This map is just a list of Western allies. Most maps like this are in the same vein.
This is the largest annual study, based on polls from the countries themselves (conducted by a Western nation at that) and how they perceive democracy / trust in their government etc etc has markedly differing results.
https://www.allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perception-index/
It is. As a Brazilian, trust me when I tell that we, Brazilians and United-Staters, are much more alike than it first seems, politically and culturally speaking - unfortunately.
Brazil banned Bolsonaro from ever running again for his election denialism. We’ve been unable to do the same with Trump. Maybe they’re ahead of us in some ways.
Brazil had a political party storm their capital after they lost an election. Though they have less polyethylene china made toys, the general populace is kinda the same. Major wage disparities between the wealthy and poor. A government that only serves the wealthy and they dangle useless wedge politics in front of the unwashed masses.
And if I remember when Brazil initially became an independent county it was seen as the “next” United States. Plus post civil war many southern slave owners moved to Brazil to continue being slavers.
All I see is that US has/had "power", but I can't say that an election with only 2 candidates is more democratic than what Brazil has which is multiple parties that can run their candidates if they wish to
The UK stands out to me as shocking as well - the ruling party in absolute shambles refusing to vacate so they can cling to power because they know they would lose an election.
3 prime ministers since the last election, 2 not voted for. The cabinet a merry go round.
Hard to argue this is the modern vision of democracy.
I think you don’t understand the Uk system very well, and parliamentary systems in general… PM are not elected.. they are not supposed to be elected, that’s just not how it works.. people vote for the party composition of parliament, and they decide the PM
A political party that wins a majority in an election has no obligation to call for a new election at any time, they have a mandate untill the next elections
None of this means that the UK is not a proper democracy.. it’s just not a presidential democracy, and in my opinion parliamentary ones are much better
You don’t vote for the Prime Minister unless he or she is your parliamentary candidate for your constituency. It would be possible to be the leader of a party and your party to get enough votes to get an overall majority win, but you lose your constituency seat and wouldn’t be PM. I mean it never happens because they get parachuted into safe seats, but it is at least possible. You could however join one of the party’s and become a member, then you would be able to vote for a leader if/when the old one is deposed. This doesn’t work like it does in the US where they vote directly for a president.
Also no cabinet is elected, when they lose their cabinet jobs, they are still MP’s.
Your point about clinging to power doesn’t make any sense either, the last election was 2019 the next one is due no later than Jan 2025.
I’m not really sure what your point is.
I don‘t think anyone can reasonably claim that the US implementation of democracy has some deep systematic issues, mainly due to a combination of being very old and any attempt reform being seen as basically blasphemy… things like first past the post voting are not used in real modern democracies for very good reasons.
How do you explain US support on authoritarian regimes?
How about USSR's support on nationalists when communism despises nationalism?
Just a few examples. States are far more pragmatic that what you insinuate. Political values mean little in the face of cold calculus of geopolitics dominated by political realism.
They probably should have made the colors a gradient. Saudi Arabia just went from 1.93 to 2.08 a couple of years ago. Many of the deep red countries are around 1.9. So it’s only saying Saudi Arabia is a tiny bit more democratic(but still clearly in the authoritarian bracket), ir just happens to be right on the other side of one of the color boundaries. I will all point out it’s not entirely based on how the government is elected, but also aspects like civil liberties.
This map isn’t so much “how authoritarian is a country” but “how functioning is a states government”. Saudi Arabia scores highly on the “Functioning of Government” metric so beats out states like Iran which are technically democracies albeit non-functioning ones
But then China should be pretty high no? I mean they run arguably one of the most successful countries in history if we go by economics, they went from a backwater laden with warlords and then mass famine to being the second superpower. At the very least they should be above Saudi Arabia, because even though it’s a de facto dictatorship it still has elections(though they are very different from the version used in the west), certainly better than Saudi Arabia
There are many other issues with this that just make it impossible to take serious.
First is that this is full of political views, given that it Democracy isn't a real metric that can be compared properly given that are a lot of factors that basically can determine a country being a Democracy or Not.
For example:
**There is no way that US or UK should be this high for start of conversation.**
A lot of countries that are under US should not be under it, US is a country that you literally can't vote for the representative of the country, and where you can have situations like Hilary x Trump where Hilary had more nominal votes than Trump but lost because their system.
Regarding China,
China is clearly being held lower because it's China not because of how it's system works, China has a Election system, it might be occupied by only the CCP and the representatives (they vote for people congress) that the people might vote are "filtered" by the CCP first, but people are still able to vote into those who might represent their interests.
**SA is being held higher than it should just because of the geopolitical interest and technicallity of being a monarchy**, not due to any other factor.
In theory it should have a score of 0, because the citzen complains and votes can be completly ignored by monarchy if they feel so.
Iran scores some points on the metric of political process or participation by having actual elections with multiple parties and a somewhat reasonable turnout, but not enough for this alone to move them out of authoritarian into hybrid given the legitimacy of them is disputed and access to them isn’t universal (eg women cant vote in presidential elections). Additionally Iran has very poor freedom of press, problems with civil liberties and a government which is generally deemed to be incompetent. Conversely while KSA has the same issues with civil liberties, freedom of press and has no elections whatsoever, the state is deemed to be stable and effective at governance which means it (barely) scores better than Iran. TL;DR KSA having no elections but a functioning state barely beats Iran having limited elections but a poorly functioning state. Iran considered authoritarian but only barely
Interesting I would have never guessed Iran had half decent elections… has there ever been an oppositional candidate that democratically beat a previous administration?
Also worth remembering that while Iran does have elections for the government, it still does have a supreme leader as head of the government, who has lots of power, and is appointed for life from amongst the clerics.
Yeah, and pretty frequently. But, Iran also has a council that has to approve candidates to run in the first place, and will reject them if they are deemed too disaligned with Islam. So you have to be an islamist, only islamists can hold office, but you get to vote between more right wing or more left wing versions of islamists.
In Iran's defense though, this isn't that different from a lot of other systems in practice. In America for example, the two parties can do whatever they want and put up whatever candidate they want. If a communist won the republican primary, they'd just annul it, they wouldn't let them run the ticket, and that'd be that. Since America is a two party system where third parties are so unlikely to win any real office that it's near mathematically impossible, we basically also have a system that stops radicals from getting in office.
"Radicals" meaning people outside of the broad state ideology. In America you can't feasibly run and win high office if you're not a capitalist (Social democrats are a kind of capitalist) and in Iran you can't run for office if you're not an Islamist. It's just more official in Iran's case.
Iran's defacto ruled by a supreme leader. It's elections are generally appointee and supervised by him and every major decision is his to bless and "guide". He also de facto appoints the council you're talking about.
Most countries see Khamenei as equivalent to the King of Saudi Arabia or President of the USA since he actually calls the big shots and not Ibrahim Raisi.
If they could elect their supreme leader they'd actually be a democracy, the confidence in the elections is generally low. Many organisations see it as reliable as Russia's elections.
Also let's not mention the fact that the elected officials of Iran have no power over the IRGC who control most of the economy and foreign policy and only answer to the supreme leader
Saudi Arabia has municple elections but that's it. But this clearly states it takes into account civil libs and functioning of gov which Saudi scores higher than Iran on.
Especially since MBS
Yes. Elections in Iran can be somewhat competitive, in that citizens can choose between various parliamentary parties or candidates for president. These usually range from moderate reformers to hardline conservatives, and it can make some difference at the policy and governance level. However, the political spectrum is quite narrow because candidates need to be vetted by the Guardian Council, which is not democratically elected. Anyone who is too far out of the acceptable range would be disqualified from running. Moreover, the Supreme Leader is the head of state and, while he isn't directly involved in day to day governance, he has the final say. He is appointed for life by the Assembly of Experts, a body that is, in principle at least, democratically elected, and he in turn appoints half the members of the Guardian Council.
Women can vote in Iran. women can't become president. and they get outvoted by guardian council if they are chosen as ministers by president and they can not become judges they only can get lower positions than ministers (only one short term exception). However they can Participate as parliament members.
Iran is not a democracy because everything is decided by the supreme leader in the end. The supreme leader decides on half of the ministers. The supreme leader decides who can be in the guardian council, who can veto or change laws decided by parliament and who can be a parliament candidate or who can be a presidency candidate. Also the supreme leader decides who is the chief justice of country and who are the main army leaders.
Also as you stated no press freedom.very restricted religious freedom.
People are perfectly free to choose who they want, the fact that Japan is one party is down to 2 things
1. Japanese people have gone to the extreme when it comes to the 'if it aint broke, dont fix it' mentality, and even though the current govt is doing a 'meh' job, 'meh' is good enough for most people.
2. Around 30 years ago the current power lost power once, and the party they lost to fucked things up so spectacularly that no one really wants to risk it again
Outside of a few years in the late 60s and a few years in the mid 90s
The Japanese have never been not apathetic about politics
The assumption here is that all politicians are corrupt but will do the bare minimum necessary, and thats true no matter who you vote for, so who cares
The elections are free and fair though so it's not like they pretended to win.
It's probably not the LDP's fault the socialist party like sudoku'd themselves by winning and then immediately forming a coalition with the LDP. Also not LDP's fault the allies did a political purge of Japan after WW2.
Thailand literally just said no to the candidate who won the presidential election, yet they're the same as most of South America.
Sham elections are worse than corruption
That's an over simplification. The election winner doesn't get an automatic mandate to govern in countries where coalitions are required to assume a governing majority. The reality is the coalition was never properly formed and collapsed when the largest member pulled out and negotiated power. No one "won" the election. To "win" an election you need to have enough votes to form a majority government, or convince other parties to join your cause.
That's because Future Forward Party (FFP) who won the most vote failed to form a coalition. Mostly because their biggest partner (and second largest party in the parliament) , Pheu Thai Party (PTP) dropped out and formed coalition with the Pro-junta parties instead.
Now I agreed with you that the score should probably lower anyway. Because all the 300 members of the upper house of the National Assembly are appointed by the Junta, and will always be for the foreseeable future. And they have the power to vetoed any PM candidates from FFP.
Thailand has a parliamentary system, they don't have presidential elections.
The problem in Thailand is that only the lower house of parliament is elected, the upper house is appointed by the military, and a government needs the support of both chambers in order to take power. This effectively gives the military a veto on the political process.
I mean, idk the methodology, but your parsing over the worst vs 2nd worst rating. It’s not like it’s a massive difference. If I had to guess I’d say maybe Saudi Arabia’s government is a little more compartmented and is power more among an elite few rather than a pure sole authoritarian leader calling all the shots?
More like if 2/3 pick tacos, then the third’s vote for pizza counts toward tacos. Also, their room has been gerrymandered to split up the fourth child, who would also have voted pizza, into a different district that votes heavily taco.
Also voting is done by phones. Dad and mom both have a phone. The kids share a 10yo windows phone that needs to be restarted for every user to cast their vote. There is a 50 digit security code and lengthy authentification process installed to prevent voter fraud. It‘s also possible to just write a letter to mom and dad, but they are working to get rid of that option because after they managed to secure a week of ”kids only eat fish, broccoli and spinach for a week, while we order food“, miraculously they were overvoted the following week and much of that happened by those letter votes. Therefor it is very likely, that some fraud has taken place by letter voting.
Everyone gets a combination of both with a little more pizza than taco. No one really likes that stuff and everyone complains that no matter what you vote for you always get basically the same with minor adjustments.
Everyone complaining that the changes are too small are only looking at the present and not realizing that small changes add up over time and are much better than going all in on one side or the other.
More like, I want them to eat taco so I spend the entire year telling them pizza is bad so they all vote taco, still thinking it’s their voluntary choice.
Make sure you mention a constitution of rights to prevent eating each other alive becoming legal.
Or that this famed republic, a shining city on a hill, was even less democratic upon inception and only gave a voice to white, christian, land-owning men and made black people property, as well as women to a lesser extent. A rather unusual consequence for a republic founded by rich men who owned a lot of property and slaves.
I'm not sure why people think that wasn't taught in schools before. I started school in the 70's and learned all about slavery and how some of the original framers owned slaves.
Breaking News: People living hundreds of years ago largely adhered to social norms of the time, but also radically revolutionized national governance to an unheard of degree and ushered in the age of Liberal Democracy.
I mean... for Christ's sake...
Yeah the whole trying to criticise it for not being enlightened enough is a strange one when the alternative at the time was the Divine Right of Kings. Yeah its not up to snuff but it paved the way for further liberalisation. Countries that clung to some variant of Divine Right or Heavenly Mandate required brutal and horrific civil war to start down the path of liberalisation.
"We can't vote directly for president, we're not a democracy!"
"Electing president by popular vote does not change our government from a republic."
"But then presidents will only visit NY and LA and ignore small states!"
"With the electoral college in play, the 2020 presidential election saw zero presidential campaign events in the 9 smallest states. The 30 smallest states (60% of states) received 32 of 212 presidential campaign events (15% of events). But 7 states (14%) did get 80% of all campaign events, and 4 of those states are in the top 10 most populated states.
If you defend the electoral college with the intent of representing smaller states, your system fucking blows, while still sacrificing the representation of the larger states, as the top 4 states in population (33.3% of all americans) got 16% of the campaign events. If you exclude Florida, those 3 states (27% population) got 1% of the campaign events.
But wow, every 4 years I'm sure happy we all need to talk about how much Pennsylvanians sure do love fracking."
"I don't care. My candidate can win without most people voting for them."
Specifically electoral process and pluralism, **civil liberties**, **the functioning of government**, political participation and **political culture**.
Source: I read the text on the map.
The ones in bold are the ones I think might be causing some confusion. For example gay marriage could be a civil liberty, but how that connects to democracy can be a bit more opaque. I think it's that inequality leads to less recognition and less representation. But it just emphasizes the fact that this map comes down to Statista's moral and ethical views.
Another, probably more clear cut example could be voting rights of convicts in prison. Not all US states allow convicts to vote. But I believe all Scandinavian countries do. Does that translate to "more democracy"? Personally I'd say yes, but you be the judge.
> But it just emphasizes the fact that this map comes down to Statista's moral and ethical views.
The democracy index is done by the economic intelligence unit. Source: also reading text on the map
More info about it:, and breakdown of each category for each country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
This looks like it's based on Freedom House's report. One of the telltale signs is that somehow, Iran (which at least has competitive elections, although they're highly manipulated) is somehow less democratic than Saudi Arabia, which is an absolute monarchy with zero democracy and doesn't pretend otherwise.
I think having absolutely 0 democratic institutions, no elections whatsoever no matter how corrupt, and an absolute hereditary monarch should just put you at 0 no?
At least in China there's the CCP which you can join and don't have to be born into.
Saudi Arabia and Iran each register a score of 0.00 on Electoral Process and Pluralism.
Saudi Arabia outperforms Iran on Functioning of Government, 3.57 to 2.50.
Iran beats Saudi Arabia on Political Participation, 3.33 to 2.22.
Saudi Arabia beats Iran on Political Culture, 3.13 to 2.50.
Both register a score of 1.47 on Civil Liberties.
Regarding elections, Saudi Arabia doesn't hold elections, while Iran's elections are only between people allowed to run by the Supreme Leader, who is himself indirectly elected by an elected body whose candidates must be approved by the Supreme Leader. As the Supreme Leader has much more power than anyone else, the elections, limited as they are, are effectively just allowing the people to pick the Supreme Leader's deptuties from a list drawn up by him.
So, in summation, neither hold elections for the actual leadership, Saudi Arabia is marginally better at keeping the lights on and the roads paved, Iran has somwhat more citizen participation in politics, Saudi Arabia has a little less corruption (probably just because the ruling family "legally" own the sources of wealth, rather than just pilfering like in Iran), and both are massive human rights abusers.
The difference between Saudi Arabia and Iran is marginal and superficial. Both are fundamentalist dictatorships run according to the principle of "L'Etat, c'est moi.". The differences are just window dressing.
It says right there as a source. It's the economic intelligence unit democracy index. More info and breakdown of each component of the index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
And Spain being labeled a "Full Democracy" when they are facing investigations for spying on minority party politicians and voters, deeming referendums Illegal, and sending armed police to beat up people who want to vote.
Or Taiwan. I'm from there and all the "Taiwan ranked as top Asian democracy" headlines make me cringe. Perhaps the best of Asia but certainly not in the world lol
1 party states where you could theoretically vote the ruling party out of office but they've still maintained a monopoly on the government since their inception
edit: not SK (I am stupid)
> 1 party states where you could theoretically vote the ruling party out of office but they've still maintained a monopoly on the government since their inception
This is not remotely true for South Korea.
Japan has twice voted out the ruling party.
In the 1993 election, the long-ruling LDP remained the largest party but lost their majority. Almost all opposition parties formed a coalition government lead by the New Party, which was basically a bunch of moderate LDP members that had defected due to their exasperation with corruption, sending the LDP into opposition. In 1994 the New Party PM resigned, and the premiership passed to the New Frontier Party, which was another LDP offshoot but was further to the right and was perceived as being heavy-handed. NFP getting the premiership resulted in the Socialist Party, long the main opposition party, leaving the coalition, which left it without a majority and the government facing a certain defeat in a vote of no confidence, which lead to the new PM's resignation. Following that, the Socialists negotiated a coalition with their longtime rivals, the LDP, leading to an unwieldy coalition with a Socialist Prime Minister and the LDP back in government, but their junior partner holding the premiership. This lasted until 1996, when the PM stepped down, and the LDP regained the premiership while continuing the prior coalition. Later that year new elections were held, which lead to the LDP regaining their majority as well as the Socialists, newly renamed the Social Democrats, losing most of their seats and ceasing to be a major force in Japanese politics.
The second time was in 2009, when the LDP suffered a crushing defeat to the Democrats, the main opposition party at that time, with the Democrats obtaining a substantial majority of the seats. At the next elections in 2012, they suffered an even worse defeat to the LDP, which won a substantial majority of the seats. The LDP has held the majority again since that time.
Saudi Arabia, an absolutist monarchy, more democratic than Iran and Jordan ? WTF?
Edit: I confused the color of Jordan with Syria. But I also don't think that Syria under Assad is much more authoritarian then KSA.
KSA scores, 2.08/10, Iran scores 1.96/10, and Jordan 3.17/10.
Both KSA and Iran score 0 for their Electoral Process. KSA scores notably better on Functioning of Government (which is where Syria scores 0)
Australia also has proportional voting in the Senate and preferential voting in the House of Reps.
I'm guessing what brings Australia down is the media landscape being absolute shite.
If you don't see flaws in Canada, then you've never been to Canada.
Edit: This was a joke. It was not my intent to engage in serious discussion of any kind.
No term limits, the government has control over banks, laws and businesses but the federal government lacks any power to push bills that are municipal problems. Local elected officials can get away with murder here in Canada and the federal government takes all the heat.
There is a lot to unpack here.
>No term limits
Because you aren't electing a president, you are electing your local MP, then the MPs vote on who will be PM. In practice, this is usually the party the most seats, but there is no rule that it has to be. In theory, any MP can be the PM if they can get enough MPs to vote for them.
>the government has control over banks
No, the government has jurisdiction over regulating the banks as per the Constitution Act of 1867.
> but the federal government lacks any power to push bills that are municipal problems
Because the Canadian constitution is unambiguous over these being Provincial matters. The Constitution Act of 1867 says that any issue of "purely local nature" is the exclusive jurisdiction of the Provinces. This is unambiguous and the courts have enforced this consistently going back to the literal 1800s even before the Supreme Court of Canada was the Highest Court. The Judicial Committee of the Privy council enforced this precedent, then the Supreme Court of Canada kept enforcing it because it is literally in the constitution word for word.
>Local elected officials can get away with murder here in Canada and the federal government takes all the heat.
Again, none of this is the jurisdiction of the Federal government. Local elections are 100% handled by the provinces. The provinces can redraw and change the rules of municipal elections at will. It is up to the Provincial governments to regulate that.
I get the feeling you don't understand that Canada is a Federation, not a Unitary state.
Disagreeing with the government gets you run down by Mounties, your bank account frozen, and your kids stolen, but that’s more democratic than *shudders* an electoral system
Only 4 times in American history has the winner lost the popular vote. In Canada, it’s the expectation
We also have first past the post which means many votes are essentially put in the bin. A party can have 20% of the vote nationwide and have no representatives in parliament. UK democracy is a joke.
My thought is have the House of Lords as first past the post so local constituencies have a local representative at parliament. Then use proportional representation in the commons so the national views are represented.
That's sort of what Australia has (although around the other way). Our lower house is the same.as the UK commons but our upper house has proportional representation where each state gets 8 representatives. Means we get local representation but also minor parties get a say if they get enough of the vote.
A hybrid regime is a state has both authoritarian and democratic characteristics. This is usually the result of an incomplete transition from one to another. For example Turkey has an elected body but the president is not accountable to said body.
>A hybrid regime is a state has both authoritarian and democratic characteristics
I find concepts like this funny because this describes every country that's listed here as a democracy. Upholding rule of law and state integrity necessitates a degree of authoritarianism regardless of ideology or elections
Mfs thought process while making the chart
1. USA - Hmm. People can choose between only 2 parties. And vote for a candidate who is the least racist amongst the two. 10/10 full democracy.
2. India - Hmm, several national parties. Thousands of regional parties. Ranges from Left wings, right wings, communists. People have the choice to vote among thousands of candidates .6/10 flawed democracy.
All I can say is that the US is ranked lower on this map than Japan, so I think it is the biases of the authors, not because Japan and South Korea are part of the first world.
Political participation and stability being ranked so highly makes the map very different from how citiziens would actually feel about this issue.
Also, it is for me absurd that they take turnout into account but not things like voting system (a a country where a candidate that got less votes than the other one gets elected is a.. questionable democracy, and I am not only taking about the US here; or a country where less than 30% of the vote gets you all the power etc.), unelected chambers that still have some power, certain discriminatory provisions (for e.g. That all/ a majority of members of gov. must be of a certain religion) etc.
It's impressive that Mongolia has stayed democratic at all while sandwiched between the world's two major autocratic powers.
Shouldn't Eritrea be in the lowest subtier? Most political scientists think it's the least democratic country in the world save for North Korea.
This is a flawed index by The Economist. Its defects are plenty: arbitrarily defined thresholds, anonymous "experts" making judgments, ill-interpreted criteria, Anglo-Saxon bias, ...
Alternative indexes are the following:
- https://www.idea.int/gsod-indices/democracy-indices
- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/political-regime
- https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking
- https://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
- https://www.v-dem.net
- https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2022
According to the European Parliament, Hungary is no longer a democracy, but a hybrid regime or [electoral autocracy](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220909IPR40137/meps-hungary-can-no-longer-be-considered-a-full-democracy), i.e. a constitutional system in which elections occur, but respect for democratic norms and standards is absent.
The European Parliament is right. Hungary is not a democracy anymore, not even a flawed one.
This is my favourite little piece of information because no matter where it is posted people get really, REALLY, into the arguments about what it is displaying but almost nobody actually goes to look at the source that is incredibly easy to find and one the actual infographic shows in order to gather information about something they're incredibly passionate about apparently.
And by stating that I am not making the argument that the methodology is bulletproof.
You're telling me that Spain, a country that charges voters in a regional referendum like they're criminals, has a proper democracy? And Portugal, a country with zero flaws in the Democratic system, has not?
Unless I'm missing something the most populated country in the 9.0-10 range is the Netherlands with 17 million people, then Sweden with 10 million.
None of the others in that zone have more than 10 million.
So that leads me to think that it's probably difficult to maintain their levels of democracy over a certain size.
How can France be a "Full democracy" while [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution#:~:text=Its%20best%2Dknown%20provision%2C%20paragraph%203%20(Article%2049.3)%2C%20allows%20the%20government%20to%20force%20passage%20of%20a%20law%20without%20a%20vote) exists ?
This map makes no sense. How is Saudi Arabia less Authoritarian than any of the countries in deep red?
Percentage of journalists beheaded?
This map is just a list of Western allies. Most maps like this are in the same vein. This is the largest annual study, based on polls from the countries themselves (conducted by a Western nation at that) and how they perceive democracy / trust in their government etc etc has markedly differing results. https://www.allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perception-index/
Except that The US is listed as a flawed democracy. You'd think that would be the one country they'd be artificially inflating
It probably is slightly inflated..
Word. I'm shocked the US isn't turquoise.
You’re telling me the United States is on par with Brazil?
It is. As a Brazilian, trust me when I tell that we, Brazilians and United-Staters, are much more alike than it first seems, politically and culturally speaking - unfortunately.
Brazil banned Bolsonaro from ever running again for his election denialism. We’ve been unable to do the same with Trump. Maybe they’re ahead of us in some ways.
Brazil had a political party storm their capital after they lost an election. Though they have less polyethylene china made toys, the general populace is kinda the same. Major wage disparities between the wealthy and poor. A government that only serves the wealthy and they dangle useless wedge politics in front of the unwashed masses.
And if I remember when Brazil initially became an independent county it was seen as the “next” United States. Plus post civil war many southern slave owners moved to Brazil to continue being slavers.
All I see is that US has/had "power", but I can't say that an election with only 2 candidates is more democratic than what Brazil has which is multiple parties that can run their candidates if they wish to
Brazil has actual political parties to begin with 🤷♂️
The UK stands out to me as shocking as well - the ruling party in absolute shambles refusing to vacate so they can cling to power because they know they would lose an election. 3 prime ministers since the last election, 2 not voted for. The cabinet a merry go round. Hard to argue this is the modern vision of democracy.
I think you don’t understand the Uk system very well, and parliamentary systems in general… PM are not elected.. they are not supposed to be elected, that’s just not how it works.. people vote for the party composition of parliament, and they decide the PM A political party that wins a majority in an election has no obligation to call for a new election at any time, they have a mandate untill the next elections None of this means that the UK is not a proper democracy.. it’s just not a presidential democracy, and in my opinion parliamentary ones are much better
You don’t vote for the Prime Minister unless he or she is your parliamentary candidate for your constituency. It would be possible to be the leader of a party and your party to get enough votes to get an overall majority win, but you lose your constituency seat and wouldn’t be PM. I mean it never happens because they get parachuted into safe seats, but it is at least possible. You could however join one of the party’s and become a member, then you would be able to vote for a leader if/when the old one is deposed. This doesn’t work like it does in the US where they vote directly for a president. Also no cabinet is elected, when they lose their cabinet jobs, they are still MP’s. Your point about clinging to power doesn’t make any sense either, the last election was 2019 the next one is due no later than Jan 2025. I’m not really sure what your point is.
I don‘t think anyone can reasonably claim that the US implementation of democracy has some deep systematic issues, mainly due to a combination of being very old and any attempt reform being seen as basically blasphemy… things like first past the post voting are not used in real modern democracies for very good reasons.
Isn’t that to be expected? That alliances would form amongst countries that share similar political systems and values?
How do you explain US support on authoritarian regimes? How about USSR's support on nationalists when communism despises nationalism? Just a few examples. States are far more pragmatic that what you insinuate. Political values mean little in the face of cold calculus of geopolitics dominated by political realism.
They probably should have made the colors a gradient. Saudi Arabia just went from 1.93 to 2.08 a couple of years ago. Many of the deep red countries are around 1.9. So it’s only saying Saudi Arabia is a tiny bit more democratic(but still clearly in the authoritarian bracket), ir just happens to be right on the other side of one of the color boundaries. I will all point out it’s not entirely based on how the government is elected, but also aspects like civil liberties.
This map isn’t so much “how authoritarian is a country” but “how functioning is a states government”. Saudi Arabia scores highly on the “Functioning of Government” metric so beats out states like Iran which are technically democracies albeit non-functioning ones
But then China should be pretty high no? I mean they run arguably one of the most successful countries in history if we go by economics, they went from a backwater laden with warlords and then mass famine to being the second superpower. At the very least they should be above Saudi Arabia, because even though it’s a de facto dictatorship it still has elections(though they are very different from the version used in the west), certainly better than Saudi Arabia
There are many other issues with this that just make it impossible to take serious. First is that this is full of political views, given that it Democracy isn't a real metric that can be compared properly given that are a lot of factors that basically can determine a country being a Democracy or Not. For example: **There is no way that US or UK should be this high for start of conversation.** A lot of countries that are under US should not be under it, US is a country that you literally can't vote for the representative of the country, and where you can have situations like Hilary x Trump where Hilary had more nominal votes than Trump but lost because their system. Regarding China, China is clearly being held lower because it's China not because of how it's system works, China has a Election system, it might be occupied by only the CCP and the representatives (they vote for people congress) that the people might vote are "filtered" by the CCP first, but people are still able to vote into those who might represent their interests. **SA is being held higher than it should just because of the geopolitical interest and technicallity of being a monarchy**, not due to any other factor. In theory it should have a score of 0, because the citzen complains and votes can be completly ignored by monarchy if they feel so.
Can you explain what you mean by Iran being a “non functioning real democracy”?
Iran scores some points on the metric of political process or participation by having actual elections with multiple parties and a somewhat reasonable turnout, but not enough for this alone to move them out of authoritarian into hybrid given the legitimacy of them is disputed and access to them isn’t universal (eg women cant vote in presidential elections). Additionally Iran has very poor freedom of press, problems with civil liberties and a government which is generally deemed to be incompetent. Conversely while KSA has the same issues with civil liberties, freedom of press and has no elections whatsoever, the state is deemed to be stable and effective at governance which means it (barely) scores better than Iran. TL;DR KSA having no elections but a functioning state barely beats Iran having limited elections but a poorly functioning state. Iran considered authoritarian but only barely
Interesting I would have never guessed Iran had half decent elections… has there ever been an oppositional candidate that democratically beat a previous administration?
Also worth remembering that while Iran does have elections for the government, it still does have a supreme leader as head of the government, who has lots of power, and is appointed for life from amongst the clerics.
Yeah, and pretty frequently. But, Iran also has a council that has to approve candidates to run in the first place, and will reject them if they are deemed too disaligned with Islam. So you have to be an islamist, only islamists can hold office, but you get to vote between more right wing or more left wing versions of islamists. In Iran's defense though, this isn't that different from a lot of other systems in practice. In America for example, the two parties can do whatever they want and put up whatever candidate they want. If a communist won the republican primary, they'd just annul it, they wouldn't let them run the ticket, and that'd be that. Since America is a two party system where third parties are so unlikely to win any real office that it's near mathematically impossible, we basically also have a system that stops radicals from getting in office. "Radicals" meaning people outside of the broad state ideology. In America you can't feasibly run and win high office if you're not a capitalist (Social democrats are a kind of capitalist) and in Iran you can't run for office if you're not an Islamist. It's just more official in Iran's case.
Iran's defacto ruled by a supreme leader. It's elections are generally appointee and supervised by him and every major decision is his to bless and "guide". He also de facto appoints the council you're talking about. Most countries see Khamenei as equivalent to the King of Saudi Arabia or President of the USA since he actually calls the big shots and not Ibrahim Raisi. If they could elect their supreme leader they'd actually be a democracy, the confidence in the elections is generally low. Many organisations see it as reliable as Russia's elections. Also let's not mention the fact that the elected officials of Iran have no power over the IRGC who control most of the economy and foreign policy and only answer to the supreme leader Saudi Arabia has municple elections but that's it. But this clearly states it takes into account civil libs and functioning of gov which Saudi scores higher than Iran on. Especially since MBS
Yes. Elections in Iran can be somewhat competitive, in that citizens can choose between various parliamentary parties or candidates for president. These usually range from moderate reformers to hardline conservatives, and it can make some difference at the policy and governance level. However, the political spectrum is quite narrow because candidates need to be vetted by the Guardian Council, which is not democratically elected. Anyone who is too far out of the acceptable range would be disqualified from running. Moreover, the Supreme Leader is the head of state and, while he isn't directly involved in day to day governance, he has the final say. He is appointed for life by the Assembly of Experts, a body that is, in principle at least, democratically elected, and he in turn appoints half the members of the Guardian Council.
Yeah the 2021 Iranian election changed parties from the 2017 one but the legitimacy was disputed
Women can vote in Iran. women can't become president. and they get outvoted by guardian council if they are chosen as ministers by president and they can not become judges they only can get lower positions than ministers (only one short term exception). However they can Participate as parliament members. Iran is not a democracy because everything is decided by the supreme leader in the end. The supreme leader decides on half of the ministers. The supreme leader decides who can be in the guardian council, who can veto or change laws decided by parliament and who can be a parliament candidate or who can be a presidency candidate. Also the supreme leader decides who is the chief justice of country and who are the main army leaders. Also as you stated no press freedom.very restricted religious freedom.
I'm pretty sure Iranian women can vote in presidental election.
I thought it got repealed in 79 and they can only vote in local ones but maybe not
[удалено]
Theocracy and Democracy are two different axes. They're not mutually exclusive.
There is Japan who is deep blue even though its essentially a one-party state.
That and most of those politicians are in their because their parents were politicians, then they’ll do the same for their children and so on.
Political dynasty, but since its Japan, it holds no negative connotation.
And so on all the way back to the shogun era in many cases.
People are perfectly free to choose who they want, the fact that Japan is one party is down to 2 things 1. Japanese people have gone to the extreme when it comes to the 'if it aint broke, dont fix it' mentality, and even though the current govt is doing a 'meh' job, 'meh' is good enough for most people. 2. Around 30 years ago the current power lost power once, and the party they lost to fucked things up so spectacularly that no one really wants to risk it again
Just like the Russians, the Japanese became politically apathetic?
Outside of a few years in the late 60s and a few years in the mid 90s The Japanese have never been not apathetic about politics The assumption here is that all politicians are corrupt but will do the bare minimum necessary, and thats true no matter who you vote for, so who cares
The elections are free and fair though so it's not like they pretended to win. It's probably not the LDP's fault the socialist party like sudoku'd themselves by winning and then immediately forming a coalition with the LDP. Also not LDP's fault the allies did a political purge of Japan after WW2.
Thailand literally just said no to the candidate who won the presidential election, yet they're the same as most of South America. Sham elections are worse than corruption
That's an over simplification. The election winner doesn't get an automatic mandate to govern in countries where coalitions are required to assume a governing majority. The reality is the coalition was never properly formed and collapsed when the largest member pulled out and negotiated power. No one "won" the election. To "win" an election you need to have enough votes to form a majority government, or convince other parties to join your cause.
That's because Future Forward Party (FFP) who won the most vote failed to form a coalition. Mostly because their biggest partner (and second largest party in the parliament) , Pheu Thai Party (PTP) dropped out and formed coalition with the Pro-junta parties instead. Now I agreed with you that the score should probably lower anyway. Because all the 300 members of the upper house of the National Assembly are appointed by the Junta, and will always be for the foreseeable future. And they have the power to vetoed any PM candidates from FFP.
Thailand has a parliamentary system, they don't have presidential elections. The problem in Thailand is that only the lower house of parliament is elected, the upper house is appointed by the military, and a government needs the support of both chambers in order to take power. This effectively gives the military a veto on the political process.
Allied with US
The US that doesn't even score that highly on this map?
No, just horrible and misinformed research.
More than 200 people fell for this poorly thought out American bashing
Have a read on the methodology and breakdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
I mean, idk the methodology, but your parsing over the worst vs 2nd worst rating. It’s not like it’s a massive difference. If I had to guess I’d say maybe Saudi Arabia’s government is a little more compartmented and is power more among an elite few rather than a pure sole authoritarian leader calling all the shots?
To teach kids about democracy, I let them vote on dinner. They picked pizza. Then I made tacos because they don't live in a swing state.
They picked pizza, but they share a bedroom so they collectively only get one vote
More like if 2/3 pick tacos, then the third’s vote for pizza counts toward tacos. Also, their room has been gerrymandered to split up the fourth child, who would also have voted pizza, into a different district that votes heavily taco.
Also voting is done by phones. Dad and mom both have a phone. The kids share a 10yo windows phone that needs to be restarted for every user to cast their vote. There is a 50 digit security code and lengthy authentification process installed to prevent voter fraud. It‘s also possible to just write a letter to mom and dad, but they are working to get rid of that option because after they managed to secure a week of ”kids only eat fish, broccoli and spinach for a week, while we order food“, miraculously they were overvoted the following week and much of that happened by those letter votes. Therefor it is very likely, that some fraud has taken place by letter voting.
This post made me miss my windows phone.
Let 10 kids vote on pizza vs tacos. 6 vote for pizza and the other 4 don't get their tacos. Pure democracy.
Yes. We’ve already had several wars about it
Everyone gets a combination of both with a little more pizza than taco. No one really likes that stuff and everyone complains that no matter what you vote for you always get basically the same with minor adjustments.
Everyone complaining that the changes are too small are only looking at the present and not realizing that small changes add up over time and are much better than going all in on one side or the other.
W
Their combined ages don't equal yours so you have more power in the electoral college
More like, I want them to eat taco so I spend the entire year telling them pizza is bad so they all vote taco, still thinking it’s their voluntary choice.
And turns out none of them know what pizza and tacos actually taste like while they cast their vote.
The better way to teach kids about democracy is to tell them about 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on What's for dinner.
Make sure you mention a constitution of rights to prevent eating each other alive becoming legal. Or that this famed republic, a shining city on a hill, was even less democratic upon inception and only gave a voice to white, christian, land-owning men and made black people property, as well as women to a lesser extent. A rather unusual consequence for a republic founded by rich men who owned a lot of property and slaves.
I'm not sure why people think that wasn't taught in schools before. I started school in the 70's and learned all about slavery and how some of the original framers owned slaves.
Breaking News: People living hundreds of years ago largely adhered to social norms of the time, but also radically revolutionized national governance to an unheard of degree and ushered in the age of Liberal Democracy. I mean... for Christ's sake...
Yeah the whole trying to criticise it for not being enlightened enough is a strange one when the alternative at the time was the Divine Right of Kings. Yeah its not up to snuff but it paved the way for further liberalisation. Countries that clung to some variant of Divine Right or Heavenly Mandate required brutal and horrific civil war to start down the path of liberalisation.
"We can't vote directly for president, we're not a democracy!" "Electing president by popular vote does not change our government from a republic." "But then presidents will only visit NY and LA and ignore small states!" "With the electoral college in play, the 2020 presidential election saw zero presidential campaign events in the 9 smallest states. The 30 smallest states (60% of states) received 32 of 212 presidential campaign events (15% of events). But 7 states (14%) did get 80% of all campaign events, and 4 of those states are in the top 10 most populated states. If you defend the electoral college with the intent of representing smaller states, your system fucking blows, while still sacrificing the representation of the larger states, as the top 4 states in population (33.3% of all americans) got 16% of the campaign events. If you exclude Florida, those 3 states (27% population) got 1% of the campaign events. But wow, every 4 years I'm sure happy we all need to talk about how much Pennsylvanians sure do love fracking." "I don't care. My candidate can win without most people voting for them."
If you wanted to teach them then they would have had to vote who decides what's for dinner for the next 4 years, mommy or daddy
That’s democracy?
That's basically US democracy.
Mexico is hybrid regime but the Thai military reigning supreme is a flawed democracy? Yea I call bs
There are other reasons than just voting that this takes into account, such as press freedom and civic engagement and other things.
Specifically electoral process and pluralism, **civil liberties**, **the functioning of government**, political participation and **political culture**. Source: I read the text on the map. The ones in bold are the ones I think might be causing some confusion. For example gay marriage could be a civil liberty, but how that connects to democracy can be a bit more opaque. I think it's that inequality leads to less recognition and less representation. But it just emphasizes the fact that this map comes down to Statista's moral and ethical views. Another, probably more clear cut example could be voting rights of convicts in prison. Not all US states allow convicts to vote. But I believe all Scandinavian countries do. Does that translate to "more democracy"? Personally I'd say yes, but you be the judge.
> But it just emphasizes the fact that this map comes down to Statista's moral and ethical views. The democracy index is done by the economic intelligence unit. Source: also reading text on the map More info about it:, and breakdown of each category for each country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
Lenin was right, the Economist really is just a bourgeois rag.
Lol sizes of "flaws" may vary
This is ultimately based on vibes, so yeah
No, there are actual metrics being used It’s still flawed but it isn’t totally baseless
Thailand just had an election, if I remember correctly. The general is no longer their PM
Disclaimer: This entirely depends on how democracy is defined and most importantly, by **whom**
This looks like it's based on Freedom House's report. One of the telltale signs is that somehow, Iran (which at least has competitive elections, although they're highly manipulated) is somehow less democratic than Saudi Arabia, which is an absolute monarchy with zero democracy and doesn't pretend otherwise.
Saudi Arabia is litteraly one of the only countries in the world (a bunch of others are on the peninsula btw) that isn't even de jure democratic.
And scores only a fraction over 2, which is shit.
I think having absolutely 0 democratic institutions, no elections whatsoever no matter how corrupt, and an absolute hereditary monarch should just put you at 0 no? At least in China there's the CCP which you can join and don't have to be born into.
Saudi Arabia and Iran each register a score of 0.00 on Electoral Process and Pluralism. Saudi Arabia outperforms Iran on Functioning of Government, 3.57 to 2.50. Iran beats Saudi Arabia on Political Participation, 3.33 to 2.22. Saudi Arabia beats Iran on Political Culture, 3.13 to 2.50. Both register a score of 1.47 on Civil Liberties. Regarding elections, Saudi Arabia doesn't hold elections, while Iran's elections are only between people allowed to run by the Supreme Leader, who is himself indirectly elected by an elected body whose candidates must be approved by the Supreme Leader. As the Supreme Leader has much more power than anyone else, the elections, limited as they are, are effectively just allowing the people to pick the Supreme Leader's deptuties from a list drawn up by him. So, in summation, neither hold elections for the actual leadership, Saudi Arabia is marginally better at keeping the lights on and the roads paved, Iran has somwhat more citizen participation in politics, Saudi Arabia has a little less corruption (probably just because the ruling family "legally" own the sources of wealth, rather than just pilfering like in Iran), and both are massive human rights abusers. The difference between Saudi Arabia and Iran is marginal and superficial. Both are fundamentalist dictatorships run according to the principle of "L'Etat, c'est moi.". The differences are just window dressing.
How is keeping the lights on a "democratic value"
It says right there as a source. It's the economic intelligence unit democracy index. More info and breakdown of each component of the index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
There are plenty of red flags on this map, the one I noticed were Japan and S. Korea not being labeled as "flawed democracies"
And Spain being labeled a "Full Democracy" when they are facing investigations for spying on minority party politicians and voters, deeming referendums Illegal, and sending armed police to beat up people who want to vote.
I always find it funny when Spain is lumped in with the 'free West' and you remember they came out of a fascist dictatorship less than 50 years ago
What do you mean? Samsungistan -I mean South Korea isn't a full democracy?
Japan is the bigger joke -- the same party has been in power for 64 of the last 68 years.
Or Taiwan. I'm from there and all the "Taiwan ranked as top Asian democracy" headlines make me cringe. Perhaps the best of Asia but certainly not in the world lol
Wait, if Taiwan is the best of Asia, "top Asian democracy" literally means the same
whats wrong with democracy in Taiwan?
-Basically a one party state -full democracy
I'm not familiar with Japan or SK. What's the flaw there ?
1 party states where you could theoretically vote the ruling party out of office but they've still maintained a monopoly on the government since their inception edit: not SK (I am stupid)
> 1 party states where you could theoretically vote the ruling party out of office but they've still maintained a monopoly on the government since their inception This is not remotely true for South Korea.
Japan has twice voted out the ruling party. In the 1993 election, the long-ruling LDP remained the largest party but lost their majority. Almost all opposition parties formed a coalition government lead by the New Party, which was basically a bunch of moderate LDP members that had defected due to their exasperation with corruption, sending the LDP into opposition. In 1994 the New Party PM resigned, and the premiership passed to the New Frontier Party, which was another LDP offshoot but was further to the right and was perceived as being heavy-handed. NFP getting the premiership resulted in the Socialist Party, long the main opposition party, leaving the coalition, which left it without a majority and the government facing a certain defeat in a vote of no confidence, which lead to the new PM's resignation. Following that, the Socialists negotiated a coalition with their longtime rivals, the LDP, leading to an unwieldy coalition with a Socialist Prime Minister and the LDP back in government, but their junior partner holding the premiership. This lasted until 1996, when the PM stepped down, and the LDP regained the premiership while continuing the prior coalition. Later that year new elections were held, which lead to the LDP regaining their majority as well as the Socialists, newly renamed the Social Democrats, losing most of their seats and ceasing to be a major force in Japanese politics. The second time was in 2009, when the LDP suffered a crushing defeat to the Democrats, the main opposition party at that time, with the Democrats obtaining a substantial majority of the seats. At the next elections in 2012, they suffered an even worse defeat to the LDP, which won a substantial majority of the seats. The LDP has held the majority again since that time.
A better term is a dominant party system. A one party state is one in which only one party (or one alliance of parties) is allowed.
How is South Korea one-party state?
**whom**
Saudi Arabia, an absolutist monarchy, more democratic than Iran and Jordan ? WTF? Edit: I confused the color of Jordan with Syria. But I also don't think that Syria under Assad is much more authoritarian then KSA.
Iran is very weird here. But they do classify Jordan as less authoritarian than KSA.
Lol jordan is a civil rights paradise compared to KSA
KSA scores, 2.08/10, Iran scores 1.96/10, and Jordan 3.17/10. Both KSA and Iran score 0 for their Electoral Process. KSA scores notably better on Functioning of Government (which is where Syria scores 0)
Saudi Arabia is bad but people in this thread are acting like it’s literally North Korea lmao. Don’t get all your news from Reddit, people
Just a reminder that the Global Democracy Index is basically an anonymous opinion poll, and has only a very thin veneer of "evidence" behind it.
I love these global ranking maps because they piss everyone off and it's fun to read the comments.
I hate this map, not that I disagree with it. I'm Red-Blue colour blind and can't tell which is blue and which is purple.
Officially, i‘m only red-green colour blind, but… I can‘t differ them too
I agree, and the colour path makes little sense.
The purple throws it all off, should either be a yellow or preferably not there in the first place.
I don't even know what purple is. Never understood or accepted that so-called colour.
Purple looks like purple y'know
Thank you, now I get it.
The Economist being The Economist.
Useless infographic map of the year award goes to this map.
90% of posts here are not even accurate
Democracy, famously quantifiable
I wonder why New Zealand scores higher than most other Commonwealth countries
Proportional voting system. Has moved on from first past the post.
Australia also has proportional voting in the Senate and preferential voting in the House of Reps. I'm guessing what brings Australia down is the media landscape being absolute shite.
This image is posted every month and it’s funny everytime because anyone who has been alive ever knows this map is complete nonsense
Always the same map.
If you don't see flaws in Canada, then you've never been to Canada. Edit: This was a joke. It was not my intent to engage in serious discussion of any kind.
We need mixed proportional, FPTP sucks. If only a party would get elected on that... /s
But this report *does* see flaws. That's why Canada's score is 8.88, and not 10.
Sure it has flaws, but how specifically does it relate to its democracy?
No term limits, the government has control over banks, laws and businesses but the federal government lacks any power to push bills that are municipal problems. Local elected officials can get away with murder here in Canada and the federal government takes all the heat.
>No term limits I think basically no parliamentary democracy has term limits, because we elect the members of parliament, not the prime minister
There is a lot to unpack here. >No term limits Because you aren't electing a president, you are electing your local MP, then the MPs vote on who will be PM. In practice, this is usually the party the most seats, but there is no rule that it has to be. In theory, any MP can be the PM if they can get enough MPs to vote for them. >the government has control over banks No, the government has jurisdiction over regulating the banks as per the Constitution Act of 1867. > but the federal government lacks any power to push bills that are municipal problems Because the Canadian constitution is unambiguous over these being Provincial matters. The Constitution Act of 1867 says that any issue of "purely local nature" is the exclusive jurisdiction of the Provinces. This is unambiguous and the courts have enforced this consistently going back to the literal 1800s even before the Supreme Court of Canada was the Highest Court. The Judicial Committee of the Privy council enforced this precedent, then the Supreme Court of Canada kept enforcing it because it is literally in the constitution word for word. >Local elected officials can get away with murder here in Canada and the federal government takes all the heat. Again, none of this is the jurisdiction of the Federal government. Local elections are 100% handled by the provinces. The provinces can redraw and change the rules of municipal elections at will. It is up to the Provincial governments to regulate that. I get the feeling you don't understand that Canada is a Federation, not a Unitary state.
Disagreeing with the government gets you run down by Mounties, your bank account frozen, and your kids stolen, but that’s more democratic than *shudders* an electoral system Only 4 times in American history has the winner lost the popular vote. In Canada, it’s the expectation
This belongs to r/shittymaps
Always pisses me off when I see the UK ranked higher that the US. The UK has and UNELECTED upper chamber with bishops and 96 hereditary peers
It shows that the methodology is highly questionable. And it's not just about the UK. Several countries here look weird.
We also have first past the post which means many votes are essentially put in the bin. A party can have 20% of the vote nationwide and have no representatives in parliament. UK democracy is a joke. My thought is have the House of Lords as first past the post so local constituencies have a local representative at parliament. Then use proportional representation in the commons so the national views are represented.
That's sort of what Australia has (although around the other way). Our lower house is the same.as the UK commons but our upper house has proportional representation where each state gets 8 representatives. Means we get local representation but also minor parties get a say if they get enough of the vote.
You’ve got my vote
What makes a regime hybrid?
It runs on gasoline and electricity
If I had an award you would get it.
A hybrid regime is a state has both authoritarian and democratic characteristics. This is usually the result of an incomplete transition from one to another. For example Turkey has an elected body but the president is not accountable to said body.
Erdogan moment
>A hybrid regime is a state has both authoritarian and democratic characteristics I find concepts like this funny because this describes every country that's listed here as a democracy. Upholding rule of law and state integrity necessitates a degree of authoritarianism regardless of ideology or elections
Mfs thought process while making the chart 1. USA - Hmm. People can choose between only 2 parties. And vote for a candidate who is the least racist amongst the two. 10/10 full democracy. 2. India - Hmm, several national parties. Thousands of regional parties. Ranges from Left wings, right wings, communists. People have the choice to vote among thousands of candidates .6/10 flawed democracy.
France, a full democratie ? haha good one !
Exactly my thought, should be downgraded as the same level of the US
Same with Canada and UK
Japan is literally a one party system
I question Japan's ranking in all aspects... doesn't it have a 99% conviction rate?
Japan and SK get a slap on the wrist because they are in the western block. Change my mind,
All I can say is that the US is ranked lower on this map than Japan, so I think it is the biases of the authors, not because Japan and South Korea are part of the first world.
Political participation and stability being ranked so highly makes the map very different from how citiziens would actually feel about this issue. Also, it is for me absurd that they take turnout into account but not things like voting system (a a country where a candidate that got less votes than the other one gets elected is a.. questionable democracy, and I am not only taking about the US here; or a country where less than 30% of the vote gets you all the power etc.), unelected chambers that still have some power, certain discriminatory provisions (for e.g. That all/ a majority of members of gov. must be of a certain religion) etc.
Thai is a democracy ? yea this map is bs
China is worse than Saudi Arabia? This map is bumpkiss
Hybrid Regime would be a good band name.
How is Japan a full democracy? The LDP has pretty much been in power since ww2 save for like... 4 years.
It's impressive that Mongolia has stayed democratic at all while sandwiched between the world's two major autocratic powers. Shouldn't Eritrea be in the lowest subtier? Most political scientists think it's the least democratic country in the world save for North Korea.
I think Eritrea is considered the most censored place not the least democratic.
Those two go hand in hand.
This is a flawed index by The Economist. Its defects are plenty: arbitrarily defined thresholds, anonymous "experts" making judgments, ill-interpreted criteria, Anglo-Saxon bias, ... Alternative indexes are the following: - https://www.idea.int/gsod-indices/democracy-indices - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/political-regime - https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking - https://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm - https://www.v-dem.net - https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2022
This map is very wrong
According to the European Parliament, Hungary is no longer a democracy, but a hybrid regime or [electoral autocracy](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220909IPR40137/meps-hungary-can-no-longer-be-considered-a-full-democracy), i.e. a constitutional system in which elections occur, but respect for democratic norms and standards is absent. The European Parliament is right. Hungary is not a democracy anymore, not even a flawed one.
This is my favourite little piece of information because no matter where it is posted people get really, REALLY, into the arguments about what it is displaying but almost nobody actually goes to look at the source that is incredibly easy to find and one the actual infographic shows in order to gather information about something they're incredibly passionate about apparently. And by stating that I am not making the argument that the methodology is bulletproof.
The United Kingdom is upholding Democracy better than the United States. Oh, the chagrin. The founding fathers are rolling in their damn graves.
You're telling me that Spain, a country that charges voters in a regional referendum like they're criminals, has a proper democracy? And Portugal, a country with zero flaws in the Democratic system, has not?
Turkey, democracy? Nuh uh
That's why it's not a democracy on this map, but classified as a hybrid regime.
Cuba an authoritarian regime? Maybe. Cuba less democratic than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Yeah no this map is bullshit
Cuba is ranked higher than Saudi Arabia.
Poland flawed democracy? Its much closer to dictatorship, much like Hungary or Belarus.
Data sounds pretty subjective. Who exactly is the Economist Intelligence Unit?
What are the numbers counting/scoring? 0-10 whats?
r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
Nordic gang rise up.
Chile being a full democracy while it still suffers from the effects of the US-backed coup that put Pinochet in power.
Bullshit index with shitty methodology (or lack thereof). Not even worth mentioning.
UK having a high score invalidates this map
Dogshit map
Unless I'm missing something the most populated country in the 9.0-10 range is the Netherlands with 17 million people, then Sweden with 10 million. None of the others in that zone have more than 10 million. So that leads me to think that it's probably difficult to maintain their levels of democracy over a certain size.
Yeah right lol. The US only calls itself a democracy. That’s a lie.
India sitting like a lone star in an ocean of authoritarian regimes
Its impressive if you take into account their population size
Arab monarchies all scoring higher than they should. One can only guess why....
mam they're all red...
Not sure why countries with monarchs and unelected upper house are ranked higher than the US but okay.
How can France be a "Full democracy" while [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_49_of_the_French_Constitution#:~:text=Its%20best%2Dknown%20provision%2C%20paragraph%203%20(Article%2049.3)%2C%20allows%20the%20government%20to%20force%20passage%20of%20a%20law%20without%20a%20vote) exists ?
r/shittydesign