{"id":1262877,"date":"2023-04-29T18:10:42","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T22:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-state-of-democracy-around-the-world\/1262877\/"},"modified":"2023-04-29T18:10:42","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T22:10:42","slug":"the-state-of-democracy-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-state-of-democracy-around-the-world\/1262877\/","title":{"rendered":"The State Of ‘Democracy’ Around The World"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

The State Of ‘Democracy’ Around The World<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Only 8% of the world\u2019s population actually lives in a full, functioning democracy,<\/strong> according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, another 37% of people live in some type of \u201cflawed democracy\u201d, while 55% of the world does not live in democracy at all, based on the EIU\u2019s latest\u00a0Democracy Index Report.<\/a><\/p>\n

As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Joyce Mas detail below, <\/a>events such as the war in\u00a0Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0and restrictive, long-lasting COVID-19 measures, have caused numerous declines to country democracy scores in recent years. Since the source report first began tracking scores in 2006, the global average has fallen from 5.52 to 5.29.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Methodology<\/h3>\n

The EIU measures democracy by assessing 60 indicators across five key categories:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Electoral process and pluralism<\/li>\n
  2. Political culture<\/li>\n
  3. Political participation<\/li>\n
  4. Functioning of government<\/li>\n
  5. Civil liberties<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Each category has a rank of 0-10 based on how the indicators fared, and the overall democracy score is an average of each of the five categories. For example, here\u2019s a look at the U.S.\u2019 scoring out of 10 in each of the overall categories in 2022:<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/p>\n

    This score defines the U.S. as a flawed democracy and ranks it 30th overall in the world, down four spots from last year\u2019s ranking. <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u201cFlawed\u201d in this case simply means there are problems, ranging from poor political culture to governance issues, but flawed democracies are still considered to have free and fair elections, as well as civil liberties.<\/p>\n

    The World\u2019s Democracies by Region<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Below we map out the state of democracy across various regions around the world.<\/p>\n

    The Americas<\/h3>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    One of the best performers year-over-year was\u00a0Chile<\/strong>, with its score\u00a0increasing by nearly 0.3. The country moved out of the flawed democracy category last year, largely because of the shift towards constitutional reform alongside President Gabriel Boric moving towards the political center, reducing polarization.<\/p>\n

    Only three other countries in the Americas are also considered full democracies:\u00a0Costa Rica, Canada<\/strong>, and\u00a0Uruguay<\/strong>\u2014the latter of which is #1 regionally.<\/p>\n

    On the flipside, some of the world\u2019s worst performers year-over-year are located specifically in Latin America, namely:\u00a0El Salvador<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Haiti<\/strong>. Much of the low scores in the region are associated with high crime rates and corrupt governance.<\/p>\n

    Africa<\/h3>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    The only full democracy in Africa is the small, island nation of\u00a0Mauritius<\/strong>. Overall, Africa is one of the lowest scoring regions with only five of the continent\u2019s 54 countries ranking as some type of democracy.<\/p>\n

    Tunisia\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0score decreased significantly in 2022. President Kais Saied dismissed parliament early in the year and took control of the electoral council, slowly shifting towards centralized power. And although there were critics, many have since been arrested, downgrading them in the EIU\u2019s eyes from a flawed democracy to a hybrid regime.<\/p>\n

    Europe<\/h3>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Spain<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0France<\/strong>\u00a0regained status as full democracies in 2022, mainly improving in the civil liberties and functioning of government categories thanks to the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. However, both countries face political polarization; in Spain this is largely exemplified in the attitudes surrounding the Catalan separatist movement.<\/p>\n

    Some of the lowest scoring regimes in the region are in\u00a0Russia<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Belarus<\/strong>. Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine has violated international law, as well as another country\u2019s sovereignty, decimating its score by 0.96 in the index. Belarus has continually allied itself with Russia,\u00a0allowing troops<\/a>\u2014and likely\u00a0missiles<\/a>\u2014to enter Ukraine from its borders.<\/p>\n

    Oceania and East Asia<\/h3>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    In this region, levels of democracy were severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0Hong Kong<\/strong>\u00a0only removed restrictive policies like mask mandates in early 2023. In contrast,\u00a0Thailand<\/strong>\u00a0lifted these restrictions a year prior, providing more individual freedom, according to the report.<\/p>\n

    Malaysia\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0fairly high score of 7.3 could face scrutiny, as the former Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, who was in office during COVID-19, is currently facing corruption charges for money laundering of COVID-19 stimulus package funds.<\/p>\n

    Central Asia and The Middle East<\/h3>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Finally, in the Middle East and Central Asia, there are no full democracies at all. The lowest scoring country globally is\u00a0Afghanistan<\/strong>\u00a0at only 0.32.<\/p>\n

    Israel<\/strong>, the only democracy of any kind of the region, actually moved down six spots in the global ranking from the year prior. Its lowest scoring category in 2022 was civil liberties. This year, the country\u00a0is in the spotlight due to its judicial reforms proposed by the ruling nationalist party, and civil response has been strong. Mass protests continue around the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
    \nSat, 04\/29\/2023 – 21:30<\/span><\/p>\n

    From:Zerohedge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The State Of ‘Democracy’ Around The World Only 8% of the world\u2019s population actually lives in a full, functioning democracy, according to the Economist Intelligence…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1262877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1262877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1262877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1262877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1262877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}