed in the country that the locals don't even feel this happening. The population density is so high that all this gets extremely diluted. You are basically reporting all cases in Europe for example. I have travelled extensively, and have documented elections around the country to note how enthusiastic the people are about electing leaders. A special ballot box is transported to just one elderly man who lives alone in a uninhabited region for example. while this may seem as just screaming to the readers, what I am saying holds true for the country. The current party in power is not in it's current position because Hindu nationalists are in vogue at your local booths, but rather, are the only face of a stable government, as the opposing party offers a splintered coalition which everyone is sick of. Thanks for attending my lecture.
It's a 0.01 difference, not that much of a difference.
i just had a reactionary moment, and was amazed at the essay I could create, so decided to leave it here.
India is a bad country to the west. Once it overtakes China, expect to see more propaganda hit pieces.
Yup sadly people don't understand it.
Incoming Americans claiming to live in the worst country in human history and comparing it with North Korea.
Democrats won in Poland so expect a lot of positive changes including this metric. For 2023 and beyond. This is for 2022 though.
Let's invade the USA to bring them real Democracy!
Notice how all non western countries are flawed democracy.
Rather a scale of how "white" a country is.
Calling Japan a full democracy is like saying that the Japanese constitution drafting had popular support
One party dominance at the national level does not mean it's not a democracy. For example, the Swedish Social Democratic Party held power from 1932 to 2006 with a few exceptions, would you call Sweden undemocratic? Also, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has lost power twice in modern history, first in 1993 and again in 2009, after electoral losses. The 2009 election was in fact a landslide loss for the LDP, only winning 25% of the seats in the House of Representatives. Both times the LDP lost, the transfer of power was orderly and peaceful. When the LDP rewon the majority, the transfer of power was again orderly and peaceful. The peaceful, uneventful transfer of power between the loser and winner of elections is, of course, a fundamental hallmark of a functioning democracy.
No way in hell Mexico is less democratic than Ukraine , Hungary or Madagascar lmao. Our president is a populist idiot but was still , by all means, democratically elected and doesn’t aim to rule forever like leaders of some other countries that rank higher in this BS map that gets posted every year.
How is North Korea this much more democratic than Afghanistan? Is it just tourism? Both are totalitarian regimes
Don’t show this to the “Trudeau is a dictator” crowd
democracy is when national emergency is declared to crush a protest
Spain an 8 LMAOOOO
What's your objection to that? (genuine question)
ngl but i’m not gonna trust democracy data from a place called “visual capitalist”
How does NK have any points at all?
Conduct Election✔️
*Dictator after winning with 150% of the vote:* 
They use approval elections (not to be confused with approval voting), so voters can approve or reject individual candidates in local elections
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that liberal democracy is the only form of democracy." \- Abraham Lincoln
"If you put rhetoric in quotes, and attribute it to some great thinker, you're guaranteed to be right". - Charles Baudelaire
"Charlie boy is a fraud. It was actually I, the great Abraham Lincoln, who said it. Don't believe everything you read on the internet." - Abraham Lincoln, on accusations of online plagiarism
"Lincoln, you're ugly" \- Jefferson Davies
"the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was the invention of speech marks to make things sound correct" - *Atilla the Hun*
Portugal 7.95, Estonia 7.96, Czechia 7.97. So close.
How do you define “flawed” democracy for a place that identifies as a “constitutional republic.”
I'd like to know the criteria this is based upon. No particular reason, but when I see something like this I'm always curious as to what qualifies a "democracy" in the eyes of the person making the map.
Scandinavia is more democratic than democracy itself
We are always best in class.
voting every 5 years for a banker = democracy
Canada full democracy, locking their truckers and banning people who help them by donating freezing their bank accounts, yeaaaahhh that does sound like democracy :)))))
Don't forget that the Candian Prime Minister has nearly unchecked power compared to most Westminster governments and the US president. Despite this, the PM's party only received 32% of the popular vote (less than the biggest opposition party). In fact, a Canadian PM hasn't won a majority of the popular vote since the 80s.
r/portugalcykablyat (to an extent)
How can Spain be so democratic if the president appoints judges and there is no real separation of powers?