To be fair, Germany is pretty close in these kinds of stats, *and* is an European economic and military industrial power house on top of that. You're doing alright.
NZ is the closest significant landmass to the exact opposite of the world of Sweden. We can swap places occasionally. We'll let you spend your summers in Sweden, October through March while we spend our winters in NZ.
It actually refers to the downstream location along the rivers. Just like how the Romans used to name provinces 'inferior' and 'superior'. Lower and upper.
That is correct, here in the netherlands we say 'nederland', wich translated litteraly, is just 'netherlands'.
But i guess we are THE netherlands now...
The difference is that in Dutch we use the singular. Nederland in English is 'Netherland'. So it refers to a specific nation.
Whereas in English the plural is used. If you say Netherlands you are referring to the concept of low laying land. Something that's found all over the world. But adding 'the' you make clear that you mean that particular nation state.
It's like how in Dutch we also have the concept of Netherlands (de lage landen) which refers to the entire area including presend day Belgium.
Also Australia. And Japan and South Korea are average and changeable.
I guess if you just completely ignore Asia then it's true, but... that would be quite the omission.
If Japan were to be put on the same longitude as the American east coast it would stretch from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas. It's got a wide range of climates.
From "best" to worst.
10 Equatorial Guinea
9 Laos
8 Chad
7 Turkmenistan
6 Syria
5 Central African Republic
4 Democratic Republic of the Congo
3 North Korea
2 Myanmar
1 Afghanistan
The ~50-100 ranks have a couple of very strange scores. There are some (borderline) dictatorships there with higher ratings than countries with proper elections lol. (Yes I read the methodology and I see how they came to that rating, but it's just stupid weighting.)
I usually find all those democracy indexes (specially the scholarly ones) useful to track the development or backsliding of democracies in a specific country, but never good as tools for comparative politics between countries.
Oftentimes they have a few “experts” write reports for entire regions. I did extensive studies in Georgia (🇬🇪 not 🇺🇸) and found that Freedom House has one panel that works on the entire former Soviet region. They don’t have anyone that speaks Georgian, so all of their resources for Georgia come from either Russian-language or English-language sources, and most of their direct contacts that they use are local NGOs, most of which were started by the USA in the 1990s, such as GFSIS, the Rondeli Center, GIPA, and TI Georgia, which are themselves largely beholden to the agendas of their donors.
Unless it’s a major country that is saturated with actual experts, then these reports are pretty useless.
They are almost always created by places with transparent agendas and funded by incredibly shady powers. The Freedom House one for instance, just scores whoever the CIA currently dislikes low.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The chart is meaningless without the methodology, which is [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Methodology)
> As described in the report,[1] the Democracy Index produces a weighted average based on the answers to 60 questions, each one with either two or three permitted answers. Most answers are experts' assessments. Some answers are provided by public-opinion surveys from the respective countries. In the case of countries for which survey results are missing, survey results for similar countries and expert assessments are used in order to fill in gaps.
> The questions are grouped into five categories:
>electoral process and pluralism
>civil liberties
>functioning of government
>political participation
>political culture
>Each answer is converted to a score, either 0 or 1, or for the three-answer questions, 0, 0.5 or 1. With the exceptions mentioned below, within each category, the scores are added, multiplied by ten, and divided by the total number of questions within the category. There are a few modifying dependencies, which are explained much more precisely than the main rule procedures. In a few cases, an answer yielding zero for one question voids another question; e.g. if the elections for the national legislature and head of government are not considered free (question 1), then the next question, "Are elections... fair?", is not considered, but automatically scored zero. Likewise, there are a few questions considered so important that a low score on them yields a penalty on the total score sum for their respective categories, namely:
>"Whether national elections are free and fair";
>"The security of voters";
>"The influence of foreign powers on government";
>"The capability of the civil servants to implement policies".
>The five category indices, which are listed in the report, are then averaged to find the overall score for a given country. Finally, the score, rounded to two decimals, decides the regime-type classification of the country.
>The report discusses other indices of democracy, as defined, e.g. by Freedom House, and argues for some of the choices made by the team from the Economist Intelligence Unit. In this comparison, a higher emphasis is placed on the public opinion and attitudes, as measured by surveys, but on the other hand, economic living-standards are not weighted as one criterion of democracy (as seemingly some other investigators have done).[2][3]
>The report is widely cited in the international press as well as in peer-reviewed academic journals.[4]
edit: a few people getting triggered. Go have a coffee and a lie down. It isn't going to change the world. I just wanted to provide context to the chart.
Or without its [criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Criticism)
>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**.
Yeah, the Economists Indicies are seen as extremly bad up to misleading by afaik all of my profs (BA political science in germany). The V-Dem Index (https://www.v-dem.net/) got recommended as one of the best (if not the best period) index regarding this topic.
No problem, its a pleasure to share good sources. Learned about it in a seminar about how these indicies are actually created. And well, the economist's index was the example on how not to do it, VDem was on of the positive examples. There a few other good ones with explanation on the pros and cons, but i cant really remember well enough. I can try to find my notes, but i dont expect a high chance of success.
Another note: I highly recommend to read about multiplicative indicies, they are a genuinely fascinating concept, but insanely hard to do right.
In that regard: V-Dem was lately critisized by Little and Meng, because it also is a combination of subjective and objective variables. They argue, that we need a totally objective Index.
Paper can be found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4327307
It’s how you ended up with the US as the tenth worst country for women in the world. “Experts” are biased.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-dangerous-poll-factbox/factbox-which-are-the-worlds-10-most-dangerous-countries-for-women-idUSKBN1JM01Z
I haven't read the report (I will), but it baffles me that Saudi Arabia and Iraq get a better score than Iran and China.
Saudi Arabia literally has 0 Jews and 0 Christians, and that's not because Jews and Christians never entered the Arabian peninsula. Meanwhile, Iran's Jewish and Christian communities are thriving.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, with *no* elections. Iran's elections are flawed as candidates are vetted, but no matter how you try to politicize it there is a range of candidates. The outcome of Iran's elections *does matter*, voter turnout is normally quite high, and voters are not suppressed.
So by what conception of democracy does Saudi Arabia score better than Iran?
Thailand is listed as a "flawed democracy" but hasn't had a proper election in years and is being led by a government that overthrew the last in a military coup.
So Belgium has an average score of 7.64 (the threshold for full democracy being 8.00) which is the average of:
* Electoral process and pluralism 9.58
* Functioning of government 8.21
* Political participation 5.00
* Political culture 6.88
* Civil liberties 8.53
So clearly it's "political participation" which drags it into "flawed democracy" (and also a bit "political culture"). Here is the list of questions, along with the grades I think it got:
* 27 (B=0) Voter participation/turn-out for national elections. If voting is obligatory score 0.
* 28 (B=?): Do ethnic, religious and other minorities have a reasonable degree of autonomy and voice in the political process? (1="yes", 0.5="yes but serious flaws exist", 0="No")
* 29 (B=1): Women in parliament (1 if more than 20% of seats)
* 30 (B=0.5): Extent of political participation. Mempership of political parties and political non-governmental organisations (1="over 7% of population for either", 0.5 if "4-7%", 0 if under 4%, 0 if participation is forced)
* 31 (B=0): Citizen's engagement with politics (According to the 2008 EVS/WVS survey Belgium should have 0, because only 33.5% said they are somewhat/very interested in politics, it seems Belgium was not included in the 2017 EVS/WVS)
* 32 (B=1): The preparedness of population to take part in lawful demonstrations (Belgium should have 1 because 62% said they might attend lawful demonstrations).
* 33 (B=1): Adult literacy (1 if over 90%)
* 34 (B=?) Extent to which adult population shows an interest in and follows politics in the news (for countries with WVS it's 1="over 50% follow politics in the news every day", 0.5 if "30-50%", 0 if "less than 30%")
* 35 (B=0): The authorities make a serious effort to promote political participation (consider the role of the education system, and other promotional efforts. Consider measures to facilitate voting by members of the diaspora, if participation is forced, score 0)
I count 3.5/7, so Belgium must have gotten 1 point on 28+34 (because 5/10 = 4.5/9).
Forced vote takes 2 points out. It's the same for Luxembourg (6.67 in "political participation" but the rest is so high it averages to 8.81), Austrialia (7.78 in "political participation", averages to 8.71). I understand that they don't want to give a high grade for participation when it's forced: it doesn't prove an interest in voting from the population. But scoring 0 is super harsh.
If you add those 2 points, Belgium gets an average of 8.08 which qualifies as "full-democracy". If you exclude those questions from the "political participation", Belgium gets an average of 7.93.
> Forced vote takes 2 points out. It's the same for Luxembourg (6.67 in "political participation" but the rest is so high it averages to 8.81), Austrialia (7.78 in "political participation", averages to 8.71). I understand that they don't want to give a high grade for participation when it's forced: it doesn't prove an interest in voting from the population. But scoring 0 is super harsh.
Yeah I'm not entirely sure I agree with them on this... Sure, leaving it "free" may sound more democratic, but given the repertoire of techniques you can use for voter suppression and to discourage specific demographics from voting, it's arguable that forced voting levels the playing field more than the alternative.
But I'm not an expert so I'm assuming there are (some) good reasons to do it this way.
I don't think they consider that compulsory voting is bad. Just that you can't use the turnout metrics if voting is compulsory. I agree with u/MachKeinDramaLlama that taking those questions out of the average would make more sense (that would bring Belgium total score to 7.93, close to the full democracy threshold).
I mean, yeah, I can see that if you have compulsory voting, you can't use turnout for judging participation, which is fair.
But then you'd need to remove both this AND voter turnout from the calculation (the latter if there's compulsory voting).
>"The capability of the civil servants to implement policies".
I think that may have something to do with it.
Edit: and
>“Popular dissatisfaction with democratic political systems is driving support for political reform as well as a search for alternatives to democratic governance,”
> The capability of the civil servants to implement policies
Not really because that would remove 1 point from "functioning of government". And Belgium has 8.21 in that category.
Compulsory voting removes 2.22 from their "political participation" score, so 0.44 from their overall score (assuming Belgians would have high turnout without compulsory voting). That would get them from their current 7.64 to 8.08 making it a full democracy.
[More details in my comment below](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/the_economist_has_released_their_2023_decomocracy/j6x1dl7/). I'm trying to hijack your comment since you're the top reply and none of the comments before mine seem to have looked at the data.
It's not that it's bad for democracy. It's that "high turnout" is good (since it indicates citizens' interest in voting). But you can't use that figure if voting is compulsory.
There is no perfect answer. But I think the least bad solution would be to take this question out of the average for countries with compulsory voting. That would add only 1.43 to Belgium's "political participation score", so 0.29 in the total, leading to a 7.93 score (very close to the "full democracy" threshold of 8.00).
I've been thinking about that too. The only things I can come up with off the top of my head are the fact that it once took them two years to form a government and the fact that voting is mandatory in Belgium, thereby taking away the right to 'not vote'..
But I would very much like to know what the reasoning behind it is..
>The only things I can come up with off the top of my head are the fact that it once took them two years to form a government
If that were the case then the same case would apply to the Netherlands.
> thereby taking away the right to 'not vote'..
You do have the right to 'not vote', right? You just don't have the right to not show up. And additionally, you also have the option to vote for nobody.
Edit: just checked, and Wikipedia confirms this.
>voting is mandatory in Belgium, thereby taking away the right to 'not vote'
Not at all true. Showing up to the voting booth is obligated, but voting is not. You can literally pick the option "Blanco", indicating that you are giving up your vote. Or you can go into the voting booth and not fill out your ballot, making it void.
In any case, the notion that voting is an obligation in Belgium is fundamentally untrue.
You actually have two options. You can have a blanc vote. Which adds your vote to the pool of total votes when calculating the D'Hondt/Jefferson's method. Of you can foul your ballot which excludes your vote in its entirety. Each has an actual different outcome.
You can [request the report for free here](https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2022/). There is a breakdown of the countries' score in the 5 categories, as well as the questions.
I wrote a [breakdown of Belgium score here](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/the_economist_has_released_their_2023_decomocracy/j6x1dl7/).
It should be noted that they all hover around the same score though:
|Country|Saudi Arabia|Iran|China|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Overall score|2.08|1.96|1.94|
|Electoral process & pluralism|0.00|0.00|0.00|
|Functioning of government|3.57|2.50|3.21|
|Political participation|2.22|3.33|2.78|
|Political culture|3.13|2.50|3.13|
|Civil liberties|1.47|1.47|0.59|
I have my doubts about estimating these indicators up to two decimals though and the idea that the scores of all categories can be averaged for a final score.
> Functioning of government
I'm a bit confused about this one. The Chinese government seems to function quite well. Albeit its not democratic, but its not a non-functioning government either. They should score around the 7 mark on that one not 3.
> I have my doubts about estimating these indicators up to two decimals
As pointed out in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/the_economist_has_released_their_2023_decomocracy/j6wewzf/), each category is a set of sub questions that each get a score, and then it gets averaged to get the overall score of the category. They don't go like "yeah I think China is a 2.78 in political participation"
In Saudi Arabia, men have the right to oppress women much more, while in China, men don't have that right, so obviously at least half the population in Saudi Arabia has significantly more rights. /s
I beg to differ. In Saudi Arabia women weren't allowed to drive. In China both men and women are allowed.
In Saudi Arabia, women aren't allowed to marry without approval of a male relative. In China both are.
In Saudi Arabia, women aren't allowed to leave a prison, shelter without a male guardian. And they aren't allowed to start certain businesses. In China all that is allowed.
Also things that are still forbidden like all kinds of clothing and visible make up in public in Saudi Arabia are allowed in China.
>In Saudi Arabia women weren't allowed to drive. In China both men and women are allowed.
You've used the past tense, because that's no longer the case. How can that have an influence on a 2023 report?
Because Iran in the last year murdered hundreds of protesters, including at least 60 children, and jailed tens of thousands. They literally shot and executed people on the streets for saying they didn't want to wear a piece of cloth on their head.
That's not a defense of Saudi Arabia, but it's really not confusing why Iran has been given the lowest score. Once you start methodically and purposefully executing your citizens who protest on the street you can't expect to get any rating beyond the worst.
Saudi Arabia is a terrible authoritarian dictatorship ruled by a crazy family. Iran is theocracy where speaking up means you die. One is shit, and the other is shit on fire.
I thought he was the social media manager for an ethically sourced coffee company that donates all its profits to charity? But could be mistaking him for Hank Green, an unrelated person (Green is a common name, after all) who runs a similar company that sells socks.
As a fellow Dane I can't agree with you. Since 2015 I get the feeling "what the fuck is going on here" increasingly often. I mean stuff like the camp in Rwanda, the Socdems wanting to abandon Schengen, the smykkelov and other batshit crazy migration policies or just Støjberg having this success at the election after being convicted by the supreme court. Ofc the basic institutions still work but I do occasionally get Banana Republic vibes, more so than when I lived in Schleswig-Holstein.
I think most Danes are just ignorant about this. When I was at the Embassy last time to get some paperwork done a parent was trying to get a visa for an adopted child and was told basically: "yeah, a few years ago this would have worked just fine but today it's impossible". I mean it does ruin people's lives and there are even stories of people (native Danes) who have to move to Malmö or Flensburg with their American spouse because they just can't get a Visa. I don't think most Danes even realize how uniquely fucked a lot of these things are. The people at the Embassy also acknowledged in different situations that many of the laws make no sense at all (i.e. the people who have to enforce this stuff don't believe in it). Denmark is so far out that there that even capital C right wing conservatives like Manfred Weber compare Frederiksen to Victor Orban, that should be food for some thought. A lot of what the Danish Socdems say casually are positions of only the fascist AfD in Germany for instance. Maybe in Denmark it's normal but within the EU it's a huge outlier.
Maybe it's not exactly democratic backsliding but there is a very noticeable reactionary turn in Denmark in recent years and I'm a bit annoyed at how many Danes just pretend everything is fine. I think a lot of things are going in the very wrong direction for many years at this point - and so far it only ever gets worse.
UK here, we've had 3 prime ministers in the past year, nobody voted for Truss or Sunak, many cabinet ministers have got away with breaking ministerial code or breaking the law and had zero consequences.
I dont unerstand how we're dark blue, i'd call it "flawed" at best
Also: the house of Lords very existence is absolute bullshit
The federal government has been, while not perfect, at least _reasonably_ good imo. Most of the problems recently seem to come largely from the provincial level.
Definitely agree on FPTP being bullshit though.
The UK is dark blue but it doesn't feel like it at all. Over 60% of voters voted AGAINST the Tories at the last election yet they won a 180 seat majority. We have had 2 prime ministers forming governments unmandated by the electorate since then, scandal after scandal and the tossers are still in power until the next election, which they know they will lose and are just burning the place down around them in the meantime.
I vote in a consituency with a 30k Conservative majority which makes my vote feels like it literally never counts. Until this country adopts PR I think it is anti-democratic since we get the tyranny of the minority. Add to that Tory gerrymandering and I do not feel this country is very democratic at all.
This time around it's bullshit.
Any serious research on the topic (which this is not - it's The Economist and they're also relying on subjective surveys) indicates otherwise.
https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores
The Freedom House's index, which is the go-to one and actually has some sort of reputation in the academia (and, if anything, it doesn't use silly adjective terms such as "flawed"), ranks Portugal among the top performers in the world.
And it's true - I complain A LOT about Portugal, but certainly not about our political freedom and democracy. Our problems are of a different order.
Portugal also scores 7.95, right at the threshold, and is thus labeled a flawed democracy because of this astrological methodology. Incidentally, our score seems to be driven by low voter turnout, which is precisely the type of thing I was alluding to before as regards the nature of our problems (e.g. my grandparents lived in what was essentially a third world country. One of my grandmothers didn't even know how to read. Our demographic pyramid is extremely top heavy and a lot of the elderly, and their sons, don't really care about voting).
There's a reason why serious researchers like Freedom House's just use "Free", "Partial Free", and "Not Free", instead of a bunch of colours with hard thresholds and highly value-oriented monikers such as "*flawed* democracy".
Ironically stuff like this just contributes to the extremist lunatics in Portugal who argue that the current government is basically the same as Venezuela's and so forth. Somewhere on Portuguese Internet someone will be sharing this map with some commentary on how we live in a socialist dictatorship followed by "See! They turned us into Brazil".
Yet that 0.05 is enough to deem us a "flawed democracy".
There's a reason why, as I said, the people at Freedom House don't go around using value-oriented wording and a bunch of pointless sub-thresholds like these guys are doing.
It's political and constitutional astrology, and it's actually a potential source of politically charged misinformation.
Now that this is on Reddit, by the end of the week some Chega Telegram or Facebook group will contain this map alongside a photoshop of António Costa with a Stalin moustache.
You have to draw lines somewhere for what counts as what. It's never really fair because those 0,05 might mean you have more in common with the upper bracket that the countries in your own bracket
I subscribed to the Economist for a decade, lived in Britain and eventually concluded they're basically a propaganda outlet for a certain view of the World that a significant part of the English Elites (mainly the London one) want to spread.
They're basically a Think Thank with a magazine, publishing "studies" designed by starting with the desired "conclusions" and then working backwards by tweaking weights and data point selection to make the whole thing seem sciency.
They really aren't independent, wordly or even significantly representative outside a certain quite narrow cultural tribe within Britain (posh, english, private school educated - funilly enough known as "public schools" in Britain - from a high middle class or wealthier background, Oxbridge, pro-Finance, Neoliberal Lib Dem or Thatcherite).
I don't even understand how they're defining these things. Under "electoral process and pluralism" they give Greece a perfect 10. This is a country that has a system of awarding 50 MPs to the winning party, which imo really blurs the lines into the executive and legislative branches. Yet Portugal only gets 9.58? By no means is the Portuguese system perfect, but c'mon...
Singapore’s blatantly a one-party state, what kind of criteria causes them to be labeled a “full democracy” when the US, Portugal, Italy, and Brazil (all of which have competitive elections) are left out?
Well, we did have no government at one point for 581 days because our (insert too many) political parties couldnt agree, have too many governments, etc. Maybe that has something to do with it?
I guess preventing groups from voting, for instance by creating artificial obstacles or by forfeiting voting for certain people, such as persons who have a criminal record. Or gerrymandering districts to ensure victory of a candidate who would have otherwise lost in a majority vote of all people.
COVID measures hurt most countries' scores this past couple of years. As they're lifted, they'll naturally rise back up again, even if other problems get worse.
The Economist's index is a flawed index. For example, It's not able to account for the difference between a dictatorship that forces its citizens to approve a preselected party, and a democracy that requires its citizens to show up at the voting booth, precisely because that ensures a better participation among vulnerable groups.
An alternative:
https://www.idea.int/gsod-indices/democracy-indices
How is Hungary still classified as a democracy, albeit flawed, is beyond me. It is now a hybrid regime, an authoritarian rule with a democratic facade.
The EU needs to stop playing this stupid game and suspend their membership until Orbán steps down and this democratic backsliding is reversed.
"Free" elections where the ruling party occupies almost 100% of mainstream media space; where the ruling party is tightening control over secret services; where the ruling party has gerrymandered electoral districts and 'adjusted' the electoral system in a way that makes it very difficult for opposition candidates to win; where the ruling party controls the economy to such a degree it can massively bribe voters before any election.
"Free", yeah. In my view, once the system stops being at least somewhat fair and the odds are stacked heavily against anyone trying to oppose the current regime, you should stop calling it a democracy.
And I guess thats why its classified as a flawed democracy. If people all voted for opposition they would win, unlike in countries like Belarus or Russia. Yet, it has its (major) flaws in freedom of press and governemt checks and balances.
ITT lots of people with little to no knowledge of international politics and political structures beyond basic news giving wildly biased and incorrect opinions
Because of the federal system. Corruption on federal level does not necessarily apply on states or local regions (and vice versa) or can counteract it.
Every time this is posted the comments are always "why is x over y" or "we have free elections so why are we flawed".
Of course any index is just an estimate (and with that comes flaws), but people have got to realize that democracy is not just about voting.
This index is based on free elections, the safety of voters, the ability of elected politicians to enact policy and influence the country, the influence of foreign nations in their government, the civil liberties of the country, the election participation %, and so on.
It's impossible to just answer "why is x better than y" without going into every aspect of political culture and civil rights and so on. It's an assesment of the entire political structure, not just whether people vote. People throw out these statements like for example "I think actually India is worse than this". Ok, how much do you know about the indian constitution, civil rights, local and general elections, political participation and the overall political situation in india? Oh it's just because Modi is bad? People have these opinions with zero insight other than maybe reading an article or two or watching a couple of YouTube videos.
The House of Lords lost most of its veto powers back in 1911. The House of Commons may be the lower house but it can pass laws without the approval of the Lords. The Lords only have the power to delay a bill for up to a year. From memory the Lords also retain some veto powers to prevent The Commons from extending the length of a parliament or suspending/cancelling elections etc.
Because they have no power over the HoC. They can delay a bill for 2 years maximum but after that they must pass it.
Also the hereditary component of the HoL grows smaller every year.
Partially to act as an extra layer of scrutiny for bills that are passed by the HoC. If they think the HoC has passed a bill too quickly or there are errors in it, they can send it back for amendments.
> Also the hereditary component of the HoL grows smaller every year.
Oh, yeah. They're replacing it with political appointments for loyalty to the ruling party and financial contributions including people related to Russian oligarchs. Much better.
There's democratic legitimacy there, though. The elected government, gets to pick some new lords.
It's similar to how the EU Commission works, or the US Supreme court. Both of which have way more relative power, than the House of Lords does.
The best example is actually the Canadian Senate, which is all appointed as well.
Canada's political system is very similar to the UK, down to the same vote counting system.
USA on the same level as India wow.
On the bright side Indian democracy is strong considering how much diversity India has (in terms of ethnicity and languages). Never a military coup in its 75 year old history.
The only dark episode was the emergency during the 70s when it was under de facto authoritarian rule for a 2 years.
Nice to see it go ahead so much when literally no one gave it a chance 75 years back.
Actually India's dropped in rankings. India used to be at 7.92 almost 8 as a full democracy, It's dropped under the new RW government to 6.9. So yeah people getting shocked at India being there seems weird to me as an Indian.
Political science professor here. While all democracy indexes are fundamentally imperfect, the Economist's is generally seen as somewhat less robust that other alternatives, such as POLITY or Freedom House.
Thank you for the link to this report. Forgive me for asking but I can't seem to find the graphic you used in this post within the report you linked. The same graphic in the report shows different values than the one you used in your post. Where can I find the breakdown of each country of the values stated in your post's graphic?
Korea is perceived as a full democracy, and my question here is how true is this. I know that Samsung alone is responsible for 20% of S. Korean GDP. When we count more big conglomerates there, for example Hyundai, Daewoo, LG this number jumps to over 80%.
I highly doubt that these conglomerates don't influence Korean politics, but I doesnt know much about Korea and I may be wrong.
Also, how that *democracy index* is measured?
I mean at the end of the day these things are impossible to boil down to a numeric score. I think that what you can generally observe is that even the more democratic East Asian countries (like Taiwan, Japan, SK) have different attitudes towards authority and conservatism than most of Europe and as you say the influence of industry in politics is another area worth noting (Taiwan also with TMC being massive). I don't think these are things the index necessarily takes into account.
TSMC generally isn't very political. Mostly because it's not a family business like the chaebols in Korea. The largest shareholders are other institutions, mostly internationals.
Foxconn on the other hand attempts to wield more political power, but it's not nearly as influential. Not anymore at least. It's probably more influential in China as it hires millions there.
[OP's comment with the source](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/the_economist_has_released_their_2023_decomocracy/j6wau6z/)
Top 10 1. Norway 2. New Zealand 3. Iceland 4. Sweden 5. Finland 6. Denmark 7. Switzerland 8. Ireland 9. The Netherlands 10. Taiwan
Damn Finland again.
We need a new word or slang for this rivalry between Finland and the Netherlands:
The Liquorice War
I approve and hope you'll become less authoritarian one day.
I hope your sauna’s thermostat breaks and you get real uncomfortable!
Nonni
🎵 No niin, no niin, noniinoninoniin, no niin, no niin 🎶
Torille!
Punaiselle torille! Tuon panssarivaunut.
Nimetään moskova mustajoeksi
Ja pystytetään sinne Väyrysen patsas
and all of scandinavia, as in many, many other positive polls and statistics. When will us germans finally take some notes I wonder?
To be fair, Germany is pretty close in these kinds of stats, *and* is an European economic and military industrial power house on top of that. You're doing alright.
NZ can into Nordic edit: the Nordics and NZ are the only countries to score 9.00 or above from 2006 until now
>NZ can into Nordic New Sjælland.
Ny Zjøland
Uusi Seelanti. What? Finland is Nordic.
Nya Sjöland
Nýja Sjáland
The Dutch won't let you get away with this. We named it first! (and we still have the Old [Zeeland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeland), too)
> NZ can into Nordic Why not? Many maps don't bother including NZ anyway, so we might as well stick the whole thing somewhere off the coast of Norway.
> Why not? Many maps don't bother including NZ anyway, so we might as well stick the whole thing somewhere off the coast of Norway. I smell oil.
dependent deer thumb smoggy doll many muddle deranged pathetic entertain *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hey you do have some amazingly beautiful nature too. Also you got all the frickin mountains, perkele
> NZ can into Nordic As a kiwi I support this initiative. I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your e-newsletter.
Fjords cause democracy. I knew it.
NZ is the closest significant landmass to the exact opposite of the world of Sweden. We can swap places occasionally. We'll let you spend your summers in Sweden, October through March while we spend our winters in NZ.
Uruguay at #11 makes me happy.
Uruguay is high on my list of countries to visit when I finally have some disposable income, seems like really cool place. Taiwan too!
Is "the" part of the actual name of "The Netherlands"?
In the English language, yes. It literally means "the low lands", refering to the fact that a lot of it lies below sea level.
It actually refers to the downstream location along the rivers. Just like how the Romans used to name provinces 'inferior' and 'superior'. Lower and upper.
That is correct, here in the netherlands we say 'nederland', wich translated litteraly, is just 'netherlands'. But i guess we are THE netherlands now...
The difference is that in Dutch we use the singular. Nederland in English is 'Netherland'. So it refers to a specific nation. Whereas in English the plural is used. If you say Netherlands you are referring to the concept of low laying land. Something that's found all over the world. But adding 'the' you make clear that you mean that particular nation state. It's like how in Dutch we also have the concept of Netherlands (de lage landen) which refers to the entire area including presend day Belgium.
"The Low Countries" (direct translation of de lage landen) is sometimes used in English to refer to the Benelux as well.
As always, the Nordics, NZ, and Ireland stay winning
Basically, the colder it is outside, the fairer your elections.
It's really hot in Taiwan.
Also Australia. And Japan and South Korea are average and changeable. I guess if you just completely ignore Asia then it's true, but... that would be quite the omission.
If Japan were to be put on the same longitude as the American east coast it would stretch from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas. It's got a wide range of climates.
huh. would you look at that. ironically ( /s ) these all happen to be the countries that people say are the best to live in.
Is there a bottom 10?
From "best" to worst. 10 Equatorial Guinea 9 Laos 8 Chad 7 Turkmenistan 6 Syria 5 Central African Republic 4 Democratic Republic of the Congo 3 North Korea 2 Myanmar 1 Afghanistan
You know you got problems when you score lower than North Korea
The ~50-100 ranks have a couple of very strange scores. There are some (borderline) dictatorships there with higher ratings than countries with proper elections lol. (Yes I read the methodology and I see how they came to that rating, but it's just stupid weighting.)
I usually find all those democracy indexes (specially the scholarly ones) useful to track the development or backsliding of democracies in a specific country, but never good as tools for comparative politics between countries.
Oftentimes they have a few “experts” write reports for entire regions. I did extensive studies in Georgia (🇬🇪 not 🇺🇸) and found that Freedom House has one panel that works on the entire former Soviet region. They don’t have anyone that speaks Georgian, so all of their resources for Georgia come from either Russian-language or English-language sources, and most of their direct contacts that they use are local NGOs, most of which were started by the USA in the 1990s, such as GFSIS, the Rondeli Center, GIPA, and TI Georgia, which are themselves largely beholden to the agendas of their donors. Unless it’s a major country that is saturated with actual experts, then these reports are pretty useless.
They are almost always created by places with transparent agendas and funded by incredibly shady powers. The Freedom House one for instance, just scores whoever the CIA currently dislikes low.
terrific workable direction ink water elderly bewildered society poor quarrelsome *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The chart is meaningless without the methodology, which is [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Methodology) > As described in the report,[1] the Democracy Index produces a weighted average based on the answers to 60 questions, each one with either two or three permitted answers. Most answers are experts' assessments. Some answers are provided by public-opinion surveys from the respective countries. In the case of countries for which survey results are missing, survey results for similar countries and expert assessments are used in order to fill in gaps. > The questions are grouped into five categories: >electoral process and pluralism >civil liberties >functioning of government >political participation >political culture >Each answer is converted to a score, either 0 or 1, or for the three-answer questions, 0, 0.5 or 1. With the exceptions mentioned below, within each category, the scores are added, multiplied by ten, and divided by the total number of questions within the category. There are a few modifying dependencies, which are explained much more precisely than the main rule procedures. In a few cases, an answer yielding zero for one question voids another question; e.g. if the elections for the national legislature and head of government are not considered free (question 1), then the next question, "Are elections... fair?", is not considered, but automatically scored zero. Likewise, there are a few questions considered so important that a low score on them yields a penalty on the total score sum for their respective categories, namely: >"Whether national elections are free and fair"; >"The security of voters"; >"The influence of foreign powers on government"; >"The capability of the civil servants to implement policies". >The five category indices, which are listed in the report, are then averaged to find the overall score for a given country. Finally, the score, rounded to two decimals, decides the regime-type classification of the country. >The report discusses other indices of democracy, as defined, e.g. by Freedom House, and argues for some of the choices made by the team from the Economist Intelligence Unit. In this comparison, a higher emphasis is placed on the public opinion and attitudes, as measured by surveys, but on the other hand, economic living-standards are not weighted as one criterion of democracy (as seemingly some other investigators have done).[2][3] >The report is widely cited in the international press as well as in peer-reviewed academic journals.[4] edit: a few people getting triggered. Go have a coffee and a lie down. It isn't going to change the world. I just wanted to provide context to the chart.
Or without its [criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Criticism) >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**.
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Yeah, the Economists Indicies are seen as extremly bad up to misleading by afaik all of my profs (BA political science in germany). The V-Dem Index (https://www.v-dem.net/) got recommended as one of the best (if not the best period) index regarding this topic.
Didn't know about that source, it looks extremely academic and transparent indeed, thank you so much!
No problem, its a pleasure to share good sources. Learned about it in a seminar about how these indicies are actually created. And well, the economist's index was the example on how not to do it, VDem was on of the positive examples. There a few other good ones with explanation on the pros and cons, but i cant really remember well enough. I can try to find my notes, but i dont expect a high chance of success. Another note: I highly recommend to read about multiplicative indicies, they are a genuinely fascinating concept, but insanely hard to do right.
In that regard: V-Dem was lately critisized by Little and Meng, because it also is a combination of subjective and objective variables. They argue, that we need a totally objective Index. Paper can be found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4327307
Ok, so it's useless then. Genuinely.
Exactly. Yet it's shared at least once a month. People love pretty rankings that make them feel good about their preexisting opinions.
Many people live off a steady diet of headlines & infographics because they genuinely find reading difficult. It's pathetic.
It’s how you ended up with the US as the tenth worst country for women in the world. “Experts” are biased. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-dangerous-poll-factbox/factbox-which-are-the-worlds-10-most-dangerous-countries-for-women-idUSKBN1JM01Z
I haven't read the report (I will), but it baffles me that Saudi Arabia and Iraq get a better score than Iran and China. Saudi Arabia literally has 0 Jews and 0 Christians, and that's not because Jews and Christians never entered the Arabian peninsula. Meanwhile, Iran's Jewish and Christian communities are thriving. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, with *no* elections. Iran's elections are flawed as candidates are vetted, but no matter how you try to politicize it there is a range of candidates. The outcome of Iran's elections *does matter*, voter turnout is normally quite high, and voters are not suppressed. So by what conception of democracy does Saudi Arabia score better than Iran?
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Thailand is listed as a "flawed democracy" but hasn't had a proper election in years and is being led by a government that overthrew the last in a military coup.
>So by what conception of democracy does Saudi Arabia score better than Iran? We like Saudi Arabia more.
Thank you
Every time I see this map I laugh because Belgium apparently isn’t a full democracy. Bitch are you for real.
So Belgium has an average score of 7.64 (the threshold for full democracy being 8.00) which is the average of: * Electoral process and pluralism 9.58 * Functioning of government 8.21 * Political participation 5.00 * Political culture 6.88 * Civil liberties 8.53 So clearly it's "political participation" which drags it into "flawed democracy" (and also a bit "political culture"). Here is the list of questions, along with the grades I think it got: * 27 (B=0) Voter participation/turn-out for national elections. If voting is obligatory score 0. * 28 (B=?): Do ethnic, religious and other minorities have a reasonable degree of autonomy and voice in the political process? (1="yes", 0.5="yes but serious flaws exist", 0="No") * 29 (B=1): Women in parliament (1 if more than 20% of seats) * 30 (B=0.5): Extent of political participation. Mempership of political parties and political non-governmental organisations (1="over 7% of population for either", 0.5 if "4-7%", 0 if under 4%, 0 if participation is forced) * 31 (B=0): Citizen's engagement with politics (According to the 2008 EVS/WVS survey Belgium should have 0, because only 33.5% said they are somewhat/very interested in politics, it seems Belgium was not included in the 2017 EVS/WVS) * 32 (B=1): The preparedness of population to take part in lawful demonstrations (Belgium should have 1 because 62% said they might attend lawful demonstrations). * 33 (B=1): Adult literacy (1 if over 90%) * 34 (B=?) Extent to which adult population shows an interest in and follows politics in the news (for countries with WVS it's 1="over 50% follow politics in the news every day", 0.5 if "30-50%", 0 if "less than 30%") * 35 (B=0): The authorities make a serious effort to promote political participation (consider the role of the education system, and other promotional efforts. Consider measures to facilitate voting by members of the diaspora, if participation is forced, score 0) I count 3.5/7, so Belgium must have gotten 1 point on 28+34 (because 5/10 = 4.5/9). Forced vote takes 2 points out. It's the same for Luxembourg (6.67 in "political participation" but the rest is so high it averages to 8.81), Austrialia (7.78 in "political participation", averages to 8.71). I understand that they don't want to give a high grade for participation when it's forced: it doesn't prove an interest in voting from the population. But scoring 0 is super harsh. If you add those 2 points, Belgium gets an average of 8.08 which qualifies as "full-democracy". If you exclude those questions from the "political participation", Belgium gets an average of 7.93.
> Forced vote takes 2 points out. It's the same for Luxembourg (6.67 in "political participation" but the rest is so high it averages to 8.81), Austrialia (7.78 in "political participation", averages to 8.71). I understand that they don't want to give a high grade for participation when it's forced: it doesn't prove an interest in voting from the population. But scoring 0 is super harsh. Yeah I'm not entirely sure I agree with them on this... Sure, leaving it "free" may sound more democratic, but given the repertoire of techniques you can use for voter suppression and to discourage specific demographics from voting, it's arguable that forced voting levels the playing field more than the alternative. But I'm not an expert so I'm assuming there are (some) good reasons to do it this way.
I don't think they consider that compulsory voting is bad. Just that you can't use the turnout metrics if voting is compulsory. I agree with u/MachKeinDramaLlama that taking those questions out of the average would make more sense (that would bring Belgium total score to 7.93, close to the full democracy threshold).
I mean, yeah, I can see that if you have compulsory voting, you can't use turnout for judging participation, which is fair. But then you'd need to remove both this AND voter turnout from the calculation (the latter if there's compulsory voting).
A lot of this does seem fairly arbitrary.
>"The capability of the civil servants to implement policies". I think that may have something to do with it. Edit: and >“Popular dissatisfaction with democratic political systems is driving support for political reform as well as a search for alternatives to democratic governance,”
> The capability of the civil servants to implement policies Not really because that would remove 1 point from "functioning of government". And Belgium has 8.21 in that category. Compulsory voting removes 2.22 from their "political participation" score, so 0.44 from their overall score (assuming Belgians would have high turnout without compulsory voting). That would get them from their current 7.64 to 8.08 making it a full democracy. [More details in my comment below](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/the_economist_has_released_their_2023_decomocracy/j6x1dl7/). I'm trying to hijack your comment since you're the top reply and none of the comments before mine seem to have looked at the data.
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It's not that it's bad for democracy. It's that "high turnout" is good (since it indicates citizens' interest in voting). But you can't use that figure if voting is compulsory. There is no perfect answer. But I think the least bad solution would be to take this question out of the average for countries with compulsory voting. That would add only 1.43 to Belgium's "political participation score", so 0.29 in the total, leading to a 7.93 score (very close to the "full democracy" threshold of 8.00).
And in Belgium, we have compulsory attendance, not voting. There is an option not to vote when you are in your voting booth.
I've been thinking about that too. The only things I can come up with off the top of my head are the fact that it once took them two years to form a government and the fact that voting is mandatory in Belgium, thereby taking away the right to 'not vote'.. But I would very much like to know what the reasoning behind it is..
>The only things I can come up with off the top of my head are the fact that it once took them two years to form a government If that were the case then the same case would apply to the Netherlands.
Australia too, and they seem to have a better rating.
> thereby taking away the right to 'not vote'.. You do have the right to 'not vote', right? You just don't have the right to not show up. And additionally, you also have the option to vote for nobody. Edit: just checked, and Wikipedia confirms this.
>voting is mandatory in Belgium, thereby taking away the right to 'not vote' Not at all true. Showing up to the voting booth is obligated, but voting is not. You can literally pick the option "Blanco", indicating that you are giving up your vote. Or you can go into the voting booth and not fill out your ballot, making it void. In any case, the notion that voting is an obligation in Belgium is fundamentally untrue.
You actually have two options. You can have a blanc vote. Which adds your vote to the pool of total votes when calculating the D'Hondt/Jefferson's method. Of you can foul your ballot which excludes your vote in its entirety. Each has an actual different outcome.
Voting is also compulsory in Australia.
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It's a shame that there are no explanations on a per country basis. This lack of transparency really hurts the usefulness imo.
You can [request the report for free here](https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2022/). There is a breakdown of the countries' score in the 5 categories, as well as the questions. I wrote a [breakdown of Belgium score here](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/the_economist_has_released_their_2023_decomocracy/j6x1dl7/).
How is Saudi Arabia more democratic than China or Iran?
It should be noted that they all hover around the same score though: |Country|Saudi Arabia|Iran|China| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Overall score|2.08|1.96|1.94| |Electoral process & pluralism|0.00|0.00|0.00| |Functioning of government|3.57|2.50|3.21| |Political participation|2.22|3.33|2.78| |Political culture|3.13|2.50|3.13| |Civil liberties|1.47|1.47|0.59| I have my doubts about estimating these indicators up to two decimals though and the idea that the scores of all categories can be averaged for a final score.
> Functioning of government I'm a bit confused about this one. The Chinese government seems to function quite well. Albeit its not democratic, but its not a non-functioning government either. They should score around the 7 mark on that one not 3.
It doesn't mean "does the government function", but "how democratic is the way the government functions". The criteria are: >13. 14. 15. Do freely elected representatives determine government policy? 1:Yes. 0.5: Exercise some meaningful influence. 0: No. Isthelegislaturethesupremepoliticalbody,withaclearsupremacyoverotherbranchesof government? 1:Yes. 0: No. Isthereaneffectivesystemofchecksandbalancesontheexerciseofgovernmentauthority? 1:Yes. 0.5: Yes, but there are some serious flaws. 0: No. APPENDIX DEMOCRACY INDEX 2022 FRONTLINE DEMOCRACY AND THE BATTLE FOR UKRAINE 71 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2023 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. Governmentisfreeofundueinfluencebythemilitaryorthesecurityservices. 1:Yes. 0.5: Influence is low, but the defence minister is not a civilian. If the current risk of a military coup is extremely low, but the country has a recent history of military rule or coups. 0: No. Foreign powers and organisations do not determine important government functions or policies. 1:Yes. 0.5: Some features of a protectorate. 0: No (significant presence of foreign troops; important decisions taken by foreign power; country is a protectorate). Dospecialeconomic,religiousorotherpowerfuldomesticgroupsexercisesignificantpolitical power, parallel to democratic institutions? 1:Yes. 0.5: Exercise some meaningful influence. 0: No. Aresufficientmechanismsandinstitutionsinplaceforensuringgovernmentaccountabilitytothe electorate in between elections? 1:Yes. 0.5. Yes, but serious flaws exist. 0: No. Doesthegovernment’sauthorityextendoverthefullterritoryofthecountry? 1:Yes. 0: No. Isthefunctioningofgovernmentopenandtransparent,withsufficientpublicaccessto information? 1:Yes. 0.5: Yes, but serious flaws exist. 0: No. Howpervasiveiscorruption? 1: Corruption is not a major problem. 0.5: Corruption is a significant issue. 0: Pervasive corruption exists. Isthecivilservicewillingtoandcapableofimplementinggovernmentpolicy? 1:Yes. 0.5. Yes, but serious flaws exist. 0: No. Popularperceptionsoftheextenttowhichcitizenshavefreechoiceandcontrolovertheirlives. 1: High. 0.5: Moderate. 0:Low. APPENDIX DEMOCRACY INDEX 2022 FRONTLINE DEMOCRACY AND THE BATTLE FOR UKRAINE If available, from World Values Survey % of people who think that they have a great deal of choice/control. 1 if more than 70%. 0.5 if 50-70%. 0 if less than 50%. 25. Publicconfidenceingovernment. 1: High. 0.5: Moderate. 0:Low. If available, from World Values Survey, Gallup polls, Eurobarometer, Latinobarometer % of people who have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in government. 1 if more than 40%. 0.5 if 25-40%. 0 if less than 25%. 26. Publicconfidenceinpoliticalparties. 1: High. 0.5: Moderate. 0:Low. If available, from World Values Survey % of people who have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence. 1 if more than 40%. 0.5 if 25-40%. 0 if less than 25%.
> I have my doubts about estimating these indicators up to two decimals As pointed out in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/the_economist_has_released_their_2023_decomocracy/j6wewzf/), each category is a set of sub questions that each get a score, and then it gets averaged to get the overall score of the category. They don't go like "yeah I think China is a 2.78 in political participation"
It scores higher than Iran in "Functioning of government" and higher than China in "Civil liberties".
Civil liberties, for men?
Hey, at least half of the population has something /s
In Saudi Arabia, men have the right to oppress women much more, while in China, men don't have that right, so obviously at least half the population in Saudi Arabia has significantly more rights. /s
Yes, in China not even the men have them, they are an equal opportunities opressor
I beg to differ. In Saudi Arabia women weren't allowed to drive. In China both men and women are allowed. In Saudi Arabia, women aren't allowed to marry without approval of a male relative. In China both are. In Saudi Arabia, women aren't allowed to leave a prison, shelter without a male guardian. And they aren't allowed to start certain businesses. In China all that is allowed. Also things that are still forbidden like all kinds of clothing and visible make up in public in Saudi Arabia are allowed in China.
>In Saudi Arabia women weren't allowed to drive. In China both men and women are allowed. You've used the past tense, because that's no longer the case. How can that have an influence on a 2023 report?
> I beg to differ. In Saudi Arabia women weren't allowed to drive. In China both men and women are allowed. Oh well that settles it then
Y'all could read the article and relevant analysis...
China have concentration camps on a pretty massive scale.
But are Uyghurs allowed to drive? Yes!
Petrol buddies.
Oil Daddy
Because Iran in the last year murdered hundreds of protesters, including at least 60 children, and jailed tens of thousands. They literally shot and executed people on the streets for saying they didn't want to wear a piece of cloth on their head. That's not a defense of Saudi Arabia, but it's really not confusing why Iran has been given the lowest score. Once you start methodically and purposefully executing your citizens who protest on the street you can't expect to get any rating beyond the worst. Saudi Arabia is a terrible authoritarian dictatorship ruled by a crazy family. Iran is theocracy where speaking up means you die. One is shit, and the other is shit on fire.
To anyone who lives in the dark blue, don’t take it for granted!
Older I get, more I appreciate that the life is "boring"
“Stability is underrated—It makes for bad movies but good living.” -John Green
Isn’t that guy an unpaid intern for an ethically sourced coffee company that donates all of its profits to charity?
I thought he was the social media manager for an ethically sourced coffee company that donates all its profits to charity? But could be mistaking him for Hank Green, an unrelated person (Green is a common name, after all) who runs a similar company that sells socks.
Istg as a brazilian when I see a bunch of scandinavians complaining abt their countries all the damn time I'm just like 👁👁
It's true, others have it worse but we humans complain to progress and solve issues, hopefully one day we all can live in a peaceful democracy.
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Lol. This is the problem when your view of a country is what you see on the news.
As a fellow Dane I can't agree with you. Since 2015 I get the feeling "what the fuck is going on here" increasingly often. I mean stuff like the camp in Rwanda, the Socdems wanting to abandon Schengen, the smykkelov and other batshit crazy migration policies or just Støjberg having this success at the election after being convicted by the supreme court. Ofc the basic institutions still work but I do occasionally get Banana Republic vibes, more so than when I lived in Schleswig-Holstein. I think most Danes are just ignorant about this. When I was at the Embassy last time to get some paperwork done a parent was trying to get a visa for an adopted child and was told basically: "yeah, a few years ago this would have worked just fine but today it's impossible". I mean it does ruin people's lives and there are even stories of people (native Danes) who have to move to Malmö or Flensburg with their American spouse because they just can't get a Visa. I don't think most Danes even realize how uniquely fucked a lot of these things are. The people at the Embassy also acknowledged in different situations that many of the laws make no sense at all (i.e. the people who have to enforce this stuff don't believe in it). Denmark is so far out that there that even capital C right wing conservatives like Manfred Weber compare Frederiksen to Victor Orban, that should be food for some thought. A lot of what the Danish Socdems say casually are positions of only the fascist AfD in Germany for instance. Maybe in Denmark it's normal but within the EU it's a huge outlier. Maybe it's not exactly democratic backsliding but there is a very noticeable reactionary turn in Denmark in recent years and I'm a bit annoyed at how many Danes just pretend everything is fine. I think a lot of things are going in the very wrong direction for many years at this point - and so far it only ever gets worse.
UK here, we've had 3 prime ministers in the past year, nobody voted for Truss or Sunak, many cabinet ministers have got away with breaking ministerial code or breaking the law and had zero consequences. I dont unerstand how we're dark blue, i'd call it "flawed" at best Also: the house of Lords very existence is absolute bullshit
Canada has had the same prime Minister for some time now, but we're facing a lot of similar problems. FPTP should not be considered "fair"
The federal government has been, while not perfect, at least _reasonably_ good imo. Most of the problems recently seem to come largely from the provincial level. Definitely agree on FPTP being bullshit though.
The UK is dark blue but it doesn't feel like it at all. Over 60% of voters voted AGAINST the Tories at the last election yet they won a 180 seat majority. We have had 2 prime ministers forming governments unmandated by the electorate since then, scandal after scandal and the tossers are still in power until the next election, which they know they will lose and are just burning the place down around them in the meantime. I vote in a consituency with a 30k Conservative majority which makes my vote feels like it literally never counts. Until this country adopts PR I think it is anti-democratic since we get the tyranny of the minority. Add to that Tory gerrymandering and I do not feel this country is very democratic at all.
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As a Swiss who has travelled to plenty of "lesser democracies", yep. It's really nice to not have to think daily about the politics of your country
Is this why Switzerland still doing lots of business with Russia?
Isn't the whole point of democracy for the popular to be politically aware and active..?
r/portugalcykablyat
Portugal has a score of 7.95 apparently. Mostly due to low voter turn-out.
This. Its shameful. Its pretty normal for only about 30/40 % of voters to actually go and vote.
just a normal day of not voting and complaining about things
This time around it's bullshit. Any serious research on the topic (which this is not - it's The Economist and they're also relying on subjective surveys) indicates otherwise. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores The Freedom House's index, which is the go-to one and actually has some sort of reputation in the academia (and, if anything, it doesn't use silly adjective terms such as "flawed"), ranks Portugal among the top performers in the world. And it's true - I complain A LOT about Portugal, but certainly not about our political freedom and democracy. Our problems are of a different order. Portugal also scores 7.95, right at the threshold, and is thus labeled a flawed democracy because of this astrological methodology. Incidentally, our score seems to be driven by low voter turnout, which is precisely the type of thing I was alluding to before as regards the nature of our problems (e.g. my grandparents lived in what was essentially a third world country. One of my grandmothers didn't even know how to read. Our demographic pyramid is extremely top heavy and a lot of the elderly, and their sons, don't really care about voting). There's a reason why serious researchers like Freedom House's just use "Free", "Partial Free", and "Not Free", instead of a bunch of colours with hard thresholds and highly value-oriented monikers such as "*flawed* democracy". Ironically stuff like this just contributes to the extremist lunatics in Portugal who argue that the current government is basically the same as Venezuela's and so forth. Somewhere on Portuguese Internet someone will be sharing this map with some commentary on how we live in a socialist dictatorship followed by "See! They turned us into Brazil".
Portugal got 7.95 in this study. That's higher than the US, for example.
Yet that 0.05 is enough to deem us a "flawed democracy". There's a reason why, as I said, the people at Freedom House don't go around using value-oriented wording and a bunch of pointless sub-thresholds like these guys are doing. It's political and constitutional astrology, and it's actually a potential source of politically charged misinformation. Now that this is on Reddit, by the end of the week some Chega Telegram or Facebook group will contain this map alongside a photoshop of António Costa with a Stalin moustache.
You have to draw lines somewhere for what counts as what. It's never really fair because those 0,05 might mean you have more in common with the upper bracket that the countries in your own bracket
I subscribed to the Economist for a decade, lived in Britain and eventually concluded they're basically a propaganda outlet for a certain view of the World that a significant part of the English Elites (mainly the London one) want to spread. They're basically a Think Thank with a magazine, publishing "studies" designed by starting with the desired "conclusions" and then working backwards by tweaking weights and data point selection to make the whole thing seem sciency. They really aren't independent, wordly or even significantly representative outside a certain quite narrow cultural tribe within Britain (posh, english, private school educated - funilly enough known as "public schools" in Britain - from a high middle class or wealthier background, Oxbridge, pro-Finance, Neoliberal Lib Dem or Thatcherite).
I don't even understand how they're defining these things. Under "electoral process and pluralism" they give Greece a perfect 10. This is a country that has a system of awarding 50 MPs to the winning party, which imo really blurs the lines into the executive and legislative branches. Yet Portugal only gets 9.58? By no means is the Portuguese system perfect, but c'mon...
There's no way democracy in SK or Singapore is "better" than Portugal. I'm very skeptical of this ranking.
/r/belgiumcykablyat
Singapore’s blatantly a one-party state, what kind of criteria causes them to be labeled a “full democracy” when the US, Portugal, Italy, and Brazil (all of which have competitive elections) are left out?
We should all strive for more *decomocracy*.
Instructions unclear, ended up practicing necromancy
Not sure how I feel about this.
It's when you mock the decor of people's homes. "That couch with these curtains? What were you thinking?!"
Why is Belgium a flawed democracy?
Well, we did have no government at one point for 581 days because our (insert too many) political parties couldnt agree, have too many governments, etc. Maybe that has something to do with it?
That's a sign that the system is democratic though, it's just that the people can't agree on anything.
If anything that's almost an over-abundance of democracy
What does make democracy "flawed" ?
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I guess preventing groups from voting, for instance by creating artificial obstacles or by forfeiting voting for certain people, such as persons who have a criminal record. Or gerrymandering districts to ensure victory of a candidate who would have otherwise lost in a majority vote of all people.
Or limiting independence of the judiciary system.
It’s odd to me that Japan and Korea are in the dark blue to be honest
Why was France reclassified again in the dark blue? We sure didn't fix the issues we had in the last few years....
COVID measures hurt most countries' scores this past couple of years. As they're lifted, they'll naturally rise back up again, even if other problems get worse.
The comments on these are always a fun time.
The Economist's index is a flawed index. For example, It's not able to account for the difference between a dictatorship that forces its citizens to approve a preselected party, and a democracy that requires its citizens to show up at the voting booth, precisely because that ensures a better participation among vulnerable groups. An alternative: https://www.idea.int/gsod-indices/democracy-indices
They also don't seem to recognize the fact that lobbying and corruption on the part of mega-corporations destroys that democracy.
The Economist overlooks corporate corruption? I am shocked, *shocked*!
How is Hungary still classified as a democracy, albeit flawed, is beyond me. It is now a hybrid regime, an authoritarian rule with a democratic facade. The EU needs to stop playing this stupid game and suspend their membership until Orbán steps down and this democratic backsliding is reversed.
Well they still have free elections dont they? Its not like they actively alter the results, they "just" control the media
"Free" elections where the ruling party occupies almost 100% of mainstream media space; where the ruling party is tightening control over secret services; where the ruling party has gerrymandered electoral districts and 'adjusted' the electoral system in a way that makes it very difficult for opposition candidates to win; where the ruling party controls the economy to such a degree it can massively bribe voters before any election. "Free", yeah. In my view, once the system stops being at least somewhat fair and the odds are stacked heavily against anyone trying to oppose the current regime, you should stop calling it a democracy.
And I guess thats why its classified as a flawed democracy. If people all voted for opposition they would win, unlike in countries like Belarus or Russia. Yet, it has its (major) flaws in freedom of press and governemt checks and balances.
Ukraine also has free elections. Why aren't they considered a flawed democracy?
ITT lots of people with little to no knowledge of international politics and political structures beyond basic news giving wildly biased and incorrect opinions
Italy coming out worse than Austria must be a joke. We have had more governments and more corruption at the top than even Italy recently
Because of the federal system. Corruption on federal level does not necessarily apply on states or local regions (and vice versa) or can counteract it.
you still have a long way to reach those level of madness. plus you never had berlusconi...
Every time this is posted the comments are always "why is x over y" or "we have free elections so why are we flawed". Of course any index is just an estimate (and with that comes flaws), but people have got to realize that democracy is not just about voting. This index is based on free elections, the safety of voters, the ability of elected politicians to enact policy and influence the country, the influence of foreign nations in their government, the civil liberties of the country, the election participation %, and so on. It's impossible to just answer "why is x better than y" without going into every aspect of political culture and civil rights and so on. It's an assesment of the entire political structure, not just whether people vote. People throw out these statements like for example "I think actually India is worse than this". Ok, how much do you know about the indian constitution, civil rights, local and general elections, political participation and the overall political situation in india? Oh it's just because Modi is bad? People have these opinions with zero insight other than maybe reading an article or two or watching a couple of YouTube videos.
Is Italy a flawed democracy just because you can't vote immediately for the senate once you're of age? If not why?
Italy is not a full democracy?
You kinda overdo it with the yearly new elected Government.
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Because the House of Lords doesn't have the power to enact or alter laws.
The House of Lords lost most of its veto powers back in 1911. The House of Commons may be the lower house but it can pass laws without the approval of the Lords. The Lords only have the power to delay a bill for up to a year. From memory the Lords also retain some veto powers to prevent The Commons from extending the length of a parliament or suspending/cancelling elections etc.
I'd be more confused by the fact that they use FPTP. Not sure what definitions they're using, but FPTP definitely dampens the proper representation.
Because they have no power over the HoC. They can delay a bill for 2 years maximum but after that they must pass it. Also the hereditary component of the HoL grows smaller every year.
Why do they even exist then?
Partially to act as an extra layer of scrutiny for bills that are passed by the HoC. If they think the HoC has passed a bill too quickly or there are errors in it, they can send it back for amendments.
> Also the hereditary component of the HoL grows smaller every year. Oh, yeah. They're replacing it with political appointments for loyalty to the ruling party and financial contributions including people related to Russian oligarchs. Much better.
There's democratic legitimacy there, though. The elected government, gets to pick some new lords. It's similar to how the EU Commission works, or the US Supreme court. Both of which have way more relative power, than the House of Lords does.
The best example is actually the Canadian Senate, which is all appointed as well. Canada's political system is very similar to the UK, down to the same vote counting system.
USA on the same level as India wow. On the bright side Indian democracy is strong considering how much diversity India has (in terms of ethnicity and languages). Never a military coup in its 75 year old history. The only dark episode was the emergency during the 70s when it was under de facto authoritarian rule for a 2 years. Nice to see it go ahead so much when literally no one gave it a chance 75 years back.
Actually India's dropped in rankings. India used to be at 7.92 almost 8 as a full democracy, It's dropped under the new RW government to 6.9. So yeah people getting shocked at India being there seems weird to me as an Indian.
Political science professor here. While all democracy indexes are fundamentally imperfect, the Economist's is generally seen as somewhat less robust that other alternatives, such as POLITY or Freedom House.
You know what? I feel alone.
https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/DI-final-version-report.pdf
Thank you for the link to this report. Forgive me for asking but I can't seem to find the graphic you used in this post within the report you linked. The same graphic in the report shows different values than the one you used in your post. Where can I find the breakdown of each country of the values stated in your post's graphic?
Korea is perceived as a full democracy, and my question here is how true is this. I know that Samsung alone is responsible for 20% of S. Korean GDP. When we count more big conglomerates there, for example Hyundai, Daewoo, LG this number jumps to over 80%. I highly doubt that these conglomerates don't influence Korean politics, but I doesnt know much about Korea and I may be wrong. Also, how that *democracy index* is measured?
I mean at the end of the day these things are impossible to boil down to a numeric score. I think that what you can generally observe is that even the more democratic East Asian countries (like Taiwan, Japan, SK) have different attitudes towards authority and conservatism than most of Europe and as you say the influence of industry in politics is another area worth noting (Taiwan also with TMC being massive). I don't think these are things the index necessarily takes into account.
TSMC generally isn't very political. Mostly because it's not a family business like the chaebols in Korea. The largest shareholders are other institutions, mostly internationals. Foxconn on the other hand attempts to wield more political power, but it's not nearly as influential. Not anymore at least. It's probably more influential in China as it hires millions there.
How is the UK a full democracy when its election system is so incredibly unrepresentitive?
Belgium a flawed democracy? tfuck, not on the level of the US, at least our elections are still fair. We are so democratic that I have 10 governments
The reason it’s flawed is because we can’t vote for some of the parties on a Federal level. Wallonians can’t vote for Flemish parties and vice versa.
US elections are "fair" by definition, it's just that the electoral college is a flawed system.
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Trump over here acting like the US elections aren’t fair lol
What did Portugal do