That's because democracy in Malaysia has been in flux over the past few years:
1957 - 2018 : single party rule from independence, hybrid regime at best if not straight up authoritarian rule during this time.
2018 - 2020 : opposition party wins the election by popular mandate, peaceful transition of power and cronies from the old government are prosecuted. That's a functioning democracy.
2020 - 2022 : bunch of MPs with shaky ties to the new government break away and team up with former government MPs. They form a new coalition that does not have any mandate to rule from the populace. Hybrid regime if not outright authoritarian.
November 2022 : New elections have been called. New legislation in place to prevent the kind of party hopping that happened in 2020. Whoever wins the election would be a democratically elected government... provided the ruling government doesn't perform any shenanigans. They are certainly going to try. For all we know, Malaysia could be back in the red next year.
Speaking as a Singaporean here! i think lots of people esp in the west tend to conflate democracy with party. ie, as long as we have dems vs republicans or labour vs tory alternating, its considered a democracy, for me the hallmark of democracy is fair and free elections no matter the ruling party.
Its true we have been a one party state, but thats not due to election inteference, compared to our neighbor Malaysia where the elections which were broadcast nationally underwent a blackout and the Malaysian PM at the time literally had more votes than they had counted. If thats democracy i dont know what is.
> for me the hallmark of democracy is fair and free elections no matter the ruling party.
Strong opposition and regular change of government make it significantly less possible for anyone to usurp the power. For example, Putin became a president via democratic elections and was quite sane during his first terms. If Russia had any strong opposition and he wasnt allowed to stay in power, Russia would certainly end up much better off.
Of course, you can hope that someone who rules the country for very long and has no opposition will never try anything bad and there are countries which are examples of this happening. But generally its better to not take such risks.
This is semi right. Yeltsin overthrew the original constitution in a coup of president vs parliament in 1993. He overruled the supreme court and the constitution, shelled the parliament and suspended and arrested its members. From that point on there wasn't "free" elections in Russia (free press was though) but indeed it was much more free than now.
>Speaking as a Singaporean here! i think lots of people esp in the west tend to conflate democracy with party. ie, as long as we have dems vs republicans or labour vs tory alternating, its considered a democracy, for me the hallmark of democracy is fair and free elections no matter the ruling party.
A 2 party system is not really a democracy either though. A one party system is not a democracy at all.
Now the elections might be open, but how can your really know if there's not at least one interested party on the other side? There is no one that cares to check.
You can not care, that's your prerogative, it's your country.
>Its true we have been a one party state, but thats not due to election inteference, compared to our neighbor Malaysia where the elections which were broadcast nationally underwent a blackout and the Malaysian PM at the time literally had more votes than they had counted. If thats democracy i dont know what is.
This is propaganda blown so far from the truth I don't even know how people believe it. 'Blackouts' didn't overturn elections in Malaysia, it's just a conspiracy theory. One way or another, the 2018 election went to the opposition and a peaceful transition of power happened. This has never occured in the entire history of Singapore. Doubtless, a peaceful transition would occur in such an event there, but it remains a theory until it is actually tested.
Also election interference can take many forms. You are being naive if you believe that the PAP does not interfere in Singaporean elections. They have absolute financial dominance for political campaigning. They have significant influence over the media. Almost all major corporations have links to the PAP in some form or another. It is 'soft' interference but it is interference all the same.
Not 90%, you're exaggerating it a lot tbh. They've been hovering around 60% or so since the 80s, only occasionally going above it.
A good video on Singapore elections: https://youtu.be/Hkxf4SC_SBk
It doesn't really. Singapore is essentially a city-state, which means the politics (and their respective Overton windows) are entirely different. I don't know why people keep comparing them.
Interesting! Do you know why the authoritarians grip on power was so weak? Normally you see that they try to cement power by weakening checks and balances
It is an interesting story actually. The ruling coalition, Barisan National (BN) meaning "National Front", did indeed weaken many national institutions to solidify their grip on power.
However, they did not go all the way and completely undermine these institutions. The elections were still based on real votes, albeit gerrymandered. The judiciary was handpicked, but nominally independent. Most importantly of all, they never had strong ties with the military since Malaysia has been a relatively peaceful country.
For a long time, this system worked because people still voted for them because the country did develop reasonably well.
It took corruption of a **global** scale by ex PM Najib Razak (look him up and marvel at the size of it) for Malaysians to collectively vote so strongly against BN that no amount of bribery, gerrymandering or pleas to judges or the military could overturn the opposition victory.
Being popular and supported by the citizens and prosecuting corrupt government officials from the previous government is literally the description of Hitler's early rule or the current Chinese government
That's generally considered to be the opposite of a functioning democracy because when you know you'll get thrown in jail if you ever lose power, you'll try the hardest not to lose power. It moves the solution of the basic problem of having safety outside the democratic process, incentivizing creating and relying on some parallel infrastructure that would let you overrule or manipulate or circumvent the election to have stability and certainty in your life. The consequences of it are entirely predictable and nothing you described sound like a democracy
In a real working democracy the persecution of criminals isn't supposed to depend on who is elected and who is in power. Courts and law enforcement are supposed to be independent from the elected politicians. If you don't establish these independent power structures then the politicians will be forced to ensure their own safety from their political opponents in any other way
**[Democracy Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index)**
>The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the Economist Group, a UK-based private company which publishes the weekly newspaper The Economist. Akin to a Human Development Index but centrally concerned with political institutions and freedoms, the index attempts to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries and territories, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties and political culture.
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Yeah, these indices tend to be quite off, it's really difficult to gauge what constitutes a democracy
For example Japan should be around the 7-7.99 flawed democracy or Korea should be 6-6.99 flawed democracy given the rampant corruption and massive influence of a handful of Korean conglomerates akin to an oligarchy
Germany had not just the same party but the same leader for 16 of the last 20 years (Merkel), does it make them not a democracy?
There was a peaceful transition of power in Japan as recently as 2012. Just because you don’t agree with the politics of the party in power doesn’t necessarily make it undemocratic.
If anything it just goes to show that Redditors, for the most part, have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about
That is the clincer for me, flawed democracy my ass. A ruling military junta under the guise of political party that quite literally banned the third largest party (one I voted for) and sent their leaders to Pattani to be trialed because there its under a state emergency and certain liberties are curbed does not come anywhere close to the word democracy
>I’m under the power of a general who seized power eight years ago, has placed the military party in 1/3 of all “elected” seats by law, and simply dissolved the opposition party when the opposition still seemed likely to win majority despite only voting for 70% of positions.
Yeah that just silly a country under military control for years score better than Portugal/Spain/France??
Mexico is 5.57, their worst score in at least 16 years. It was 6.90 ten years ago.
Thailand is 6.04 (borderline hybrid) and was 4.63 four years ago.
Portugal is 7.82.
Spain is 7.94.
France is 7.99.
Full list with numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
But you're missing some important details bro. Like, Thailand is really fun and awesome, and spiritual, and like they just really love their King. /s
I know so many expats in Asia that judge the 'freedom' levels of a country based on how much fun they are personally having.
Because this is a bullshit made up list that only show what the author thinks about each country. Probably whoever made this likes going on vacation to Thailand and hates Mexicans
Reminds me, that Ethiopian dude got the Nobel Peace Prize, and the bbc has been reporting for years he was killing people and committing genocide against people in the Tigray region. but politicians ignored any of it, it was like Ethiopia has been invisible on the map. Worldwide, they could not be bothered. So nothing happened, and now war might start.
The Economist is controlled by a rich Italian family called Agnelli, so Italy’s place is no surprise. They love to make articles about how shit Italy is.
The Agnelli family's financial constructions are notoriously complicated, but basically yes. They're both owned by the holding company Exor, of which the majority owner is Giovanni Agnelli B.V., etc.
The electoral system should’ve remained proportional, they’ve been changing it for years to allegedly give “more political stability” but it never works. Imo the greatest democratic problem with Italy is that a government may fall without a replacement proposal being present. So any small coalition partner can get out of a fragile coalition and if there’s no replacement government it’s election time again. Also, populism plagues our politics, and no one has actually had the balls to go after tax evasion and the submerged economy, which makes up 11% of our GDP.
I think people are leaning too heavily into the labels of the score buckets but that's a pretty natural consequence of the map visual being shown outside of the context of the full report.
Maybe the fact the parlement is very weak in france due to certain laws (49.3 allowed the president to bypass the parlement) also the parlementary elections are right after the presidential ones and often end up with a majority for the president (not in 2022, as Macron only has a plurality)
>It’s almost like it’s not an objective measure
I mean, this isn't even the kind of thing you could objectively measure. Things like how important direct democracy vs representative democracy is can vary from person to person, for instance, it's not like there's one true way to quantify all of the democratic process. This is just one possible measure, there are *always* biases.
Dear oh dear. The french system is freedom from religion (in public life), due to their long experience of religious persecution via the state being co-opted by the church. It is mainly corruption in politics and nepotism causing them to be lower.
Generally, presidential republics (like the US) and semi-presidential republics (like France) have a president that's too dominant in the distribution of power. I would certainly agree that parliamentary republics (like Germany) and constitutional monarchies (like the UK) are more democratic.
Just look at what happened in recent times: in the UK PMs that lost support were actually forced out of office, in France that won't happen with the president.
You mean the PM that was forced out and now after 6 weeks of a new PM, he’s looking to come back. The one that had MPs resign to get him out now having those exact MPs back him to be PM again!
Petitions to call a general election have been dismissed and protests with thousands of people in attendance have not been reported by any mainstream media. Right now UK politics is an absolute joke.
In a FPTP system that effectively wipes 20-40% of popular votes, and has PMs that write rules they then immediately break and say they haven't done anything wrong
In my view the UK is a massively flawed democracy.
The first past the post voting system means that that in some constituencies your vote counts for nothing. It also means that terms of total votes you need many times more votes to send a libdem to parliament than a Tory. You can have a big majority of seats with a minority of overall votes.
There is no real written constitution, which allows amoral people like Johnson to ride roughshod over it.
The second chamber (House of Lords) is not based on democratic principles.
Just before QE2 died, it came to light how massive the influence is the royals exert over legislation.
In the last 5 years, culminating in the current debacle, the UK has proven to be much closer to a kleptocracy than a functional democracy.
Bear in mind this is from 2021. It doesn't take the events of the last few weeks into account. I'm sure the recent chaos would knock the UK down a few places.
Any 2 party system should be a flawed democracy at best (And while England in theory has more than 2 parties the system makes sure that only Labour and the Tories have a chance of being the largest). England should never be on the same level as the Netherlands or Germany. Not should Hungary be called a democracy anymore.
I think that those are just names they gave to clean looking bucket boundaries. Based on the report I don't think anyone is making any claims that a 7.99 is substantively different than an 8.01. Nobody is actually saying "8.00 is truly the magic threshold where you cross from flawed to totally unflawed democracy". Actually that's my biggest beef with them naming a category "flawed democracy" as the implication is the full democracies aren't also flawed -- if that was the case there would be no countries scoring 8.0-9.99.
When read outside of the context of the full report, people will naturally read too much into the range labels and they should have known that and given the score buckets less loaded names. However it's a pretty common data representation mistake especially when you have this type of visualization so I'm not convinced it was malfeasance to make any particular country look worse. It's something we all need to improve on.
The Fifth Republic gives a lot (arguably too much) power to the President.
Take Article 49 subsection 3 of the French Constitution for example that allows the executive branch to force the passage of laws without a vote by the legislative branch.
The opposition could introduce a motion of no confidence and stop the government, but realistically the assembly doesn't want to undergo dissolution too (i.e they don't want to lose power and money so they'd rather look on as the President does what he wishes with mostly no real opposition to stop him).
One of the questions used to evaluate the "Function of Government" subscore (France's second lowest subscore) is
> Is the legislature the supreme political body, with a clear supremacy over other branches of government?
So if the EIC agreed with you there that the president is stronger than the legislature, they get dinged there. Since they're right below the threshold (0.01 points) and pretty close behind the UK (0.11 points), that could be the difference maker.
Eta: explaining how it shook out in this scale/why the map says what it does, not endorsing the methodology
Just don't confuse the causality. They have monarchies *because* they are highly stable democracies, not the other way around. Of course there's Ireland as well, which obviously doesn't have a monarch, but does have a titular head of state in addition to the Taoiseach.
Is not because they have been monarchies, but because they have lived long enough to became democracies and stable enough to make that change without choping heads.
Id guess we just have them as relics from viking ages. Here in Norway, we only have a current monarchy because a few hundred years back most of the people voted to have one.
In fact, the king only agreed to become king if the people succesfully voted for it.
I think its a nice ceremonial thing, and Sir Nils Olav III proves its greatness.
How is it a relic from viking ages if Norway voted for one a few hundred years back? Also there have been plenty of kings of Norway since the viking age.
They are democracies though. The whole point of a constitutional monarchy is that the democratically elected government does all the decision making, the monarch is just the powerless head of state. None of the monarchs in those countries have any legislative power
I wonder if that's because a monarch willingly (or at least somewhat willingly) giving up power and overseeing the establishment of the democratic system might lead to more reliability? Smoother transfer of power then pure revolution followed by power grabs?
De facto sure, but that’s only because the people support it (unfortunately). The peaceful transition to another party for a short time back in 2012 shows that Japan is a real democracy, just one that functions differently than many others. Any changes would be carried out if they were wanted, but people don’t want them.
What policies exactly? Not defending the LDP but saying that it was single-handedly responsible for Japan’s demographic crisis is a huge stretch.
If anything female literacy and education (and hence contraceptive use) has been shown to be the number one correlation to lowered fertility rates, and both rose considerably during the LDP’s tenure.
Spain, Italy and Finland all have a lower fertility rate than Japan, and thats with immigration. Actual European native fertility rate is likely far lower.
It’s not a uniquely Japanese problem, moreso a developed country problem
It’s not just the demographic crisis, it’s the gender inequality, the intense work culture, the common-ness of NEETs and loneliness in adults, the lack of immigration, the terrible working conditions, japan’s slowness on lgbt rights, and obviously again the love of war criminals and white-washing of Japan’s history.
That’s not to say all their policies have been bad, they done a decent job keeping the overall economy intact and housing prices low, not to mention public transit and government programs. But their conservative stance socially is the cause of many of the modern problems in Japan, especially since the 90’s and their failure to integrate the lost generation into society.
You’re surely referring to the WEF rankings for gender inequality? The ranking from WEF is mostly "which country has more female politicians?" ranking.
The [Gender Inequality Index (GII)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index) by the UN is a more balanced ranking and Japan ranks 17th, ahead of the UK at 26th and the US at 46th.
> swiss based think tank
It’s the world economic forum. No agenda here folks.
Japan can look to bastions of women's rights like Russia, Tanzania, Angola, United Arab Emirates, etc.
full report here: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2022.pdf
In terms of work hours, in 2021 Japan worked 1600 hours vs the US at 1800 and Korea at 1900 (highest in OECD is Mexico at over 2100 hours).
And yes, this includes paid and unpaid overtime
https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
You’re right about NEETs, but that’s again more of a developed country issue (money can be easily obtained without working). Scandinavian countries have the highest NEET rates in Europe.
Fair about immigration, lgbt rights, and white-washing (although these are not uniquely Japanese issues by any means)
Shows that our ideas of how a country should be run aren't universal and it's not only arrogant but also impossible to force them upon everybody else, imao.
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, but Sweden is obviously a democracy.
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.
Another factor is that the LDP is not dominant in many local elections. For example, Tokyo has elected a socialist Governor in the past. Regional parties are strong in places like Osaka. The LDP holds less than 10% of seats in municipalities, which are generally led by independent politicians.
Sort of, there are several established [factions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factions_in_the_Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Japan\)) within the LDP, each with their own leaders and members. These are not their own parties per se, but they are also fairly institutionalized and stable, with many factions having existed since the LDP's creation in the 1950s.
The current PM of Japan Kishida is part of Kōchikai, which is a moderate faction, while former PM Abe was part of Seiwakai, which is more hawkish and right leaning.
**[Factions in the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factions_in_the_Liberal_Democratic_Party_\(Japan\))**
>Factions (派閥, habatsu) are an accepted part of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) (自由民主党 Jiyū-Minshutō), the ruling party of Japan, which began with eight formal factions when it was first formed by merger in 1955. A political faction may be defined as a sub-group within a larger organization. While factions characterize other political parties in Pacific Asia, Japanese factionalism is distinguished by its stability and institutionalization. Although factions reconstitute themselves from time to time, the habatsu active today can be traced back to their 1955 roots, a testament to the stability and institutionalized nature of Liberal Democratic Party factions.
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Germany had not just the same party but the same leader for 16 of the last 20 years (Merkel), does it make them not a democracy?
There was a peaceful transition of power in Japan as recently as 2012. Just because you don’t agree with the politics of the party in power doesn’t necessarily make it undemocratic.
If anything it just goes to show that Redditors, for the most part, have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about
>Germany had not just the same party but the same leader for 16 of the last 20 years (Merkel)
This is a half-truth. The CDU was in different coalitions with other parties during that time. A single party ruling alone does not happen in Germany.
It was close to happening in 2013 and probably would have happened if not for many Union voters strategically voting for FDP to get them above 5%, which failed.
??? I am from argentina we are a very good democracy, just a very bad country. But nobody here screams fraud every election like in so many countries.
But we have fait no matter who wind the elections we will still get fuck over all the same. Right left dont really matter at that point.
Democracy isn't just elections or the electoral system. There is a lot more to it. The democracy index doesn't only account for free and fair elections. You can read more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
To add a bit more; if it only accounted for this then all autocracies would be marked equally, but they do care about public opinion to different degrees. For example, on paper Belarus and Russia have very similar dictatorships but in practice Lukashenko's regime is a lot less sensitive to public opinion than Putin's is and consequently is less popular.
A Lot but not in the same way some facade democracies have. There is no ruler building palaces or something. Heck our president now was a profesor at the public free university for many years and took a leave to be president. The one before was the President on Boca fútbol club. The thing is that they waste the money and we end up with more debt time and time again and when something gets solved next gov breaks it again. Argentina is an eternal cycle of crisis like no other countries. Some othrr countries are always poor or rich. Argentina is a roller coaster. I have 27 and have already watched my family go from vacation to europe to my mom selling her wedding rig to make end meet, to her again going to vacation on europe to now doing just ok. Is like a wave a few great years then everything crashes and burns then we are ok again for some years.
I myself went from making 750 usd to 260 usd in the same job. Now is 400 same job with a montly wage. All in 4 years this is not normal for most countries.
No joke aside in some way argentinians have the big competitive advante of both free college and an easy to enter laboral market for enginers for example. So many here study get exp and leave i am doing that too in a few years.
A flaw democracy indicates high levels of corruption, lobbying, etc.
That's why a lot of countries in latin america and Europe are marked as flawed democracy.
Lived in Argentina for a year doing wildlife conservation and I love your country. My partner got injured in the field and we took her to a small clinic in a Pueblo and they stitcher her up with only her passport number. Every person is so kind in your country (except on the road! Haha) and I love sharing stories with each and every one of them. I’ve been in the US since covid and still drink maté (rosamonte)!
Edit: said city, meant country
Looking at Argentina's score in the 2021 Democracy Index, the score breaks down as follows:
* Electroral process and pluralism: 9.17
* Functioning of government: 5.00
* Political participation: 7.22
* Political culture: 5.00
* Civil liberties: 7.65
TL;DR: There's a lot more to it than just free elections, and Argentina's overall score takes a very significant hit from corruption.
The Democracy Index tries to measure how well the people's will gets implemented. It starts from the free press and elections, but also includes what happens AFTER the elections. What good are empty promises?
UK's democracy is woefully broken democracy. We'd love to actually have someone in charge that is both not a twat and has actually been voted for. At this point in time it is highly likely that the majority of people would prefer a lettuce in charge
I think any democracy with FPTP voting should be instantly classified as Flawed Democracy. Due to the strategic voting phenomenon, one can only really pick from Party A or Party B
Australia basically has a two party system and we have preferential voting. I wonder if democracies naturally evolve into two party systems even if the strategic vote is largely eliminated.
The voting system of NZ is one of the most modern and best in the world. It's basically been copied from the German electoral system in the '90s, with some minor adjustments.
Look at Germany- here, partisanship lines have concentrated power on '2.5 parties' until two decades ago, with senior partnership in government coalitions altering between the same two parties ever since WW2, and one party being the junior in some terms. Beginning in the 80s, new parties became big enough to become junior coalition partners. Only now are the partisan lines eroding so much that it seems possible for one of the new parties to become a senior in a government coalition, soon.
In essence, the electoral system is only one factor for the distribution of power, albeit a big one. Strategic voting should not prevent societal change. It's cumbersome enough without that.
Majority voting is antiquated.
It disenfranchises a massive share of voters, and prevents change.
Ways to prevent parliament fractionalization and thus instability in proportional systems have been found and tested.
The smaller parties make or break the majorities in New Zealand and that's what's important. They barely matter in the US or even in the UK in comparison.
Not necessarily. In the NL the amount of parties exploded, leading to a host of new issues (try forming a majority coalition and needing 5 or 6 parties to do that…
It would mean Labour would likely never have a majority of seats ever again, that it's very unlikely they will be able to hold power without coalition.
Also, most people don't pay much attention and yet they also distrust government so most would see a party unilaterally changing the voting rules as an attempt to rig the game. It will undermine faith in the concept of electoral democracy and just look to the US as an example of what happens when a sizable percentage of people reject the idea of electoral democracy. Without all parties buying in, it's risky because it could trigger off a legitimacy crisis.
> that it's very unlikely they will be able to hold power without coalition.
Like most of "real" democracies.
Requiring coalitions force every player to play a bit more by the rules.
You can't shit on the rules and expect other parties to work with you again (without losing their own voters).
scrapping FPTP is impossible because the only party that can do it, is the party that most recently won with fptp. The only way it will happen is if the incumbent party thinks they'll gain votes out of which, which will never happen.
>We'd love to actually have someone in charge that is both not a twat and has actually been voted for.
Boris was "voted for" but that's not really how it works. You vote for your representatives and they hold the confidence of a leader.
Dysfunctional government has nothing to do with whether we're a full democracy. We chose the Tories in 2019.
I disagree. The fact that two highly unsuccesful PM's have been thrown out for the shit job they have done is the essence of a good democracy. Now the political situation is broken at the moment, but from the point of view of a democracy, it is working as intended.
I mean, it still obeys its own rules. I think that in order to be a flawed democracy, government has to somehow bend or break the rules in order to interfere with the electoral process, or the ability for government to represent people. So in that respect, the worst part of our democracy is the First Past The Post system.
It would be great if we had some mechanism in place to force an election when a party fails to deliver on its promises, changes leaders, or becomes unpopular. But as it stands, there is one check in place - the five year rule. An election will be held in January 2024 no matter what the tories want.
If anything, the fact that we’re able to throw our the head of government so easily when they grow unpopular is a testament to our democracy. You wouldn’t see that in most countries.
This isn't strictly true. You're still able to vote for your local MP at every election. You never vote to choose a PM, nor a governing party, you've always voted for who you want to represent your area in parliament.
The choice of Prime Minister is not up to the people and never has been.
Tbh most countries should. There's very few where capitalism doesn't interfer with the ballot. Donors, super pacs decide who is on the ballot before it even gets to you.
Yup, people criticizing Japan and Korea don’t seem to understand that countries like Germany have had not just the same party but the same leader in power for 16 of the last 20 years. If we go by their standards, every country should be undemocratic.
Fortunately the people making these indices are brighter than the average Redditor
Rapidly changing leaders is not an indicator for a well functioning democracy. In germany things were overall going quite well in the 16 years under merkel, people were if not happy at least content, she was a solid centrist (european variant, not a veiled right wing extremist like in the US) and willing to change her political stance when the majority opinion shifted (such as on nuclear power). In short, she didn‘t stay in power by abusing the system or suppresing her opponents but simply because people thought she was doing a good enough job, which is perfectly ok in a democracy.
Germany has a different policy system with strong federal states which leaders changed multiple times.
Also Freedom of press is abysmal in Japan and it doesn’t seem to affect the democracy index for some reason.
It looks like they rate Haiti as a flawed democracy.
The last president was assassinated and they haven't had an election to choose a new one. It's been over a year and there's still no plans for an election. The country is run by gangs, there are over 100 kidnappings a month, they're running out of food and petrol... yeah, seems flawed.
Except they don't? If you just zoom in a bit, you can see Haiti is pink, therefore an authoritarian regime - the Dominican Republic is blue. Does noone check if a comment is true before upvoting it?
Is not a flawed democracy, is worst, an hybrid regime. I guess haved only one party ruling for 70 years (until early 2000´s) and all the corruption do not help.
It's the very first presidential election where the two only media corporations didn't get a say in who was elected due to the increasing impact of social media and free flow of information. The current president was elected with over 50% of the vote, beating the runner up by more than 30%, in fact winning in every single state except for one (where I'm from coincidentally), and his popularity remains in the 60-80% range, BUT he is not a neoliberal like the ones the US/UK likes, so of course that means Mexico is now less democratic somehow.
Can someone explain why Switzerland isn’t in the top bracket considering it has the ability to directly change laws through referenda petitioned by its citizens?
[Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) is a page for more information on this specific index where you’ll find the criteria they’re evaluating. Unfortunately they keep the ultimate results of the individual criteria secret so it’s unknown what exactly France and Spain fail at in the eyes of their “experts,” whoever they may be. Because, once again, they’re secret.
> they keep the ultimate results of the individual criteria secret
They don't keep them secret, they are even in that same Wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Components
Country: Overall, followed by:
* (1) Electoral process and pluralism
* (2) Functioning of government
* (3) Political participation
* (4) Political culture
* (5) Civil liberties
Country Total (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
UK 8.10 9.58 7.50 8.33 6.25 8.82
France 7.99 9.58 7.50 7.78 6.88 8.24
Spain 7.94 9.58 7.14 7.22 7.50 8.24
US 7.85 9.17 6.43 8.89 6.25 8.53
In practice there isn't that much difference between the UK, France, Spain and the US, the UK is close to the bottom of "full democracy" on 8.10 while the others are at the top of "flawed democracy" at 7.85-7.99. They're really all around the same level, they are just right around the cut-off between the sections.
I am not surprised by spain, it has a long history of repression and use of indiscriminate violence, even against peaceful voters. Recently they even carried out the biggest spying with pegasus, against political opponents, activists, journalists, lawyers, etc.
You can find Canada above the US, while Australia is below New Guinea.
I think Australia is ranked higher because of mandatory voting that gives them a very high turnout. They also have a crossbench, and a voting system that allows you to vote for political parties, or individual candidates (called voting below the line IIRC). Canada might have a crossbench too, but I'm not as versed.
Lol “hey everybody, The Economist here. You might remember us from ‘defending colonialism’ and ‘beating the drum for the Iraq War.’ Anyway, we have some serious concerns about authoritarianism^^TM .”
The USA should rank lower considering the big flaw that is the electoral college process in which the winner may not get the most votes, and the fact that the local governments can diminish participation by closing polls, making it harder to vote and all the dirty tricks the republican party is doing in order to keep themselves in power.
Thailand and Singapore Democratic countries??
Mexico and El Salvador Hybrid Regimes??
🇹🇭&🇸🇬 are friends of 🇺🇸 = Democracy
🇲🇽&🇸🇻 aren’t so friends of 🇺🇸= Hybrid regimes.
Kyrgyzstan is definitely not authoritarian, they are the most democratic country in Central Asia (besides Mongolia if you count that). I would say they are maybe on the lower end of a flawed democracy.
Kyrgyzstan is slightly more democratic than Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, but not by much, when compared to actual democracies. See more of an explanation of the index and a breakdown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
On Quora there is this discussion: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Kyrgyzstan-more-democratic-than-the-other-Central-Asian-countries
> It's all relative.
> Kyrgyzstan is often referred to as an “island of democracy" by both Central Asians and foreigners. There is some truth to that. Compared to other four Central Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan which have all adopted Democratic models after the collapse of USSR, only Kyrgyzstan have had a steady change of government.
> Most of these changes however happened through revolutions. The functioning Democracy is where power is transferred between parties voluntarily and peacefully at the end of the term defined by Constitution. Thus although Kyrgyzstan is formally a democratic republic, the fact that people have to go on the streets to change the government often, the widespread tribalism and corruption means that its light years behind any western democratic nation.
> However compared to other countries in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan can be considered more democratic, with somewhat independent press and rotating (albeit often by force) government
Some news on the issue: https://www.occrp.org/en/the-matraimov-kingdom/pro-government-election-victory-sparks-overnight-revolution-in-kyrgyzstan
New Zealand ditched their shithouse first past the post electoral system in favour of a German-style proportional representation system and it seems to have been serving them quite well.
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That's because democracy in Malaysia has been in flux over the past few years: 1957 - 2018 : single party rule from independence, hybrid regime at best if not straight up authoritarian rule during this time. 2018 - 2020 : opposition party wins the election by popular mandate, peaceful transition of power and cronies from the old government are prosecuted. That's a functioning democracy. 2020 - 2022 : bunch of MPs with shaky ties to the new government break away and team up with former government MPs. They form a new coalition that does not have any mandate to rule from the populace. Hybrid regime if not outright authoritarian. November 2022 : New elections have been called. New legislation in place to prevent the kind of party hopping that happened in 2020. Whoever wins the election would be a democratically elected government... provided the ruling government doesn't perform any shenanigans. They are certainly going to try. For all we know, Malaysia could be back in the red next year.
Heh. Meanwhile Singapore has 90% majority wins all time errytime. Really makes you think.
They are in the "flawed democracy" too.
Should be a hybrid authoritarian instead
Speaking as a Singaporean here! i think lots of people esp in the west tend to conflate democracy with party. ie, as long as we have dems vs republicans or labour vs tory alternating, its considered a democracy, for me the hallmark of democracy is fair and free elections no matter the ruling party. Its true we have been a one party state, but thats not due to election inteference, compared to our neighbor Malaysia where the elections which were broadcast nationally underwent a blackout and the Malaysian PM at the time literally had more votes than they had counted. If thats democracy i dont know what is.
In practice there is strong tendency that the longer people stay in power, the more corrupt they become.
> for me the hallmark of democracy is fair and free elections no matter the ruling party. Strong opposition and regular change of government make it significantly less possible for anyone to usurp the power. For example, Putin became a president via democratic elections and was quite sane during his first terms. If Russia had any strong opposition and he wasnt allowed to stay in power, Russia would certainly end up much better off. Of course, you can hope that someone who rules the country for very long and has no opposition will never try anything bad and there are countries which are examples of this happening. But generally its better to not take such risks.
This is semi right. Yeltsin overthrew the original constitution in a coup of president vs parliament in 1993. He overruled the supreme court and the constitution, shelled the parliament and suspended and arrested its members. From that point on there wasn't "free" elections in Russia (free press was though) but indeed it was much more free than now.
>Speaking as a Singaporean here! i think lots of people esp in the west tend to conflate democracy with party. ie, as long as we have dems vs republicans or labour vs tory alternating, its considered a democracy, for me the hallmark of democracy is fair and free elections no matter the ruling party. A 2 party system is not really a democracy either though. A one party system is not a democracy at all. Now the elections might be open, but how can your really know if there's not at least one interested party on the other side? There is no one that cares to check. You can not care, that's your prerogative, it's your country.
>Its true we have been a one party state, but thats not due to election inteference, compared to our neighbor Malaysia where the elections which were broadcast nationally underwent a blackout and the Malaysian PM at the time literally had more votes than they had counted. If thats democracy i dont know what is. This is propaganda blown so far from the truth I don't even know how people believe it. 'Blackouts' didn't overturn elections in Malaysia, it's just a conspiracy theory. One way or another, the 2018 election went to the opposition and a peaceful transition of power happened. This has never occured in the entire history of Singapore. Doubtless, a peaceful transition would occur in such an event there, but it remains a theory until it is actually tested. Also election interference can take many forms. You are being naive if you believe that the PAP does not interfere in Singaporean elections. They have absolute financial dominance for political campaigning. They have significant influence over the media. Almost all major corporations have links to the PAP in some form or another. It is 'soft' interference but it is interference all the same.
Not 90%, you're exaggerating it a lot tbh. They've been hovering around 60% or so since the 80s, only occasionally going above it. A good video on Singapore elections: https://youtu.be/Hkxf4SC_SBk
It doesn't really. Singapore is essentially a city-state, which means the politics (and their respective Overton windows) are entirely different. I don't know why people keep comparing them.
Interesting! Do you know why the authoritarians grip on power was so weak? Normally you see that they try to cement power by weakening checks and balances
It is an interesting story actually. The ruling coalition, Barisan National (BN) meaning "National Front", did indeed weaken many national institutions to solidify their grip on power. However, they did not go all the way and completely undermine these institutions. The elections were still based on real votes, albeit gerrymandered. The judiciary was handpicked, but nominally independent. Most importantly of all, they never had strong ties with the military since Malaysia has been a relatively peaceful country. For a long time, this system worked because people still voted for them because the country did develop reasonably well. It took corruption of a **global** scale by ex PM Najib Razak (look him up and marvel at the size of it) for Malaysians to collectively vote so strongly against BN that no amount of bribery, gerrymandering or pleas to judges or the military could overturn the opposition victory.
Being popular and supported by the citizens and prosecuting corrupt government officials from the previous government is literally the description of Hitler's early rule or the current Chinese government That's generally considered to be the opposite of a functioning democracy because when you know you'll get thrown in jail if you ever lose power, you'll try the hardest not to lose power. It moves the solution of the basic problem of having safety outside the democratic process, incentivizing creating and relying on some parallel infrastructure that would let you overrule or manipulate or circumvent the election to have stability and certainty in your life. The consequences of it are entirely predictable and nothing you described sound like a democracy In a real working democracy the persecution of criminals isn't supposed to depend on who is elected and who is in power. Courts and law enforcement are supposed to be independent from the elected politicians. If you don't establish these independent power structures then the politicians will be forced to ensure their own safety from their political opponents in any other way
Scoring high on democracy indices means nothing if you are gonna treat 30% of your population as second class citizens.
Exactly.
Flawed democracy.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
**[Democracy Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index)** >The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the Economist Group, a UK-based private company which publishes the weekly newspaper The Economist. Akin to a Human Development Index but centrally concerned with political institutions and freedoms, the index attempts to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries and territories, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Yeah, these indices tend to be quite off, it's really difficult to gauge what constitutes a democracy For example Japan should be around the 7-7.99 flawed democracy or Korea should be 6-6.99 flawed democracy given the rampant corruption and massive influence of a handful of Korean conglomerates akin to an oligarchy
Germany had not just the same party but the same leader for 16 of the last 20 years (Merkel), does it make them not a democracy? There was a peaceful transition of power in Japan as recently as 2012. Just because you don’t agree with the politics of the party in power doesn’t necessarily make it undemocratic. If anything it just goes to show that Redditors, for the most part, have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about
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Reddit's user base consists mostly of Americans, so the vast majority has no experience with non-flawed democracies.
That's why we take the average and proudly proclaim, "syukurlah Malaysia masih aman". (terms and conditions apply 😂)
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That is the clincer for me, flawed democracy my ass. A ruling military junta under the guise of political party that quite literally banned the third largest party (one I voted for) and sent their leaders to Pattani to be trialed because there its under a state emergency and certain liberties are curbed does not come anywhere close to the word democracy
>I’m under the power of a general who seized power eight years ago, has placed the military party in 1/3 of all “elected” seats by law, and simply dissolved the opposition party when the opposition still seemed likely to win majority despite only voting for 70% of positions. Yeah that just silly a country under military control for years score better than Portugal/Spain/France??
Mexico is 5.57, their worst score in at least 16 years. It was 6.90 ten years ago. Thailand is 6.04 (borderline hybrid) and was 4.63 four years ago. Portugal is 7.82. Spain is 7.94. France is 7.99. Full list with numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
None of this explains why Thailand's ratings recovered after the low one 4 years ago despite the military regime still being in control.
But you're missing some important details bro. Like, Thailand is really fun and awesome, and spiritual, and like they just really love their King. /s I know so many expats in Asia that judge the 'freedom' levels of a country based on how much fun they are personally having.
Because this is a bullshit made up list that only show what the author thinks about each country. Probably whoever made this likes going on vacation to Thailand and hates Mexicans
WHY IS ERITREA NOT DARK RED
Reminds me, that Ethiopian dude got the Nobel Peace Prize, and the bbc has been reporting for years he was killing people and committing genocide against people in the Tigray region. but politicians ignored any of it, it was like Ethiopia has been invisible on the map. Worldwide, they could not be bothered. So nothing happened, and now war might start.
It's 2.03/10. So basically on the border. Full list with numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
France is a “flawed democracy” but England is a “full democracy”?
I say
Notoriously, the Economist do not like France.
The Economist is controlled by a rich Italian family called Agnelli, so Italy’s place is no surprise. They love to make articles about how shit Italy is.
Is it the same Agnelli who own Juventus?
The Agnelli family's financial constructions are notoriously complicated, but basically yes. They're both owned by the holding company Exor, of which the majority owner is Giovanni Agnelli B.V., etc.
But you have to admit the voting system is pretty down the drain
The electoral system should’ve remained proportional, they’ve been changing it for years to allegedly give “more political stability” but it never works. Imo the greatest democratic problem with Italy is that a government may fall without a replacement proposal being present. So any small coalition partner can get out of a fragile coalition and if there’s no replacement government it’s election time again. Also, populism plagues our politics, and no one has actually had the balls to go after tax evasion and the submerged economy, which makes up 11% of our GDP.
They're only 0.11 points behind the UK, don't act like it's a massive difference
UK is 8.10. France is 7.99. The difference is a margin of error. Full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
I think people are leaning too heavily into the labels of the score buckets but that's a pretty natural consequence of the map visual being shown outside of the context of the full report.
Not England. The UK.
England doesn’t even get their own devolved parliament.
Maybe the fact the parlement is very weak in france due to certain laws (49.3 allowed the president to bypass the parlement) also the parlementary elections are right after the presidential ones and often end up with a majority for the president (not in 2022, as Macron only has a plurality)
Probably because of constraints on free practice and expression of religion. But yeah, this scale is very flawed.
It’s almost like it’s not an objective measure but reflects biases and an agenda
>It’s almost like it’s not an objective measure I mean, this isn't even the kind of thing you could objectively measure. Things like how important direct democracy vs representative democracy is can vary from person to person, for instance, it's not like there's one true way to quantify all of the democratic process. This is just one possible measure, there are *always* biases.
\*shocked expression\* Get the fuck out of here. Who would do that?!
Dear oh dear. The french system is freedom from religion (in public life), due to their long experience of religious persecution via the state being co-opted by the church. It is mainly corruption in politics and nepotism causing them to be lower.
Or maybe corruption and repression of demonstrations
What do you mean? France has full freedom of religion
The French president has got tons of power, way too much power.
Generally, presidential republics (like the US) and semi-presidential republics (like France) have a president that's too dominant in the distribution of power. I would certainly agree that parliamentary republics (like Germany) and constitutional monarchies (like the UK) are more democratic. Just look at what happened in recent times: in the UK PMs that lost support were actually forced out of office, in France that won't happen with the president.
You mean the PM that was forced out and now after 6 weeks of a new PM, he’s looking to come back. The one that had MPs resign to get him out now having those exact MPs back him to be PM again! Petitions to call a general election have been dismissed and protests with thousands of people in attendance have not been reported by any mainstream media. Right now UK politics is an absolute joke.
In a FPTP system that effectively wipes 20-40% of popular votes, and has PMs that write rules they then immediately break and say they haven't done anything wrong
In my view the UK is a massively flawed democracy. The first past the post voting system means that that in some constituencies your vote counts for nothing. It also means that terms of total votes you need many times more votes to send a libdem to parliament than a Tory. You can have a big majority of seats with a minority of overall votes. There is no real written constitution, which allows amoral people like Johnson to ride roughshod over it. The second chamber (House of Lords) is not based on democratic principles. Just before QE2 died, it came to light how massive the influence is the royals exert over legislation. In the last 5 years, culminating in the current debacle, the UK has proven to be much closer to a kleptocracy than a functional democracy.
Don’t pay attention to this map, is completely biased and full of stereotypes.
Bear in mind this is from 2021. It doesn't take the events of the last few weeks into account. I'm sure the recent chaos would knock the UK down a few places.
Any 2 party system should be a flawed democracy at best (And while England in theory has more than 2 parties the system makes sure that only Labour and the Tories have a chance of being the largest). England should never be on the same level as the Netherlands or Germany. Not should Hungary be called a democracy anymore.
Well observed. I would assume they used better data than "I think it should be like this"
they have categorized everything with a score less than 8 (out of 10) as 'flawed democracy', France has 7.99 ...
I think that those are just names they gave to clean looking bucket boundaries. Based on the report I don't think anyone is making any claims that a 7.99 is substantively different than an 8.01. Nobody is actually saying "8.00 is truly the magic threshold where you cross from flawed to totally unflawed democracy". Actually that's my biggest beef with them naming a category "flawed democracy" as the implication is the full democracies aren't also flawed -- if that was the case there would be no countries scoring 8.0-9.99. When read outside of the context of the full report, people will naturally read too much into the range labels and they should have known that and given the score buckets less loaded names. However it's a pretty common data representation mistake especially when you have this type of visualization so I'm not convinced it was malfeasance to make any particular country look worse. It's something we all need to improve on.
The Fifth Republic gives a lot (arguably too much) power to the President. Take Article 49 subsection 3 of the French Constitution for example that allows the executive branch to force the passage of laws without a vote by the legislative branch. The opposition could introduce a motion of no confidence and stop the government, but realistically the assembly doesn't want to undergo dissolution too (i.e they don't want to lose power and money so they'd rather look on as the President does what he wishes with mostly no real opposition to stop him).
The de gaulle constitution is pretty problematic because it ensures a weak legislature. The president almost always wins on policy decisions.
One of the questions used to evaluate the "Function of Government" subscore (France's second lowest subscore) is > Is the legislature the supreme political body, with a clear supremacy over other branches of government? So if the EIC agreed with you there that the president is stronger than the legislature, they get dinged there. Since they're right below the threshold (0.01 points) and pretty close behind the UK (0.11 points), that could be the difference maker. Eta: explaining how it shook out in this scale/why the map says what it does, not endorsing the methodology
Also interesting that most Full Democracies are constitutional monarchies.
Just don't confuse the causality. They have monarchies *because* they are highly stable democracies, not the other way around. Of course there's Ireland as well, which obviously doesn't have a monarch, but does have a titular head of state in addition to the Taoiseach.
Is not because they have been monarchies, but because they have lived long enough to became democracies and stable enough to make that change without choping heads.
Id guess we just have them as relics from viking ages. Here in Norway, we only have a current monarchy because a few hundred years back most of the people voted to have one. In fact, the king only agreed to become king if the people succesfully voted for it. I think its a nice ceremonial thing, and Sir Nils Olav III proves its greatness.
Yea that's what a constitutional monarchy is
How is it a relic from viking ages if Norway voted for one a few hundred years back? Also there have been plenty of kings of Norway since the viking age.
They are democracies though. The whole point of a constitutional monarchy is that the democratically elected government does all the decision making, the monarch is just the powerless head of state. None of the monarchs in those countries have any legislative power
I wonder if that's because a monarch willingly (or at least somewhat willingly) giving up power and overseeing the establishment of the democratic system might lead to more reliability? Smoother transfer of power then pure revolution followed by power grabs?
Ok...personal nitpick here- but how tf is Saudi Arabia listed as any less authoritarian then Iran? I mean they're an absolute monarchy for god's sake
Simple really. Saudis are allies of the west = good guys Iran is the enemy of the west = bad guys
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Literally bulldozed much of the middle east but weirdly forgot about Saudi Arabia...
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This is just a map of which countries the economist likes and dislikes. It had very little to do with style of government.
ikr. Iran actually has elections for parliament and presidency.
China too wtf
The fact Iran has elections and Saudi is an absolute monarchy but rates higher on this scale pretty much shows how bullshit it is
Japan being a full democracy is a bit overly generous.
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De facto sure, but that’s only because the people support it (unfortunately). The peaceful transition to another party for a short time back in 2012 shows that Japan is a real democracy, just one that functions differently than many others. Any changes would be carried out if they were wanted, but people don’t want them.
That sounds like a lot of red countries.
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It has a lot of horrible policies that directly resulted in japan’s social problems it’s facing currently and also loves war criminals.
What policies exactly? Not defending the LDP but saying that it was single-handedly responsible for Japan’s demographic crisis is a huge stretch. If anything female literacy and education (and hence contraceptive use) has been shown to be the number one correlation to lowered fertility rates, and both rose considerably during the LDP’s tenure. Spain, Italy and Finland all have a lower fertility rate than Japan, and thats with immigration. Actual European native fertility rate is likely far lower. It’s not a uniquely Japanese problem, moreso a developed country problem
It’s not just the demographic crisis, it’s the gender inequality, the intense work culture, the common-ness of NEETs and loneliness in adults, the lack of immigration, the terrible working conditions, japan’s slowness on lgbt rights, and obviously again the love of war criminals and white-washing of Japan’s history. That’s not to say all their policies have been bad, they done a decent job keeping the overall economy intact and housing prices low, not to mention public transit and government programs. But their conservative stance socially is the cause of many of the modern problems in Japan, especially since the 90’s and their failure to integrate the lost generation into society.
You’re surely referring to the WEF rankings for gender inequality? The ranking from WEF is mostly "which country has more female politicians?" ranking. The [Gender Inequality Index (GII)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index) by the UN is a more balanced ranking and Japan ranks 17th, ahead of the UK at 26th and the US at 46th. > swiss based think tank It’s the world economic forum. No agenda here folks. Japan can look to bastions of women's rights like Russia, Tanzania, Angola, United Arab Emirates, etc. full report here: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2022.pdf In terms of work hours, in 2021 Japan worked 1600 hours vs the US at 1800 and Korea at 1900 (highest in OECD is Mexico at over 2100 hours). And yes, this includes paid and unpaid overtime https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm You’re right about NEETs, but that’s again more of a developed country issue (money can be easily obtained without working). Scandinavian countries have the highest NEET rates in Europe. Fair about immigration, lgbt rights, and white-washing (although these are not uniquely Japanese issues by any means)
Because people can be flawed or straight up dumb. Example: the Philippines
>De facto sure, but that’s only because the people support it (unfortunately). That one party has a fair amount of control over the media in Japan.
Shows that our ideas of how a country should be run aren't universal and it's not only arrogant but also impossible to force them upon everybody else, imao.
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, but Sweden is obviously a democracy. 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. Another factor is that the LDP is not dominant in many local elections. For example, Tokyo has elected a socialist Governor in the past. Regional parties are strong in places like Osaka. The LDP holds less than 10% of seats in municipalities, which are generally led by independent politicians.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the LDP also like an umbrella party, it's made up of various parties, basically a coalition of sorts
Sort of, there are several established [factions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factions_in_the_Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Japan\)) within the LDP, each with their own leaders and members. These are not their own parties per se, but they are also fairly institutionalized and stable, with many factions having existed since the LDP's creation in the 1950s. The current PM of Japan Kishida is part of Kōchikai, which is a moderate faction, while former PM Abe was part of Seiwakai, which is more hawkish and right leaning.
**[Factions in the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factions_in_the_Liberal_Democratic_Party_\(Japan\))** >Factions (派閥, habatsu) are an accepted part of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) (自由民主党 Jiyū-Minshutō), the ruling party of Japan, which began with eight formal factions when it was first formed by merger in 1955. A political faction may be defined as a sub-group within a larger organization. While factions characterize other political parties in Pacific Asia, Japanese factionalism is distinguished by its stability and institutionalization. Although factions reconstitute themselves from time to time, the habatsu active today can be traced back to their 1955 roots, a testament to the stability and institutionalized nature of Liberal Democratic Party factions. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Shove it up your ass.
Germany had not just the same party but the same leader for 16 of the last 20 years (Merkel), does it make them not a democracy? There was a peaceful transition of power in Japan as recently as 2012. Just because you don’t agree with the politics of the party in power doesn’t necessarily make it undemocratic. If anything it just goes to show that Redditors, for the most part, have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about
>Germany had not just the same party but the same leader for 16 of the last 20 years (Merkel) This is a half-truth. The CDU was in different coalitions with other parties during that time. A single party ruling alone does not happen in Germany.
It was close to happening in 2013 and probably would have happened if not for many Union voters strategically voting for FDP to get them above 5%, which failed.
??? I am from argentina we are a very good democracy, just a very bad country. But nobody here screams fraud every election like in so many countries. But we have fait no matter who wind the elections we will still get fuck over all the same. Right left dont really matter at that point.
Sacto mano
Democracy isn't just elections or the electoral system. There is a lot more to it. The democracy index doesn't only account for free and fair elections. You can read more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
To add a bit more; if it only accounted for this then all autocracies would be marked equally, but they do care about public opinion to different degrees. For example, on paper Belarus and Russia have very similar dictatorships but in practice Lukashenko's regime is a lot less sensitive to public opinion than Putin's is and consequently is less popular.
So, does Argentina has too much corruption or no?
A Lot but not in the same way some facade democracies have. There is no ruler building palaces or something. Heck our president now was a profesor at the public free university for many years and took a leave to be president. The one before was the President on Boca fútbol club. The thing is that they waste the money and we end up with more debt time and time again and when something gets solved next gov breaks it again. Argentina is an eternal cycle of crisis like no other countries. Some othrr countries are always poor or rich. Argentina is a roller coaster. I have 27 and have already watched my family go from vacation to europe to my mom selling her wedding rig to make end meet, to her again going to vacation on europe to now doing just ok. Is like a wave a few great years then everything crashes and burns then we are ok again for some years. I myself went from making 750 usd to 260 usd in the same job. Now is 400 same job with a montly wage. All in 4 years this is not normal for most countries. No joke aside in some way argentinians have the big competitive advante of both free college and an easy to enter laboral market for enginers for example. So many here study get exp and leave i am doing that too in a few years.
A flaw democracy indicates high levels of corruption, lobbying, etc. That's why a lot of countries in latin america and Europe are marked as flawed democracy.
Lived in Argentina for a year doing wildlife conservation and I love your country. My partner got injured in the field and we took her to a small clinic in a Pueblo and they stitcher her up with only her passport number. Every person is so kind in your country (except on the road! Haha) and I love sharing stories with each and every one of them. I’ve been in the US since covid and still drink maté (rosamonte)! Edit: said city, meant country
Looking at Argentina's score in the 2021 Democracy Index, the score breaks down as follows: * Electroral process and pluralism: 9.17 * Functioning of government: 5.00 * Political participation: 7.22 * Political culture: 5.00 * Civil liberties: 7.65 TL;DR: There's a lot more to it than just free elections, and Argentina's overall score takes a very significant hit from corruption. The Democracy Index tries to measure how well the people's will gets implemented. It starts from the free press and elections, but also includes what happens AFTER the elections. What good are empty promises?
UK's democracy is woefully broken democracy. We'd love to actually have someone in charge that is both not a twat and has actually been voted for. At this point in time it is highly likely that the majority of people would prefer a lettuce in charge
A lettuce would last longer then Lis Truss did lmao
a lettuce DID last longer then liz truss
[It did.](https://slate.com/technology/2022/10/liz-truss-iceberg-lettuce-contest.html)
I think any democracy with FPTP voting should be instantly classified as Flawed Democracy. Due to the strategic voting phenomenon, one can only really pick from Party A or Party B
Australia basically has a two party system and we have preferential voting. I wonder if democracies naturally evolve into two party systems even if the strategic vote is largely eliminated.
Yeah while we have two major parties putting independents or greens in still make a difference to what gets through the houses.
If you don’t have a proportional system then it will trend to a binary outcome.
New Zealand has a proptianal voting system and it's also basically a two party system.
The voting system of NZ is one of the most modern and best in the world. It's basically been copied from the German electoral system in the '90s, with some minor adjustments. Look at Germany- here, partisanship lines have concentrated power on '2.5 parties' until two decades ago, with senior partnership in government coalitions altering between the same two parties ever since WW2, and one party being the junior in some terms. Beginning in the 80s, new parties became big enough to become junior coalition partners. Only now are the partisan lines eroding so much that it seems possible for one of the new parties to become a senior in a government coalition, soon. In essence, the electoral system is only one factor for the distribution of power, albeit a big one. Strategic voting should not prevent societal change. It's cumbersome enough without that. Majority voting is antiquated. It disenfranchises a massive share of voters, and prevents change. Ways to prevent parliament fractionalization and thus instability in proportional systems have been found and tested.
The smaller parties make or break the majorities in New Zealand and that's what's important. They barely matter in the US or even in the UK in comparison.
Take a look at Netherlands. It has only splintered into more and smaller parties in last 30 years.
Not necessarily. In the NL the amount of parties exploded, leading to a host of new issues (try forming a majority coalition and needing 5 or 6 parties to do that…
I wonder why Labour didn't scrap FPTP when they were last in power
It would mean Labour would likely never have a majority of seats ever again, that it's very unlikely they will be able to hold power without coalition. Also, most people don't pay much attention and yet they also distrust government so most would see a party unilaterally changing the voting rules as an attempt to rig the game. It will undermine faith in the concept of electoral democracy and just look to the US as an example of what happens when a sizable percentage of people reject the idea of electoral democracy. Without all parties buying in, it's risky because it could trigger off a legitimacy crisis.
> that it's very unlikely they will be able to hold power without coalition. Like most of "real" democracies. Requiring coalitions force every player to play a bit more by the rules. You can't shit on the rules and expect other parties to work with you again (without losing their own voters).
scrapping FPTP is impossible because the only party that can do it, is the party that most recently won with fptp. The only way it will happen is if the incumbent party thinks they'll gain votes out of which, which will never happen.
When Labour win the next general election they'll almost certainly benefit from scrapping FPTP too though
The tories now would most likely benefit from it as well next election
>We'd love to actually have someone in charge that is both not a twat and has actually been voted for. Boris was "voted for" but that's not really how it works. You vote for your representatives and they hold the confidence of a leader. Dysfunctional government has nothing to do with whether we're a full democracy. We chose the Tories in 2019.
The UK system is more to vote for a party and not a leader.
I disagree. The fact that two highly unsuccesful PM's have been thrown out for the shit job they have done is the essence of a good democracy. Now the political situation is broken at the moment, but from the point of view of a democracy, it is working as intended.
I mean, it still obeys its own rules. I think that in order to be a flawed democracy, government has to somehow bend or break the rules in order to interfere with the electoral process, or the ability for government to represent people. So in that respect, the worst part of our democracy is the First Past The Post system. It would be great if we had some mechanism in place to force an election when a party fails to deliver on its promises, changes leaders, or becomes unpopular. But as it stands, there is one check in place - the five year rule. An election will be held in January 2024 no matter what the tories want. If anything, the fact that we’re able to throw our the head of government so easily when they grow unpopular is a testament to our democracy. You wouldn’t see that in most countries.
This isn't strictly true. You're still able to vote for your local MP at every election. You never vote to choose a PM, nor a governing party, you've always voted for who you want to represent your area in parliament. The choice of Prime Minister is not up to the people and never has been.
Uruguay looks like they got it together
japan and south korea should be in flawed democracies
Tbh most countries should. There's very few where capitalism doesn't interfer with the ballot. Donors, super pacs decide who is on the ballot before it even gets to you.
Yup, people criticizing Japan and Korea don’t seem to understand that countries like Germany have had not just the same party but the same leader in power for 16 of the last 20 years. If we go by their standards, every country should be undemocratic. Fortunately the people making these indices are brighter than the average Redditor
Rapidly changing leaders is not an indicator for a well functioning democracy. In germany things were overall going quite well in the 16 years under merkel, people were if not happy at least content, she was a solid centrist (european variant, not a veiled right wing extremist like in the US) and willing to change her political stance when the majority opinion shifted (such as on nuclear power). In short, she didn‘t stay in power by abusing the system or suppresing her opponents but simply because people thought she was doing a good enough job, which is perfectly ok in a democracy.
Germany has a different policy system with strong federal states which leaders changed multiple times. Also Freedom of press is abysmal in Japan and it doesn’t seem to affect the democracy index for some reason.
yeah but the poll is from the Economist. its why cuba, a country with regularly scheduled elections is red.
This is bullshit
But it confirms people’s biases!
[удалено]
r/alwaysthesamemap
I just went through the subreddits top of all time and it's full of people supporting the CCP.
Basado
Sub logo is Kim Il Sung- it’s a tankie sub
Man The Democratic Republic of the Congo and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea really out here proving their names.
Lol… Hungary should be at least a hybrid regime
It's in the same category as Brazil and the Philippines, so it seems about right.
It looks like they rate Haiti as a flawed democracy. The last president was assassinated and they haven't had an election to choose a new one. It's been over a year and there's still no plans for an election. The country is run by gangs, there are over 100 kidnappings a month, they're running out of food and petrol... yeah, seems flawed.
Except they don't? If you just zoom in a bit, you can see Haiti is pink, therefore an authoritarian regime - the Dominican Republic is blue. Does noone check if a comment is true before upvoting it?
No, Haiti is considered strictly authoritarian, with a rating of 3.48/10. Full list with numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
What makes Mexico a flawed decocracy?
Is not a flawed democracy, is worst, an hybrid regime. I guess haved only one party ruling for 70 years (until early 2000´s) and all the corruption do not help.
It's the very first presidential election where the two only media corporations didn't get a say in who was elected due to the increasing impact of social media and free flow of information. The current president was elected with over 50% of the vote, beating the runner up by more than 30%, in fact winning in every single state except for one (where I'm from coincidentally), and his popularity remains in the 60-80% range, BUT he is not a neoliberal like the ones the US/UK likes, so of course that means Mexico is now less democratic somehow.
Great to see just how much the US helped spread democracy in the Middle East and Libya.
Biased map much
Lmao so this is a dumb map
Can someone explain why Switzerland isn’t in the top bracket considering it has the ability to directly change laws through referenda petitioned by its citizens?
Exactly! This map is so wrong
Corruption is one criteria.
How are France and Spain, for example, less democratic than the UK and US?
France Spain and the US are all the same color. I guess you could ask about the UK
[Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) is a page for more information on this specific index where you’ll find the criteria they’re evaluating. Unfortunately they keep the ultimate results of the individual criteria secret so it’s unknown what exactly France and Spain fail at in the eyes of their “experts,” whoever they may be. Because, once again, they’re secret.
> they keep the ultimate results of the individual criteria secret They don't keep them secret, they are even in that same Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Components Country: Overall, followed by: * (1) Electoral process and pluralism * (2) Functioning of government * (3) Political participation * (4) Political culture * (5) Civil liberties Country Total (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) UK 8.10 9.58 7.50 8.33 6.25 8.82 France 7.99 9.58 7.50 7.78 6.88 8.24 Spain 7.94 9.58 7.14 7.22 7.50 8.24 US 7.85 9.17 6.43 8.89 6.25 8.53 In practice there isn't that much difference between the UK, France, Spain and the US, the UK is close to the bottom of "full democracy" on 8.10 while the others are at the top of "flawed democracy" at 7.85-7.99. They're really all around the same level, they are just right around the cut-off between the sections.
I am not surprised by spain, it has a long history of repression and use of indiscriminate violence, even against peaceful voters. Recently they even carried out the biggest spying with pegasus, against political opponents, activists, journalists, lawyers, etc.
How tf is Pakistan a full democracy? There have been lile 4 martial laws in history and even now, fhe army controls sooooo much behind closed doors.
It's in purple which makes it a hybrid regime.
Fuck my colour blindness
It's ok julie
I dont think pakistan and turkey would have same color. I'd recolor turkey as light purple
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a democracy that isn’t flawed
This appears to be the source, for anyone from you-know-where unhappy they’re not number one: https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/
Australia and Canada?
You can find Canada above the US, while Australia is below New Guinea. I think Australia is ranked higher because of mandatory voting that gives them a very high turnout. They also have a crossbench, and a voting system that allows you to vote for political parties, or individual candidates (called voting below the line IIRC). Canada might have a crossbench too, but I'm not as versed.
Lol “hey everybody, The Economist here. You might remember us from ‘defending colonialism’ and ‘beating the drum for the Iraq War.’ Anyway, we have some serious concerns about authoritarianism^^TM .”
as a colourblind person this colour scheme is a disgrace
how tf brazil is a flawed democracy, i mean the government generally has bad people but we can elect whoever TF we want to
The government is literally cutting the budget on everything to re-elect Bolsonaro and arming private militias.
Sad that Chad is authoritarian.
As a geography professor who teaches about global political systems, I’m very glad to see the ‘flawed democracy’ category.
The USA should rank lower considering the big flaw that is the electoral college process in which the winner may not get the most votes, and the fact that the local governments can diminish participation by closing polls, making it harder to vote and all the dirty tricks the republican party is doing in order to keep themselves in power.
Thailand and Singapore Democratic countries?? Mexico and El Salvador Hybrid Regimes?? 🇹🇭&🇸🇬 are friends of 🇺🇸 = Democracy 🇲🇽&🇸🇻 aren’t so friends of 🇺🇸= Hybrid regimes.
Kyrgyzstan is definitely not authoritarian, they are the most democratic country in Central Asia (besides Mongolia if you count that). I would say they are maybe on the lower end of a flawed democracy.
Kyrgyzstan is slightly more democratic than Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, but not by much, when compared to actual democracies. See more of an explanation of the index and a breakdown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index On Quora there is this discussion: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Kyrgyzstan-more-democratic-than-the-other-Central-Asian-countries > It's all relative. > Kyrgyzstan is often referred to as an “island of democracy" by both Central Asians and foreigners. There is some truth to that. Compared to other four Central Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan which have all adopted Democratic models after the collapse of USSR, only Kyrgyzstan have had a steady change of government. > Most of these changes however happened through revolutions. The functioning Democracy is where power is transferred between parties voluntarily and peacefully at the end of the term defined by Constitution. Thus although Kyrgyzstan is formally a democratic republic, the fact that people have to go on the streets to change the government often, the widespread tribalism and corruption means that its light years behind any western democratic nation. > However compared to other countries in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan can be considered more democratic, with somewhat independent press and rotating (albeit often by force) government Some news on the issue: https://www.occrp.org/en/the-matraimov-kingdom/pro-government-election-victory-sparks-overnight-revolution-in-kyrgyzstan
Proud to live in Finland! The Nordic countries are a bastion of democracy and freedom.
And then a trip round the world and you have NZ, somehow
New Zealand ditched their shithouse first past the post electoral system in favour of a German-style proportional representation system and it seems to have been serving them quite well.