The Economist recently published another Democracy Index, scoring countries in terms of how democratic they are in the world. The first edition was published in 2006. The newest ranking is based on performance in 2014.
Each nation is assessed based on:
1.“Whether national elections are free and fair”;
2.“The security of voters”;
3.“The influence of foreign powers on government”;
4.“The capability of the civil servants to implement policies”.
Then apparently a country is given score and placed in four categories.
Full Democracy is a score 8.0-10
Flawed Democracies are nations with scores of 6.0-7.9
Hybrid Regimes are 4.0-5.9
Authoritarian Regimes are bloodthirsty dictatorships with scores of 3.9 and below.
Over the years the rankings have changed, but most countries tend to be the same category since the first ranking in 2006.
Norway received a score of 9.9, the most democratic nation in the world. North Korea is the most repressive coming in dead last with 1.0.
The top ten most democratic are
Norway
Sweden
Iceland
New Zealand
Denmark
Switzerland
Canada
Finland
Australia
Netherlands.
The ten most repressive beginning from bottom to top are:
North Korea
Central African Republic
Chad
Equatorial Guinea
Syria
Democratic Republic of Congo
Saudi Arabia
Turkmenistan
Guinea-Bissau
Iran
The U.S ranks at 19 in case you were wondering. Does this list make sense to you, or were there surprises?
Do Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland have significant ethnic minorities? A divided populace of this sort – the U.S., or China, or Australia, or most certainly Switzerland (!) – can have problems with democracy, as it runs the risk of “tyranny of the majority.”
Part of the reason the U.S. comes in low might be our anti-democratic constitutional features, such as the U.S. Senate which represents the states, not the people. But, alas, another part of the reason we come in lower than we’d like is such crap as voter suppression, Gerrymandering, and election recount lawsuits.
The U.S. treasures democracy…but doesn’t always live up to it.
One factor not captured here is that, as I understand it, the US puts more matters up for democratic vote than most countries (several levels of elections, wider pool of elected officials, referenda).
I would guess legal immigrants can vote except for illegal ones or maybe refugees. Of the top four I would wager that Iceland has least number of immigrants. Sweden and Norway have a good percentage.
Well the ranking is of nearly 170 nations so the US is doing well, but could crack the top ten.
Here are some nations besides the top ten that come ahead of us:
Luxembourg
Ireland
Germany
Austria
Malta
United Kingdom
Uruguay
Mauritius
United States
Japan
South Korea
Spain
France
Costa Rica
An ethnically diverse society might not be be linked to how democratic a state is, though may make things harder to govern. We do better than Japan and South Korea which are not diverse.
I would thought Switzerland would be most democratic, all issues are put to a vote and each year a new president serves.
.
The 3 Scandinavian countries all do; Iceland is pretty homogenous (~3% Polish is the second largest). Denmark has much more societal issue with immigration than the others.
China is pretty homogenous as well.
Bolding mine. What does that mean? Many countries have federalized regional representation.
I looked at the report. The two categories the US did worst on were “political participation”, with a score of 7.22 and “functioning of government”, at 7.5. From the report, on the US
That being said, the US didn’t do badly, really. We’re 19th out of 167, which isn’t bad.
The United States Senate, as originally established did represent the state governments; however, that has changed and it does represent the people now. The difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives is, in general, the size of the group of people being represented.
I get the sense that the assessment is less than objective and countries are ranked to suit the present political views of the US and allies.
In fact the large majority of countries are not in the least Democratic. They may be Democratic in name, but in reality they are controlled by the usual powerful minority.
Glaring examples of the rankings include putting Syria less Democratic than Saudi Arabia! And no mention at all about Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and other totalitarian regimes
The USA is a prime example of a thoroughly non Democratic country structured as a Republic, and actually run by the 1% or less. Ironically that’s pretty much like Ancient Greece where the city-states were run by Demes - the 1% of the day - but in the USA they don’t so much vote amongst themselves as buy influence from each other.
It means Wyoming with half a million people has 2 senators and California with 40 million people has 2 senators. If California decided to split into 6 states tomorrow, it would magically gain an extra 10 senators and make up 1/5th of the senate instead of the current 1/25th, despite nothing else changing.
To me, though, the first past the post, electoral college style system is far more anti-democratic than senatorial representation. It means that only a few undecided voters in a few swing states are electorally important and everyone else is completely disenfranchised. Switching to some kind of runoff style system with multiple parties would be far better.
Syria isn’t listed as much less democratic than Saudi Arabia. Really, the reason it’s below it is because it its score in “functioning of government”; Saudi Arabia has a functioning government, and Syria doesn’t. And Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, are all considered “authoritarian regimes”. In fact, none of the middle eastern states rate as “full democracies” by that methodology, and only two, Israel and Tunisia, as “flawed democracies”.
It isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a non-democratic thing. It allows Wyoming to have as much representation in the Senate as California does, on the basis of less than 1/60th the population.
(Actually, I don’t know if equal representation is definitional of democracy, in the purest sense of abstract political theory. It is, however, one of the ideals of a good democracy: “One man, one vote.” The U.S. is founded upon a compromise between the people and the states. As I see it, this is a step away from true democracy – but, again, I emphasize that this is not necessarily a bad thing. The thread is about “the most democratic countries,” and our Federalism is, I think, part of why we aren’t in the top ten.)
If California split into six different states then only one of them would still be California. The other five would be different states with their own senators. So California wouldn’t gain 10 senators. It’d lost a hell of a lot of House Representatives though.
Agreed (and agreed.) It’s all part of our foundational compromise, and thus, whether good or ill, it was at that time absolutely necessary.
Now, it’s too entrenched to change. The small states would never let an amendment pass to take away their artificially subsidized power. On the other hand, they aren’t really much of a threat to the rest of us. The Federalist Papers go into this a bit: the big states could pose a threat to the small states, and thus this counterbalancing allocation of power is a stabilizing thing.
But, yes, definitely, it is contra-democratic. To me, that shows that democracy is only one of many goods and ideals to be sought after.
Norway has a liberal naturalization policy, and most immigrants in the country over seven years have citizenship available to them. There are Polish-Norwegians, Somali-Norwegians, Pakistani-Norwegians. Their children are citizens from birth if born in Norway, or naturalized after two years if immigrants themselves. Pop duo Nico and Vinz are Ivoirian- and Ghanaian-Norwegian.
I was surprised by some listings, Nigeria being classed as authoritarian as an example. However overall I don’t see any biases, why is Syria more democratic than the U.S allies like Kuwait? In fact you missed the entire ranking of all nations, scroll down all those nations are classed as dictatorships.
Kuwait is pretty liberal among Gulf States, not like Saudi Arabia.