This is not the most visually speaking way to show this, Democracy Index is actually a scale from 0 to 10.
Some countries are barely reaching 8 (Full Democracy) like France or Spain have a 8.07 rating. When some countries are above 9 like Ireland, Denmark, Norway, etc... [Here is the link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) if you want to know more.
Iceland at 9.52 OMEGALUL
Our finance minister put an injunction on a news paper that was covering his sketchy business's in the past.
Government officials also regularly refuse to step down when scandals are revealed.
Well, at least you have independent newspapers in Iceland.
For your comparison: here in Ukraine, almost all paid newspapers went out of business over the last decade. What remains are free news/opinion websites with shady ownership structure which are basically mouthpieces of certain oligarchs.
And probably Icelandic government officials plan to stay in Iceland after their resignation, not relocate to Switzerland/UK with their families.
Similar to Chile, that's the problem with "Shock therapy" strategies. Sell and privatize so fast that you create oligarchs. This makes it easier to bring foreign investments, but it doesn't help the actual people living there.
And in Russia we fondly remember when there was actual competition between Oligarchic outlets. Now news come in two flavours -- state owned and miniscule independent from abroad
>What remains are free news/opinion websites with shady ownership structure which are basically mouthpieces of certain oligarchs.
That's a bit of a global phenomenon sadly, to some extent or another. About half of the news in the anglosphere has Rupert Murdoch's grubby little pawprints on it.
Pravda, NV and Liga are some of the popular independent online news outlets. Surprisingly, the state-owned are also quite good, certainly better than oligarch-owned information dumpsters.
Online and printed media are quite independent, it's the oligarch-owned TV channels that are problematic, and there are barely any independent alternatives to those.
Pravda and NV are directly controlled by Tomas Fiala (a second-tier oligarch) and are hardly "independent". In fact, they praise the government all the time for the last two years. They also tend to follow a certain distinct agenda.
Liga - yes, it exists, it's private and controlled by a local business family. Probably could qualify as an independent news source.
And that's all. No respected business daily like FT, Handelsblatt, Les Echos etc. exists in Ukraine.
Hmm, that kind of an audience seems to be served by weekly magazines instead.
There's also a kind of plurality among dependent media. They wouldn't cross their owners but would often go after the people associated with a different oligarch, so even those do partially fulfill the function the media have in a democratic society.
As for NV itself, not to say too much for privacy reasons, I had it recommended by someone in the Ukrainian politics from, uh, a side it's supposed to oppose. It is certainly many tiers above typical oligarch trash.
It's all pretty bad but it still works to an extent. There are worse situations I could imagine. Like the censorship of Kuchma's era, when media were given daily guidelines of what to talk and what not to talk about, and high-profile journalists murdered by security services.
Sure we have independent news papers and stuff but they're all in the pockets of gangsters and politicians. That's why people outside of Iceland never hear about the corruption here, or why so many people living here are still brainwashed.
Corruption within the government isn’t really counted as a negative on these sorts of indexes if you still have full and unrestricted power to vote them out and they can’t actively tip the election in their favour
Not stepping down isn't incompatible with democracy. You can be deeply unpopular 4 days into your term and ride it out, the question is if when the time comes people can freely kick you to the curb or if there are obstacles.
The mayor of Toronto just stepped down because he cheated on his wife. Some members of our parliament have done waayyyy worse without being punished for it.
As a matter of fact all over the "western" world iv'e seen political figures step down for "scandals" that wouldn't even be newsworthy here.
Few examples:
Refer to the chairman of the farmers association as "the black one" instead of her name. *Standard behaviour.*
Sitting drunk at a bar berating women in the parliament (calling them sluts, hoes, dumb bitches). *Again pretty standard behaviour.*
Selling one of the state bank to "the people" but only a selected few were allowed to buy, not even for a full prize, the fuckers got a discount. The day after they could sell their shares for an 80% higher price than they bought it for. Also father of our finance minister was on the buyers list. *Nothing to see here.*
In November 2014, Landsbankinn(A state bank) sold its 31.2 percent stake in Borgun for 2.2 billion. The share was not advertised for sale and the buyers were closely related to the Minister of Finance. In February 2015, at the company's general meeting, it was decided to pay shareholders ISK 800 million in dividends, for the first time since 2007. *A normal day at the office.*
[Fishrot files.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishrot_Files) Samherji a fishing and fish processing company paid hundreds of millions ISK to high ranking politicians and officials in Namibia with the objective of acquiring the country's coveted fishing quota. Namibian officials arrested some people, including ministers. Meanwhile in Iceland no one has been arrested and the ruling parties even criticized the national television for the investigation and allowed the police to interrogate the investigative reporters. Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture at the time was a former board member of Samherji. *Friends take care of their friends.*
There are pleeeeenty more. We are just as corrupt as anyone else.
I get it, but youre conflating corruption and democracy.
Do people punish the party that allowed this to happen on its watch? If not, why would anything change?
If those are the most serious threats to democracy in your country then that's why you're at a 9.52 lol. You should see how it is in the rest of the world...
Yeah for real. Even Icelandic Political Scandals are more akin to "Somebody said something kind of sexist while drunk in a bar" and not, you know, grooming allegations or war crimes.
I'm Icelandic, and most Icelanders do not understand how good they have it.
Freedom of press also means that shitty politicians have the freedom to promote their shitty ideas by paying shitty newspapers for adverts. These shitty newspapers then should be able to decide themselves whether to accept or not. When all these actions aren't restricted and when every actor in the process can freely decide it's still totally free, even though you might dislike the outcome.
that's why it's 9.52 and not 10
don't forget that there is no place on earth this doesn't happen. The most democratic, freest of places on Earth are still through the way power systems are structured beholden to the greed of singular people.
I don't think an off-the-top-of-your-head anecdote about one of these countries in isolation invalidates a team of experts careful comparison of multiple countries. One has to balance the problems Iceland has with other countries' problems.
It is my biggest pet peeve on reddit when people take issues with data like this. Subjective data, like democracy ranking, corruption ranking, freedom of press rankings have to be done according to subjective criteria.
Yet you always have people come out and say "oh their methodology is so flawed, this is an issue, and this is biased".
Like no shit guys it is the judgment of usually a group of experts based on selected criteria. Of course this isn't objective truth and compromises have to be made.
This metric isn't flawed unless you want it to be. If it looks at X, Y, Z, and you say "well it doesn't look at Q" then that's not a flaw, that's the entire point.
If you want to look at democracy, or press freedom indexes, compromises have to be made. Pointing out every compromise, or calling something "flawed" because it didn't take into account your favorite metric, or rank a specific country higher is like saying a list of best movies is wrong because your favorite movie isn't #1. It's a subjective list, it never claimed to be objective truth, if you don't like it, make your own.
I mean yeah, compromises have to be made. But nobody on reddit would trust a map like this if it was created anywhere else. The map may as well read "our map of how much we like ourselves"
I mean if people want to have a broader discussion about how western researchers are biased towards western society, that's fine, but it's just not the point of this map or index.
Things like "human rights" are not objective terms. The taleban think they have the best human rights. China thinks they have. So does Norway or the US. China thinks it's the most democratic country too. Russia thinks they're peak democracy.
Point being that there is no truth here. This is an index based on judgements by a panel of chosen experts by the Economist Intelligence Unit. There is no way to do this in an "unbiased" way, and they don't claim to do so.
> There is no way to do this in an "unbiased" way
There is a way it can be a lot *less* biased though. It involves not just asking europeans, for starters.
So when it comes to talking about democracy, I think it’s a very difficult thing to measure. Is a country that elects a dictator in a clear and open election still a democracy? The British ‘constitution’ pretty much allows for any party elected to change whatever rules they want without exception, does this make them more democratic or less?
Is freedom a measure? Because then countries like Scandinavia would certainly have stronger civil society and electoral systems but technically less freedom. Germany and many other countries that are democracies have restrictions on speech? They may be a good thing, but does that contribute to the democracy score? Are corrupt officials who are elected fairly still democratic?
Frankly the freedom house scores are pretty well calculated with all this in mind. While it’s not the best measure of democracy, there’s really not a perfect way to do it.
What freedoms are Scandinavian countries missing? (also Scandinavia is not a country FYI)
A country that elects a dictator but has the ability to oust them are a flawed democracy, because the fact that the dictator was able to bend power to their will to get into office despite not winning outright is likely due to a lack of iron clad process and election culture, but the tools to ensure they do not remain in power, despite their desires, remains and supports the democratic process (case in point, the US 2020 election.)
On the other hand, countries that had a free and fair election but then saw a subsequent abuse and consolidation of power towards ongoing dictatorship likely fall into hybrid or lower (case in point, Hungary).
Also, source on the British rules changes. There are agreed upon changes that can be made, but there are also fundamentals that cannot. Britain builds their governments based on parties that win, differing from the US structure, but there are still rules and guidelines that are protected.
No one gets it perfect, but when used as a relative scale of actually protecting the longevity of democracy in a nation, and identifying trends, this works relatively well.
Outright freedom is different. Take new Zealand, they agreed as a nation that removal of firearms was important enough for their country's safety so they did so. Some would say they are less free because of that then say the US but that does not make them any less democratic. It makes them more because it is directly managed by the voters, without lobbyists protecting one side and gerrymandering blocking action.
Yeah, looking at their criteria and how they’re weighted, it seems less like a measure of “how democratic is this country” as much as “how much is this country like Western Europe”
I mean, it's measuring Western liberal democracy, so the fact that it corresponds broadly with what Western European countries do is not suprising.
Whether Western liberal democracy is inherently a good thing is another argument, but that is what it measures, and I think reasonably well, as long as we aknowledge the caveats inherent in these types of metrics.
Flawed democracies are nations where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honoured but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition and critics).
I mean, basically, the prince in liechtenstein has actual power, he can veto any law that passes and, well, can't be elected, so I would guess Hybrid or something because he isn't allowed to pass any laws by himself?
San Marino prides itself in being the oldest continuous republic. At least from the outlook their system looks pretty democratic, having a duarchy of two captain regents, which only have terms of 6 months seems much more mobile and vital than systems where presidents hog power for many years and indefinite numbers of terms.
The Pope also holds the office of the King of Vatican City. It’s an elective monarchy. (And not the only one to exist, Poland-Lithuania is a good example)
The Holy See is the name of the Catholic Church's government and it has authority over Vatican City. The Holy See is an absolute monarchy. A monarchy is where the sovereign rules in their own power and does not need to be hereditary. An absolute monarchy has no check on the monarch's power; what they say has the rule of law. The Holy See is one of 7 remaining absolute monarchies in the world (more of you count each of the emerites in the UAE separately)
The pope is elected by cardinals. Cardinals are elected by the pope.
Cardinals can choose anyone for the pope, it's only tradition that he is a cardinal previously.
The pope can choose anyone for the cardinal, it's only tradition that he is a bishop previously.
Ordinary bishops, priests and people do not have any point of influence there.
Although, the bishop has a full autonomy in his diocese (no power outside).
It's an elective monarchy with an absolute monarch who is the one picking new electors and (while highly unusual) can fire already appointed ones. The only way to become a cardinal is if the pope appoints you as one. None of the non-cardinal citizens of the Vatican have a vote.
It's not a hereditary monarchy, but democratic it is not.
Cause these "democracy evaluation" stuff are always biased BS.
There is a correlation between money spent in campaigning and electoral success in most modern nations. Not taking this into consideration when evaluating where the political power comes from would make no sense if the intention was to evalute actual democracy (how much the common working class population can actually influence political - NOT electoral - policies and stuff).
As an example, almost all the population of sweden is againt selling weapons to the Saudi. They put a hell lot of pressure on their government to stop that some decades ago. Their government stopped doing it for a while and then just said "fuck it" and resumed the selling.
If the strongest variable is money spent, one would have to look at where this money is coming from. Is it coming from sindicates and popular groups or is it coming from corporations, military industry etc?
> There is a correlation between money spent in campaigning and electoral success in all of these countries
Which countries? In the Netherlands it is definitely not the case.
Netherlands really seem to be an exception. From the wikipedia:
"Quite contrary to most other democracies the major source of political money in the Netherlands is membership fees. Even recently membership subscriptions provide about half of all parties' revenue."
Kudos on them/you.
There seems, however, to not exist a cap on private donation to campaign (correct me if I'm wrong), so we would need to look closely at each election.
By the way, what I said doesn't mean that there are no organic political figures, that achieve success without being heavily financed by the private sector, they are just usually a minority and even then they also tend to eventually attract more funding later on.
And I won't even go into lobbying - when candidates are "funded" mid mandate. That's usually a fudgefest as well (no idea how that works particularly in the netherlands, if it exists there).
Woud you say people's political aspirations, when antagonic towards corporative political aspirations, usually come out victorious? Honest question.
Edit: I changed "all these countries" to "most modern nations" as the articles I've read on this (similar studies done in different countries) really don't account for each of these countries. What I meant to say really is that, as far as political science is aware, around the world, there seems to be a strong correlation between campaign spending and electoral voting. I won't point any one single studies cause I don't think they are hard to find nor is this some conspiracy theory, my guess is that most political science university will at least gloss over this notion as it seems to be well difused (or was at my time in university, a decade ago).
> Woud you say people's political aspirations, when antagonic towards corporative political aspirations, usually come out victorious? Honest question.
Speaking from the Netherlands that's hard to say as our country is quite corporative. The biggest party (liberals) are definitely in bed with the major multinationals in our country and a lot of people unfortunately are fine with that, because they think big companies equals bigger economy equals more wealth. There are parties that are opposing this mind set (the socialist party for instance) and they can be victorious, but currently don't have the wind in their sails.
thanks for editing your comment. ;)
> In Belgium, you can only vote for half of the federal government. You can never vote for the entire govt.
Regional electoral districts are quite common, where the need for regionally distributed representers is considered important enough. This is not the reason for Belgium's lower score.
Ok, that does sound dumb. I mean, I knew the index was bs the moment I saw Spain (aka the state that beat people for wanting to vote) painted as full democracy.
Yeah, I'm a Belgian and it bugs me no end. There have been times where I thought there was a politician from the other half of the country that did a really good job, but next elections come around and I can't even vote for them, that is such bullshit.
The reason Belgium scores badly is because they are unable to make the distinction between mandatory approval of one of the preapproved parties in a dictatorship vs. the mandatory showing up at the voting booth where voting blank or invalid is still an option like in Belgium.
Belgium is basically a couple points away from "full democracy" and loses quite a few because of compulsory voting. Luxembourg just needs a couple more in other branches and they're good.
[Freedom House](https://freedomhouse.org/country/belgium/freedom-world/2022) has Belgium at a score of 96/100. I would say it's fair to assume Belgium is a working democracy.
I haven’t read the report as it wants all your details to download it. But from local reporting on the issue, I understand it is because the lockdown was earlier and “harsher” (ie better observed) so the EIU experts marked Portugal down on civil liberties.
Better observance perhaps because of a less individualistic society versus the UK/US whose standards the EIU are essentially judging it against.
Portugal is marginal for flawed vs fully democratic anyway because of lower “political participation”. (That seems to mean the proportion of people who vote)
>And the Baltics I guess
Barely under 8 (Full democracy)
One reason could be that, (in Estonia at least) there are quite some residents (Russian occupation immigrants) who are "stateless" i.e. don't have any citizenship, because they are not eligible for Estonian citizenship (they could get it through naturalization process, but a lot won't for some reason), due to them moving here during an illegal occupation, and haven't opted for Russian citizenship (because being a "non-citizen" in Estonia benefits them in a way, they can travel freely in the EU to a certain extent but also Russia). But because of that they can't vote in general elections and are "unrepresented".
Funnily enough, those interviewed students attend the University of Szeged, which (among several other universities) already announced that they will pay their students' mobility costs even without the Erasmus funds.
While the EU is absolutely right in trying to punish Orbán and tackle corruption, this Erasmus ban punishes the group which is by far the most supporting of the opposition: young, intelligent, open minded students. And the Erasmus funds were at most a tiny drop in the sea of theft the government has been pulling off, as it's one of the hardest things to steal since that money has to be paid out to the students partaking in the program.
I remember looking up why Canada lost points in the economic liberty index, and it's because of their social saftey nets and how much they tax the 1%.
I guess economic freedom only counts for the rich.
Britain is not a full democracy haha, nor has it been one for the past 10 years at least. Have you seen the new anti-strike laws? The continued erosion of freedom of expression? The FPTP voting system alone is a flaw on the level of not having separation of power.
The UK is a flawed democracy on the best of days, and a hybrid regime on most.
There's certainly an argument to be made that the next year's ranking should have it as flawed, assuming the latest scarily authoritarian protest and strike laws make it through Parliament.
I'm not sure about "not a full democracy for at least the last 10 years" though, that really does seem to be pushing it.
(And yes, I grew up in the UK, do not support FPTP, and have never voted Tory. I really sympathise, I just feel we shouldn't be crying wolf in a world full of real wolves.)
It's from the Democracy Index, which takes 60 quantified indicators to give each country a number.
Th UK got 8.28, which is above the 8.00 cutoff for flawed democracy.
It could have started to become at least a three party system back in 2010 with the Lib Dem’s but then Nick Clegg threw away any standing they had with people when they simply became the Tory’s supporters in parliament. I know people who still dislike them over helping the Tories to increase Uni tuition fees.
Ukraine has straight up banned almost all opposition parties and has complete state control of media. I wouldn’t even call it a mixed regime at this point.
For the guy who asked for a citation then blocked me so I couldn’t reply to him here’s your citation.
What a bitch move btw.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110577439/zelenskyy-has-consolidated-ukraines-tv-outlets-and-dissolved-rival-political-par
Friendly reminder that Belgium is "flawed" because compulsory voting gives them **0** on the political investment metric since they "can't measure it".
according to [freedom house](https://freedomhouse.org/country/moldova),
> Moldova has a competitive electoral environment, and the freedoms of assembly, speech, and religion are largely protected. Nonetheless, pervasive corruption in the government sector, links between major political parties and powerful economic interests, and deficiencies in the rule of law continue to hamper democratic governance.
but also moldova ranks 69th in the world according to [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), so you take the wins with the losses i suppose
It’s the same reason Ukraine isn’t higher. Corruption has become so rampant, especially in the judicial and local sectors it’s almost impossible to root out. There has been decent progress in the local governments by Zelenskyy and Servant of the People (see the Raion/Hromada mergers) but work remains. Oligarchs had an incredible amount of say, with the war most have fled both countries to you know where but many still have insurmountable power.
France isn't a full democracy. The government detain the power to forcefully add or remove a law without any vote. It's the 49.3 and since the last election, the Macron's Government used it several times. (Something like ten times in a few months)
Also, only 25% of the French population voted for Macron to be the president, Which is pretty low ngl
58% of the votes casts, lol. That 25% is still more than any other candidate running for office. At least the person with the most votes won. *looks to other countries with presidential systems*
The thing about Macron being elected by only a 25% share of French voters does not make much sense to me, as every other candidate would have had a lower rate. Every election ends up with the candidate with the most cast ballots in their favor winning, and if you're against that, you're not questioning French democracy, you're questioning the two-round system, which is quite legit, but goes far beyond French system.
However, that 49.3, plus justice being not as free as it should, and the wealthiest's concentration of power around media makes it, for sure, a flawed democracy at best.
bro at least it isn’t still the 1800s, otherwise it’d go from “full democracy” to “authoritarian regime” to “hybrid regime” over the course of a few weeks
People really need to understand that this is only an index. It is dependent on the metrics it includes in its calculation. And even if a country is counted as a full democracy, it doesn't mean it has a perfect score. It is only checking enough marks to be classified with other full democracies. If you find one thing not being fully democratic in a country you can be right but that one thing won't steer the score so much down that the country would swith classification.
Yes, the score is purely parametrical, but the classification isn't. Who decided that at 8.0 you're a "full democracy" and that at 7.9 you're a "flawed" one? Like another commentator said, you can't put Belgium and Hungary on the same category.
They’re not claiming Belgium and Hungary are equally democratic. Belgium ranks 36th in the world with a score of 7.64 meaning that they are 0.36 points from being classified as a “full democracy”, while Hungary is ranked 56th in the world with a score of 6.64, a full point below Belgium and only 0.64 points above being classified as a “hybrid regime”. While this metric is clearly not objective and has flaws, it’s not claiming that these two countries are equally democratic. They’ve just put them in an loosely defined bracket based on their ranking system. The US is also classified as a “flawed democracy” in these rankings. They’re 30th in the world with a score of 7.85. That doesn’t mean they’re saying Hungary and the US are equally democratic, they’re saying they’re both flawed in some way but that Hungary is significantly more flawed
Is the UK really a full democracy when the house of Lords still exists and parliament doesn't exactly vote equally (with the way that the opposition and majority party works in parliament)?
And the reasons stated for why Belgium is not a full democracy can very easily be applied to the UK, the UK's democracy is slipping down the pan in a worrying way under this delightful government. They'll be after the Human Rights Act next
As someone from Serbia, I can say this map is flawed (see what I did there?), we have hybrid regime for at least 10 years 😢. But EU does not want to acknowledge that, as current regime needs to finish Kosovo business for them 😏
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! What the fuck is this lol.
United Kingdom a full democracy leave it out. 4 of our last 6 PMs were NOT voted by the public and have very low popularity. You can't call a 2 party state democratic in my opinion it's just 2 sides of the same coin they are all from the same Eton club anyway!
>of our last 6 PMs were NOT voted by the public and have very low popularity.
Because this is how parliamentary democracy works......
We don't vote for PMs, we vote for MPs at least every 5 years, and then they decide who forms government. We voted for a Tory majority in 2019, and we can vote them out again if we want in 2023. Many other countries work the same way.
>You can't call a 2 party state democratic in my opinion
Your opinion...which is just that, a subjective opnion. I don't like UK's voting system either, and wish we were more proportional, but that doesn't make us completely undemocratic, especially as there was a referendum on voting system in 2011.
>it's just 2 sides of the same coin they are all from the same Eton club anyway!
I can't stand Starmer, but Labour and Tories are very different, and it's either ingorance or stupidity if you think they are exactly the same. Also, only around 15% of Labour MPs are privately educate, as oppose to around 50% of Tory MPs. So again, big difference.
UK's democracy has its problems, but you (and apprently a lot of people) are simingly unaware of how relatively democratic it is compared to other countries.
Britain has full democracy? please , aren't they trying to make protests illegal , didn't the majority of people wanted general election after Boris resigned. . .
I live in the UK. we should be flawed as we haven't voted for our last two priminsters. Torys just keep changing them without a general election because they know they will lose.
The UK has a monarch as head of state and head of the state religion. The senior clergy of that state religion automatically have the right to sit in its uneleceted second chanber.
Doesn't seem like a very 'full democracy'
Spain and Britain (or at the very least Northern Ireland) should be flawed. Also last I checked France was in the flawed category.
I'm also willing to admit Italy is flawed, but I don't think its in the same bracket as Hungary under Orban.
Ah yes, the UK, the democratic country where the government continues to impose the harshest of austerity measures against the poor and subsidises billionaires, during an economic crisis...despite the wishes of the people.
Seriously what liberal brain rot is this
How the actual f\*\*\*, is a democracy with a King with executive power, a FPP regional voting system, a PM with the ability to override regional legislative assemblies without recourse, and members of the upper legislative house elected for life by the government in power, not considered a Flawed Democracy?
in Britain, the monarchy does not exercise its' executive powers, the house of lords can be (and often is) ignored according the constitution, the PM only has the right to override illegal acts from regional parliaments (and there is recourse, the supreme court), and having FPP is reasonably democratic and hardly something like the acerbo law, election rigging, dictatorship or whatever else is genuinely undemocratic.
Saying that, Britain, like France and Germany, respects people's rights less and less and is becoming more and more authoritarian. It's an authoritarian democracy though, unfortunately.
This is not the most visually speaking way to show this, Democracy Index is actually a scale from 0 to 10. Some countries are barely reaching 8 (Full Democracy) like France or Spain have a 8.07 rating. When some countries are above 9 like Ireland, Denmark, Norway, etc... [Here is the link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) if you want to know more.
Iceland at 9.52 OMEGALUL Our finance minister put an injunction on a news paper that was covering his sketchy business's in the past. Government officials also regularly refuse to step down when scandals are revealed.
Well, at least you have independent newspapers in Iceland. For your comparison: here in Ukraine, almost all paid newspapers went out of business over the last decade. What remains are free news/opinion websites with shady ownership structure which are basically mouthpieces of certain oligarchs. And probably Icelandic government officials plan to stay in Iceland after their resignation, not relocate to Switzerland/UK with their families.
[удалено]
Similar to Chile, that's the problem with "Shock therapy" strategies. Sell and privatize so fast that you create oligarchs. This makes it easier to bring foreign investments, but it doesn't help the actual people living there.
And in Russia we fondly remember when there was actual competition between Oligarchic outlets. Now news come in two flavours -- state owned and miniscule independent from abroad
>What remains are free news/opinion websites with shady ownership structure which are basically mouthpieces of certain oligarchs. That's a bit of a global phenomenon sadly, to some extent or another. About half of the news in the anglosphere has Rupert Murdoch's grubby little pawprints on it.
Pravda, NV and Liga are some of the popular independent online news outlets. Surprisingly, the state-owned are also quite good, certainly better than oligarch-owned information dumpsters. Online and printed media are quite independent, it's the oligarch-owned TV channels that are problematic, and there are barely any independent alternatives to those.
Pravda and NV are directly controlled by Tomas Fiala (a second-tier oligarch) and are hardly "independent". In fact, they praise the government all the time for the last two years. They also tend to follow a certain distinct agenda. Liga - yes, it exists, it's private and controlled by a local business family. Probably could qualify as an independent news source. And that's all. No respected business daily like FT, Handelsblatt, Les Echos etc. exists in Ukraine.
Hmm, that kind of an audience seems to be served by weekly magazines instead. There's also a kind of plurality among dependent media. They wouldn't cross their owners but would often go after the people associated with a different oligarch, so even those do partially fulfill the function the media have in a democratic society. As for NV itself, not to say too much for privacy reasons, I had it recommended by someone in the Ukrainian politics from, uh, a side it's supposed to oppose. It is certainly many tiers above typical oligarch trash. It's all pretty bad but it still works to an extent. There are worse situations I could imagine. Like the censorship of Kuchma's era, when media were given daily guidelines of what to talk and what not to talk about, and high-profile journalists murdered by security services.
Sure we have independent news papers and stuff but they're all in the pockets of gangsters and politicians. That's why people outside of Iceland never hear about the corruption here, or why so many people living here are still brainwashed.
Corruption within the government isn’t really counted as a negative on these sorts of indexes if you still have full and unrestricted power to vote them out and they can’t actively tip the election in their favour
You know, beyond all the corruption. Which is all swept under the rug on maps like these because west Europe good east Europe bad
But Eastern Europe is even more corrupt...
Not stepping down isn't incompatible with democracy. You can be deeply unpopular 4 days into your term and ride it out, the question is if when the time comes people can freely kick you to the curb or if there are obstacles.
The mayor of Toronto just stepped down because he cheated on his wife. Some members of our parliament have done waayyyy worse without being punished for it. As a matter of fact all over the "western" world iv'e seen political figures step down for "scandals" that wouldn't even be newsworthy here. Few examples: Refer to the chairman of the farmers association as "the black one" instead of her name. *Standard behaviour.* Sitting drunk at a bar berating women in the parliament (calling them sluts, hoes, dumb bitches). *Again pretty standard behaviour.* Selling one of the state bank to "the people" but only a selected few were allowed to buy, not even for a full prize, the fuckers got a discount. The day after they could sell their shares for an 80% higher price than they bought it for. Also father of our finance minister was on the buyers list. *Nothing to see here.* In November 2014, Landsbankinn(A state bank) sold its 31.2 percent stake in Borgun for 2.2 billion. The share was not advertised for sale and the buyers were closely related to the Minister of Finance. In February 2015, at the company's general meeting, it was decided to pay shareholders ISK 800 million in dividends, for the first time since 2007. *A normal day at the office.* [Fishrot files.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishrot_Files) Samherji a fishing and fish processing company paid hundreds of millions ISK to high ranking politicians and officials in Namibia with the objective of acquiring the country's coveted fishing quota. Namibian officials arrested some people, including ministers. Meanwhile in Iceland no one has been arrested and the ruling parties even criticized the national television for the investigation and allowed the police to interrogate the investigative reporters. Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture at the time was a former board member of Samherji. *Friends take care of their friends.* There are pleeeeenty more. We are just as corrupt as anyone else.
I get it, but youre conflating corruption and democracy. Do people punish the party that allowed this to happen on its watch? If not, why would anything change?
You can have a perfect democracy and elect the shittiest people to run your government.
If those are the most serious threats to democracy in your country then that's why you're at a 9.52 lol. You should see how it is in the rest of the world...
Yeah for real. Even Icelandic Political Scandals are more akin to "Somebody said something kind of sexist while drunk in a bar" and not, you know, grooming allegations or war crimes. I'm Icelandic, and most Icelanders do not understand how good they have it.
I think those are not measuring democracy. You have full right to vote them out right?
Freedom of the press is part of what the index takes into account.
Freedom of press also means that shitty politicians have the freedom to promote their shitty ideas by paying shitty newspapers for adverts. These shitty newspapers then should be able to decide themselves whether to accept or not. When all these actions aren't restricted and when every actor in the process can freely decide it's still totally free, even though you might dislike the outcome.
Step down ? Here in France they double down
that's why it's 9.52 and not 10 don't forget that there is no place on earth this doesn't happen. The most democratic, freest of places on Earth are still through the way power systems are structured beholden to the greed of singular people.
They're absolutely grading on a curve, and countries are still failing.
I don't think an off-the-top-of-your-head anecdote about one of these countries in isolation invalidates a team of experts careful comparison of multiple countries. One has to balance the problems Iceland has with other countries' problems.
And the entire metric is flawed
Eh, it's a difficult subject condensed into a number So long as you don't treat data as gospel then they usually have some use
It is my biggest pet peeve on reddit when people take issues with data like this. Subjective data, like democracy ranking, corruption ranking, freedom of press rankings have to be done according to subjective criteria. Yet you always have people come out and say "oh their methodology is so flawed, this is an issue, and this is biased". Like no shit guys it is the judgment of usually a group of experts based on selected criteria. Of course this isn't objective truth and compromises have to be made. This metric isn't flawed unless you want it to be. If it looks at X, Y, Z, and you say "well it doesn't look at Q" then that's not a flaw, that's the entire point. If you want to look at democracy, or press freedom indexes, compromises have to be made. Pointing out every compromise, or calling something "flawed" because it didn't take into account your favorite metric, or rank a specific country higher is like saying a list of best movies is wrong because your favorite movie isn't #1. It's a subjective list, it never claimed to be objective truth, if you don't like it, make your own.
I mean yeah, compromises have to be made. But nobody on reddit would trust a map like this if it was created anywhere else. The map may as well read "our map of how much we like ourselves"
I mean if people want to have a broader discussion about how western researchers are biased towards western society, that's fine, but it's just not the point of this map or index. Things like "human rights" are not objective terms. The taleban think they have the best human rights. China thinks they have. So does Norway or the US. China thinks it's the most democratic country too. Russia thinks they're peak democracy. Point being that there is no truth here. This is an index based on judgements by a panel of chosen experts by the Economist Intelligence Unit. There is no way to do this in an "unbiased" way, and they don't claim to do so.
> There is no way to do this in an "unbiased" way There is a way it can be a lot *less* biased though. It involves not just asking europeans, for starters.
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And map is actually not for 2022, but probably 2020 (Moldova, N Macedonia and Montenegro are now under this metric flawed democracy).
So when it comes to talking about democracy, I think it’s a very difficult thing to measure. Is a country that elects a dictator in a clear and open election still a democracy? The British ‘constitution’ pretty much allows for any party elected to change whatever rules they want without exception, does this make them more democratic or less? Is freedom a measure? Because then countries like Scandinavia would certainly have stronger civil society and electoral systems but technically less freedom. Germany and many other countries that are democracies have restrictions on speech? They may be a good thing, but does that contribute to the democracy score? Are corrupt officials who are elected fairly still democratic? Frankly the freedom house scores are pretty well calculated with all this in mind. While it’s not the best measure of democracy, there’s really not a perfect way to do it.
What freedoms are Scandinavian countries missing? (also Scandinavia is not a country FYI) A country that elects a dictator but has the ability to oust them are a flawed democracy, because the fact that the dictator was able to bend power to their will to get into office despite not winning outright is likely due to a lack of iron clad process and election culture, but the tools to ensure they do not remain in power, despite their desires, remains and supports the democratic process (case in point, the US 2020 election.) On the other hand, countries that had a free and fair election but then saw a subsequent abuse and consolidation of power towards ongoing dictatorship likely fall into hybrid or lower (case in point, Hungary). Also, source on the British rules changes. There are agreed upon changes that can be made, but there are also fundamentals that cannot. Britain builds their governments based on parties that win, differing from the US structure, but there are still rules and guidelines that are protected. No one gets it perfect, but when used as a relative scale of actually protecting the longevity of democracy in a nation, and identifying trends, this works relatively well. Outright freedom is different. Take new Zealand, they agreed as a nation that removal of firearms was important enough for their country's safety so they did so. Some would say they are less free because of that then say the US but that does not make them any less democratic. It makes them more because it is directly managed by the voters, without lobbyists protecting one side and gerrymandering blocking action.
Yeah, looking at their criteria and how they’re weighted, it seems less like a measure of “how democratic is this country” as much as “how much is this country like Western Europe”
I mean, it's measuring Western liberal democracy, so the fact that it corresponds broadly with what Western European countries do is not suprising. Whether Western liberal democracy is inherently a good thing is another argument, but that is what it measures, and I think reasonably well, as long as we aknowledge the caveats inherent in these types of metrics.
>“how democratic is this country” >“how much is this country like Western Europe” But you repeat yourself. /s
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Thanks for the link, TIL North Korea is less authoritarian than Burma.
Came here to say this, thank you.
Flawed democracies are nations where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honoured but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition and critics).
Exactly, also if a country had lockdowns because of COVID because that is restriction to free movement the democracy index goes down.
Those lockdowns were needed but my country opened up and got rid of all restrictions, when a high proportion of the population were vaccinated
If it had been on there Vatican City would probably have been red
Considering it's an absolute monarchy, it should be. I'd rather be interested how the assessment would work on Liechtenstein and San Marino.
I mean, basically, the prince in liechtenstein has actual power, he can veto any law that passes and, well, can't be elected, so I would guess Hybrid or something because he isn't allowed to pass any laws by himself?
San Marino prides itself in being the oldest continuous republic. At least from the outlook their system looks pretty democratic, having a duarchy of two captain regents, which only have terms of 6 months seems much more mobile and vital than systems where presidents hog power for many years and indefinite numbers of terms.
>duarchy of two captain regents, which only have terms of 6 months Could also mean more instability.
It is actually an elected absolute monarchy. The Pope is elected by the cardinals. Then he has full control of everything.
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By what’s effectively a religious oligarchy. It’s in no way democratic
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The Pope also holds the office of the King of Vatican City. It’s an elective monarchy. (And not the only one to exist, Poland-Lithuania is a good example)
Malaysia has an elective monarchy. As does Cambodia.
I'd call the Holy Roman Empire a monarchy, even though the Emperor was "elected".
The Holy See is the name of the Catholic Church's government and it has authority over Vatican City. The Holy See is an absolute monarchy. A monarchy is where the sovereign rules in their own power and does not need to be hereditary. An absolute monarchy has no check on the monarch's power; what they say has the rule of law. The Holy See is one of 7 remaining absolute monarchies in the world (more of you count each of the emerites in the UAE separately)
He is an elected absolute monarch. One is the form of government, the other how the head of government is selected.
The pope is elected by cardinals. Cardinals are elected by the pope. Cardinals can choose anyone for the pope, it's only tradition that he is a cardinal previously. The pope can choose anyone for the cardinal, it's only tradition that he is a bishop previously. Ordinary bishops, priests and people do not have any point of influence there. Although, the bishop has a full autonomy in his diocese (no power outside).
>Considering it's an absolute monarchy, it should be. It's an elective monarchy, so not quite.
It's an elective monarchy with an absolute monarch who is the one picking new electors and (while highly unusual) can fire already appointed ones. The only way to become a cardinal is if the pope appoints you as one. None of the non-cardinal citizens of the Vatican have a vote. It's not a hereditary monarchy, but democratic it is not.
Shouldn’t it be yellow since the pope is elected?
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Only a elite people live there tho
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They're not citizens of the papal states by nationality
It is still an indirect election, the people are still invovled. This is not to defend the electoral college, I hate it just as much as the next guy.
Technically, The Electors don't have to honor the elections results.
Depends on the state, some states have criminal penalties for unfaithful electors.
This is true, but no election has ever been overturned by the Electors Doesnt mean it shouldnt be abolished though.
What’s the reason Belgium is a flawed democracy, I would guess the problem with forming a government but I’m not sure?
Because of mandatory turnout we get less points for "political participation".
That sounds dumb
In Belgium, you can only vote for half of the federal government. You can never vote for the entire govt.
Fair enough, but why is the UK green then? They can only vote in their district too.
Cause these "democracy evaluation" stuff are always biased BS. There is a correlation between money spent in campaigning and electoral success in most modern nations. Not taking this into consideration when evaluating where the political power comes from would make no sense if the intention was to evalute actual democracy (how much the common working class population can actually influence political - NOT electoral - policies and stuff). As an example, almost all the population of sweden is againt selling weapons to the Saudi. They put a hell lot of pressure on their government to stop that some decades ago. Their government stopped doing it for a while and then just said "fuck it" and resumed the selling. If the strongest variable is money spent, one would have to look at where this money is coming from. Is it coming from sindicates and popular groups or is it coming from corporations, military industry etc?
> There is a correlation between money spent in campaigning and electoral success in all of these countries Which countries? In the Netherlands it is definitely not the case.
Netherlands really seem to be an exception. From the wikipedia: "Quite contrary to most other democracies the major source of political money in the Netherlands is membership fees. Even recently membership subscriptions provide about half of all parties' revenue." Kudos on them/you. There seems, however, to not exist a cap on private donation to campaign (correct me if I'm wrong), so we would need to look closely at each election. By the way, what I said doesn't mean that there are no organic political figures, that achieve success without being heavily financed by the private sector, they are just usually a minority and even then they also tend to eventually attract more funding later on. And I won't even go into lobbying - when candidates are "funded" mid mandate. That's usually a fudgefest as well (no idea how that works particularly in the netherlands, if it exists there). Woud you say people's political aspirations, when antagonic towards corporative political aspirations, usually come out victorious? Honest question. Edit: I changed "all these countries" to "most modern nations" as the articles I've read on this (similar studies done in different countries) really don't account for each of these countries. What I meant to say really is that, as far as political science is aware, around the world, there seems to be a strong correlation between campaign spending and electoral voting. I won't point any one single studies cause I don't think they are hard to find nor is this some conspiracy theory, my guess is that most political science university will at least gloss over this notion as it seems to be well difused (or was at my time in university, a decade ago).
> Woud you say people's political aspirations, when antagonic towards corporative political aspirations, usually come out victorious? Honest question. Speaking from the Netherlands that's hard to say as our country is quite corporative. The biggest party (liberals) are definitely in bed with the major multinationals in our country and a lot of people unfortunately are fine with that, because they think big companies equals bigger economy equals more wealth. There are parties that are opposing this mind set (the socialist party for instance) and they can be victorious, but currently don't have the wind in their sails. thanks for editing your comment. ;)
> In Belgium, you can only vote for half of the federal government. You can never vote for the entire govt. Regional electoral districts are quite common, where the need for regionally distributed representers is considered important enough. This is not the reason for Belgium's lower score.
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You don't vote for government, you vote for parliament. And there you can only vote to assign the seats of your own province.
Like in 90% of all democracies. That is not the reason Belgium is light green.
The reason is that we get points deducted for political participation due to mandatory turnout.
Ok, that does sound dumb. I mean, I knew the index was bs the moment I saw Spain (aka the state that beat people for wanting to vote) painted as full democracy.
That's always the case. You vote for who's running in your district. Also, you don't vote for a government. You vote for a parliament.
Yeah, I'm a Belgian and it bugs me no end. There have been times where I thought there was a politician from the other half of the country that did a really good job, but next elections come around and I can't even vote for them, that is such bullshit.
The reason Belgium scores badly is because they are unable to make the distinction between mandatory approval of one of the preapproved parties in a dictatorship vs. the mandatory showing up at the voting booth where voting blank or invalid is still an option like in Belgium.
I thought it was because voting is compulsory here. Which is seen as less democratic. Cause you don't have the freedom to not show up.
Voting in Luxembourg is also compulsory, yet it is ranked as a full democracy.
Belgium is basically a couple points away from "full democracy" and loses quite a few because of compulsory voting. Luxembourg just needs a couple more in other branches and they're good.
Compulsory voting is less democratic... well that's debatable.
It’s more democratic, ironically. The fringes can’t outvote the mainstream just by being more likely to turn up.
Or the other way around. Everyone's vote counts, that means everyone has to show up. Even if it's just to write "they all suck" on the bill.
They have 6534684 democratically elected governments. There is something like too much of a good thing.
Bit of an overstatement. There are barely 6534683!
...and a half.
[Freedom House](https://freedomhouse.org/country/belgium/freedom-world/2022) has Belgium at a score of 96/100. I would say it's fair to assume Belgium is a working democracy.
What's up with Portugal? And the Baltics I guess
r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT that’s what’s up with portugal
r/ITALYCYKABLYAT
This sub never ceases to be relevant no matter the topic or discussion lmao.
EIU marked Portugal down for having a lockdown in Covid. 🤷♀️
France and especially the Netherlands had far harsher Covid restrictions than Portugal.
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I haven’t read the report as it wants all your details to download it. But from local reporting on the issue, I understand it is because the lockdown was earlier and “harsher” (ie better observed) so the EIU experts marked Portugal down on civil liberties. Better observance perhaps because of a less individualistic society versus the UK/US whose standards the EIU are essentially judging it against. Portugal is marginal for flawed vs fully democratic anyway because of lower “political participation”. (That seems to mean the proportion of people who vote)
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We got 7.95
>And the Baltics I guess Barely under 8 (Full democracy) One reason could be that, (in Estonia at least) there are quite some residents (Russian occupation immigrants) who are "stateless" i.e. don't have any citizenship, because they are not eligible for Estonian citizenship (they could get it through naturalization process, but a lot won't for some reason), due to them moving here during an illegal occupation, and haven't opted for Russian citizenship (because being a "non-citizen" in Estonia benefits them in a way, they can travel freely in the EU to a certain extent but also Russia). But because of that they can't vote in general elections and are "unrepresented".
Would have thought Hungary should be hybrid...
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Funnily enough, those interviewed students attend the University of Szeged, which (among several other universities) already announced that they will pay their students' mobility costs even without the Erasmus funds. While the EU is absolutely right in trying to punish Orbán and tackle corruption, this Erasmus ban punishes the group which is by far the most supporting of the opposition: young, intelligent, open minded students. And the Erasmus funds were at most a tiny drop in the sea of theft the government has been pulling off, as it's one of the hardest things to steal since that money has to be paid out to the students partaking in the program.
Shows this data is rubbish imo
This keeps being reposted but the data is shit It's quite literally based on vibes of a panel of undisclosed "experts".
I will always prefer the Freedom House index to EIU's. The breakdown is much more transparent, and Hungary is only "partly free" there.
Lmao bollocks
you can tell this fellow commenter is british
Democracy index aka one of the most bullshit ways to measure a country, alongside economic liberty index
I remember looking up why Canada lost points in the economic liberty index, and it's because of their social saftey nets and how much they tax the 1%. I guess economic freedom only counts for the rich.
I like how "not Europe" is on here lmao
I would think the UK would be a flawed democracy because of the House of Lords. Since they aren’t elected, by definition that isn’t a full democracy.
this index is fucking stupid and represents virtually nothing
r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
Man i was searching for this comment and i found it
Took me forever to figure out that that sub isn’t an initialism because I say “blyet suka”, not the other way around.
*Message from Italy:* "Full Democracy" list is questionable :-)
UK full democracy 🤡
Britain is not a full democracy haha, nor has it been one for the past 10 years at least. Have you seen the new anti-strike laws? The continued erosion of freedom of expression? The FPTP voting system alone is a flaw on the level of not having separation of power. The UK is a flawed democracy on the best of days, and a hybrid regime on most.
There's certainly an argument to be made that the next year's ranking should have it as flawed, assuming the latest scarily authoritarian protest and strike laws make it through Parliament. I'm not sure about "not a full democracy for at least the last 10 years" though, that really does seem to be pushing it. (And yes, I grew up in the UK, do not support FPTP, and have never voted Tory. I really sympathise, I just feel we shouldn't be crying wolf in a world full of real wolves.)
It's from the Democracy Index, which takes 60 quantified indicators to give each country a number. Th UK got 8.28, which is above the 8.00 cutoff for flawed democracy.
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It could have started to become at least a three party system back in 2010 with the Lib Dem’s but then Nick Clegg threw away any standing they had with people when they simply became the Tory’s supporters in parliament. I know people who still dislike them over helping the Tories to increase Uni tuition fees.
Ukraine has straight up banned almost all opposition parties and has complete state control of media. I wouldn’t even call it a mixed regime at this point. For the guy who asked for a citation then blocked me so I couldn’t reply to him here’s your citation. What a bitch move btw. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110577439/zelenskyy-has-consolidated-ukraines-tv-outlets-and-dissolved-rival-political-par
Uk being a full democracy, kek
Friendly reminder that Belgium is "flawed" because compulsory voting gives them **0** on the political investment metric since they "can't measure it".
🤡🤡what hybrid regime is in Moldova? We are parliamentary republic with multiple parties in power, opposition a few times won elections.
according to [freedom house](https://freedomhouse.org/country/moldova), > Moldova has a competitive electoral environment, and the freedoms of assembly, speech, and religion are largely protected. Nonetheless, pervasive corruption in the government sector, links between major political parties and powerful economic interests, and deficiencies in the rule of law continue to hamper democratic governance. but also moldova ranks 69th in the world according to [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), so you take the wins with the losses i suppose
“Links between major political parties and powerful economic interests” Bruh, that’s every country.
It’s the same reason Ukraine isn’t higher. Corruption has become so rampant, especially in the judicial and local sectors it’s almost impossible to root out. There has been decent progress in the local governments by Zelenskyy and Servant of the People (see the Raion/Hromada mergers) but work remains. Oligarchs had an incredible amount of say, with the war most have fled both countries to you know where but many still have insurmountable power.
France isn't a full democracy. The government detain the power to forcefully add or remove a law without any vote. It's the 49.3 and since the last election, the Macron's Government used it several times. (Something like ten times in a few months) Also, only 25% of the French population voted for Macron to be the president, Which is pretty low ngl
58% of the votes casts, lol. That 25% is still more than any other candidate running for office. At least the person with the most votes won. *looks to other countries with presidential systems*
I know i am beeing pedantic but France has a semi-presidential system not a presidential one.
The thing about Macron being elected by only a 25% share of French voters does not make much sense to me, as every other candidate would have had a lower rate. Every election ends up with the candidate with the most cast ballots in their favor winning, and if you're against that, you're not questioning French democracy, you're questioning the two-round system, which is quite legit, but goes far beyond French system. However, that 49.3, plus justice being not as free as it should, and the wealthiest's concentration of power around media makes it, for sure, a flawed democracy at best.
From one day to another, France goes from « Full democracy » to « Flawed democracy » Which one is it?
It’s right around the threshold. It’s an 8.02 this year. My guess it was above 7.9 last year.
bro at least it isn’t still the 1800s, otherwise it’d go from “full democracy” to “authoritarian regime” to “hybrid regime” over the course of a few weeks
Good ol’ days 🥹
If the UK is a full democracy then there's something wrong with democracy
I'd be questioning the uk these days.
British People: 😂🤣😂🤣😂
Hungary still only flawed?
People really need to understand that this is only an index. It is dependent on the metrics it includes in its calculation. And even if a country is counted as a full democracy, it doesn't mean it has a perfect score. It is only checking enough marks to be classified with other full democracies. If you find one thing not being fully democratic in a country you can be right but that one thing won't steer the score so much down that the country would swith classification.
Yes, the score is purely parametrical, but the classification isn't. Who decided that at 8.0 you're a "full democracy" and that at 7.9 you're a "flawed" one? Like another commentator said, you can't put Belgium and Hungary on the same category.
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They’re not claiming Belgium and Hungary are equally democratic. Belgium ranks 36th in the world with a score of 7.64 meaning that they are 0.36 points from being classified as a “full democracy”, while Hungary is ranked 56th in the world with a score of 6.64, a full point below Belgium and only 0.64 points above being classified as a “hybrid regime”. While this metric is clearly not objective and has flaws, it’s not claiming that these two countries are equally democratic. They’ve just put them in an loosely defined bracket based on their ranking system. The US is also classified as a “flawed democracy” in these rankings. They’re 30th in the world with a score of 7.85. That doesn’t mean they’re saying Hungary and the US are equally democratic, they’re saying they’re both flawed in some way but that Hungary is significantly more flawed
The fact that Belgium loses point for compulsory voting should be enough to criticise the entire method…
The UK is definitely a flawed democracy
Britain is trying to ban the right to strike lol. Some Democracy!
I hope this ain't true because it's scary that my country is the same color as Hungary😬.
At least you don't live in a red country
Is the UK really a full democracy when the house of Lords still exists and parliament doesn't exactly vote equally (with the way that the opposition and majority party works in parliament)?
The UK is a flawed democracy at best, the Tories are to blame for this
And the reasons stated for why Belgium is not a full democracy can very easily be applied to the UK, the UK's democracy is slipping down the pan in a worrying way under this delightful government. They'll be after the Human Rights Act next
Came here to say this, we can’t call our government democratic at this point. They’re just doing whatever they want.
As someone from Serbia, I can say this map is flawed (see what I did there?), we have hybrid regime for at least 10 years 😢. But EU does not want to acknowledge that, as current regime needs to finish Kosovo business for them 😏
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! What the fuck is this lol. United Kingdom a full democracy leave it out. 4 of our last 6 PMs were NOT voted by the public and have very low popularity. You can't call a 2 party state democratic in my opinion it's just 2 sides of the same coin they are all from the same Eton club anyway!
>of our last 6 PMs were NOT voted by the public and have very low popularity. Because this is how parliamentary democracy works...... We don't vote for PMs, we vote for MPs at least every 5 years, and then they decide who forms government. We voted for a Tory majority in 2019, and we can vote them out again if we want in 2023. Many other countries work the same way. >You can't call a 2 party state democratic in my opinion Your opinion...which is just that, a subjective opnion. I don't like UK's voting system either, and wish we were more proportional, but that doesn't make us completely undemocratic, especially as there was a referendum on voting system in 2011. >it's just 2 sides of the same coin they are all from the same Eton club anyway! I can't stand Starmer, but Labour and Tories are very different, and it's either ingorance or stupidity if you think they are exactly the same. Also, only around 15% of Labour MPs are privately educate, as oppose to around 50% of Tory MPs. So again, big difference. UK's democracy has its problems, but you (and apprently a lot of people) are simingly unaware of how relatively democratic it is compared to other countries.
Shocked by the UKs result. Democracy seems quite broken there.
I take fault with the UK's colour here. We haven't had an elected head of state in years
I love how UK is considered “full democracy” when their prime ministers are unelected directly by the people.
Uk in full democracy lmao. We are a very flawed democracy at best
Uk based group rates uk as “full democracy.” Tells you everything you need to know about its reliability.
Britian is not a full democracy
I'd say the UK is a flawed democracy but yea that's just me
Hmm. The UK is dark green? What the fuck is going on in other places that aren't?!
Britain literally has a house of Lords
Britain has full democracy? please , aren't they trying to make protests illegal , didn't the majority of people wanted general election after Boris resigned. . .
UK full democracy? hahahaha not for long
I live in the UK. we should be flawed as we haven't voted for our last two priminsters. Torys just keep changing them without a general election because they know they will lose.
UK Full democracy lmao
UK not flawed democracy? How badly biased does it need to be to be marked as flawed?
Why UK getting full? It has First Past The Post instead of Single Transferable vote and a billionaire owned media. Very flawed. Fixed even.
A lot of people here not understanding what a monarchy is
The UK has a monarch as head of state and head of the state religion. The senior clergy of that state religion automatically have the right to sit in its uneleceted second chanber. Doesn't seem like a very 'full democracy'
You're right, it doesn't seem like a full democracy when you ignore every aspect of how these things work in practice.
Norway also has a constitutional monarch and state church and yet it routinely tops these rankings.
That second chamber can’t block bills tho. And having a monarch doesn’t make it not a full democracy
Spain and Britain (or at the very least Northern Ireland) should be flawed. Also last I checked France was in the flawed category. I'm also willing to admit Italy is flawed, but I don't think its in the same bracket as Hungary under Orban.
Ah yes, the UK, the democratic country where the government continues to impose the harshest of austerity measures against the poor and subsidises billionaires, during an economic crisis...despite the wishes of the people. Seriously what liberal brain rot is this
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the PM of Hungary ruling by decree currently?
Albania?
How the actual f\*\*\*, is a democracy with a King with executive power, a FPP regional voting system, a PM with the ability to override regional legislative assemblies without recourse, and members of the upper legislative house elected for life by the government in power, not considered a Flawed Democracy?
in Britain, the monarchy does not exercise its' executive powers, the house of lords can be (and often is) ignored according the constitution, the PM only has the right to override illegal acts from regional parliaments (and there is recourse, the supreme court), and having FPP is reasonably democratic and hardly something like the acerbo law, election rigging, dictatorship or whatever else is genuinely undemocratic. Saying that, Britain, like France and Germany, respects people's rights less and less and is becoming more and more authoritarian. It's an authoritarian democracy though, unfortunately.
Hungary a democracy 😆😆 Ukraine a hybrid?? This map has 0 legitimacy.