Norway Most, North Korea Least Democratic Country in the World.

Great Debates
61

The other thing to consider is reversion to the mean. That is, small populations tend to have more extreme values for all sorts of statistical measures compared to large populations.

For instance, if you look at American states with the lowest incidences of cancer, they are all low-population states. Wow, so living in large crowded states gives you cancer! Except it also turns out that American states with the highest incidences of cancer are also low-population states.

If you took a country and divided it in half arbitrarily, half the country would have a higher cancer rate than the whole country, and half would have a lower rate. And if you kept dividing up the area into smaller and smaller bits, you’d find more and more statistical noise that was smoothed by the large sample.

Another way to look at it would be to consider individual American states. If we evaluated each American state by the listed criteria, some would score higher and some would score lower. Except all the states are averaged together in one lump as “America”. It’s a lot easier to fall on one side of the mean or the other if you’re a small country. On the other hand, if you took Norway and Sweden and Denmark and Iceland and mashed them together they’d still come out near the top. But on the other other hand, Finnland does pretty good, but if Finnland was annexed by Russia it wouldn’t bring up Russia’s score even if Finns somehow kept their exact same political institutions.

62

There are many reasons the US is so relevant as a benchmark for democracy. It’s the dominant world power, it regards itself as a beacon of democracy and a model for the rest of the world, and it’s indisputably structured as a democracy, with emerging new legislation and judicial rulings that continuously alter it for better or for worse in a process of ostensibly well-intentioned continuous evolution. Looking at the successes and failures of US democracy as it’s developed is therefore instructive, whereas looking at the reasons that, say, Middle Eastern or African countries are weak democracies or not democracies at all is not particularly instructive or interesting because the reasons are usually blatantly obvious.

It’s the more subtly instigated failures that are the interesting ones, and in that respect I think it’s fascinating that the US, despite its legacy, economic strengths and its obsession with personal freedom, rates lower on democracy than the Commonwealth countries, Scandinavia, and others.

Among the reasons the US is slipping behind in democratic ideals, in my humble opinion as an outside but deeply involved observer, is that the laudable quest for individual freedom and opportunity has sometimes occurred at the expense of social values, and has unwittingly obfuscated the concept of freedom with the almighty dollar, which it has elevated to the status of deity. The more that the almighty dollar reigns supreme in every aspect of life, including the ability to control legislation, hobble government, influence the administration of justice, and shape public opinion, the farther you get from meaningful democracy in which the interests of the majority are able to prevail over the interests of a controlling minority of wealthy plutocrats. Which wealthy plutocrats, merely by possessing the vast majority of those dollars, are both the embodiment of the nation’s principal obsession and the wielders of its dominant power and influence, and – in a vicious circle of perverted social contract – the living proof that money is indeed supreme above all.

There’s more to democracy than just the right to vote. If half the population doesn’t bother to exercise that right because they already feel disenfranchised, and much of the other half have their brains addled by a billion dollars’ worth of political ads and corporate propagandizing, and all the mainstream candidates are forced to pander to all the same special interests, one should hardly be surprised that one ends up with a government that panders to its real power base. Small wonder, then, that there’s “dissatisfaction with government”. The irony of it is that it’s not the government that’s the culprit, it’s the effective disenfranchisement of the majority, which the government no longer represents.

Clearly what’s needed is for the likes of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson to get more involved in politics. The problem with US democracy is that no one ever listens to what the billionaires have to say! :wink:

63

The scores on the Freedom Index are not related to, or determined by, the editorial comments in the report. They are determined by points assigned to the answers to specific questions in the scoring rubric, most of which are answered “yes” or “no,” and some of which define answers that will score half a point. The U.S. scored thus in 2014:

Overall score 8.11
Electoral process and pluralism 9.17
Functioning of government 7.50
Political participation 7.22
Political culture 8.13
Civil liberties 8.53

Despite what the editors said, the low scores in the U.S. aren’t directly due to the Tea Party, partisan gridlock, or the existence of the Senate (really?). Our lowest score was in political participation, which is measured by voter turnout, involvement in political activities, visibility of women and minorities in politics, public interest and engagement in politics, and government efforts to promote political participation. 7.22 is most of the points, but I dare say that we’re losing points because bitching on the Internet doesn’t count for anything.

Functioning of government is also low (lower than ever, really), despite full points on most direct measures. This is partly due to questions about transparency and accountability, but mainly it’s because of questions like these:

“Popular perceptions of the extent to which they have free choice and control over their lives” - in the World Values Survey, about 18% of Americans reported “A great deal of choice/control” - zero points.

“Public confidence in government” - in the World Values Survey, about 35% of Americans reported “A great deal” or “Quite a lot,” - half a point.

“Public confidence in political parties” - in the World Values Survey, less than 15% of Americans reported "A great deal " or “Quite a lot” - zero points.

And that’s where the editorial comments come in. They look at this apathy and discontent and judge that it’s a reaction to the behavior of the political parties and the members of Congress. Those things aren’t scored directly, but they do influence some of the scores.

64

Don’t be sarcastic. It’s a serious issue. The Senate is a “not-quite-democratic” institution, as is the electoral college.

The OP didn’t indicate the methods of the rankings, and so it was not a foolish question to raise. We also still don’t know if things like Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and other forms of corruption were part of the calculation.

If the ranking is solely by adherence to pure and perfect democracy, then, yes, the Senate really does count against the U.S. If the ranking had other ideological bases, then that’s okay too. The poll-taker gets to choose the questions.

65

The methodology of the report is in the report. I’m starting to think a lot of people commenting on the report didn’t read the report.

66

A republic is a type of democracy. Get over it.

67

Isn’t it true most emerging democracies go parliamentary? Even Iraq is parliamentary.

68

Maybe they read this one instead. Different report, same subject. I would argue that there are a lot of overlapping elements, for example the root causes of voter apathy and government dysfuction.

69

While I agree that quibbling about the definition is pointless, many countries can be democracies without being republics. Constitutional monarchies, for example.

70

So The People’s Republic of China is a good example of a democracy?

71

Nah, it’s a pretty lousy example. What’s your point? Most of the major Commonwealth countries, which are constitutional monarchies and not republics, are pretty good examples.

72

“Republic” and “Democracy” are no more correlated than a car’s weight and colour.

73

You’d think white limos and equipment-laden unmarked black SUVs not to mention yellow and orange fiberglass bodies might skew things a bit.

74

I said a republic is a type of democracy, not that a democracy is a type of republic.

75

A country can be a republic and not a democracy, though. The aforementioned China and the other communist countries. Iran. Syria. Pinochet’s Chile. Etc.

76

:smack: Try Googling “definition:democracy” and “definition:republic” and learn that the words are almost synonyms.

And no, despite its name the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is neither a republic nor a democracy. If you call a tail a leg, a dog still has only 4 legs.

I feel sorry for OP. A possible interesting discussion degrades into trivia like the electoral college. I’m beginning to understand why Americans got so enthrilled by the “purple finger” democracy of Afghanistan … which BTW ranks very low in the Economist’s chart.

77

A country can be Democratic and not a democracy too such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

78

Dictionary definitions aren’t of much help in this debate.

I live in a democracy, but I don’t live in a republic.

79

Spain and France are essentially tied in the Economist’s ratings. One of those countries is a “Republic” and the other isn’t.

In this “debate” (:confused:) (at least among those who’ve not hijacked it into irrelevant trivia) one group’s understanding of the difference/similarity between Republic and Democracy is relevant and one group’s isn’t.

One guess which is which.

80

Maybe it’s because it’s late where I live, but I simply don’t understand your previous post.

:confused: