Very depressing article in Buzzfeed on the “Fragile State Index”, an attempt by poli-sci types to predict what societies are most in jeopardy for democratic failures. They put the blame primarily on significant economic inequality within a country. Other factors, such as heightened partisanship, aren’t the cause of political dysfunction, in their view, but rather are a symptom of that underlying economic inequality, as the fight between the haves and have-nots begins to show in the political arena.
The article is mainly about the US, but there’s an interesting chart about three-quarters through the article, which suggests that by their index, of the G7 nations, the US in the past fifteen years has gone from the second most cohesive to the least cohesive. The UK has followed a similar trajectory,
Canada during that period has gone from most cohesive to second-most cohesive; Japan is now the most cohesive.
Is there a way in the new board to link to a particular chart in an article like that?