

Democracy Distribution of the World - dedalus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

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tokenadult
Two other international rankings with annual revisions that have been going on
for a while are produced by nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations.

1) The Freedom House rankings of countries by freedom (both political and
economic):

<http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15>

2) The Transparency International rankings of perceived public corruption:

[http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/...](http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results)

(Both these websites use more of Flash Player than I would if I were running a
website; sorry about that.)

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yummyfajitas
While the report doesn't provide much detail on the methodology, I'd suggest
taking small variations with a grain of salt. There are quite a few criteria
they use which have nothing to do with democracy. Some if their criteria
actually go against democratic principles. For instance:

 _Do ethnic, religious and other minorities have a reasonable degree of
autonomy and voice in the political process?_

In a democracy, the majority may freely impose their will on minorities.
That's what a democracy is all about.

 _Women in parliament % of members of parliament who are women_

It doesn't make you less of a democracy if your voters hate women.

 _Is there an effective system of checks and balances on the exercise of
government authority?_

I.e., is there a non-democratic means of making sure 2 wolves and 1 sheep
don't vote on dinner? Seems non-democratic to me.

Many of the criteria are just people's preferences, e.g. what percentage of
the population cares enough about politics to read about it every day or join
a political party.

<http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy_Index_2010_web.pdf>

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ugh
You don’t use the definition of “democracy” most people use. That’s ok, an
acknowledgment that more than your definition of democracy exists would be
nice, though.

My perception is that “democracy” is most often used to refer to democracy
(following your definition), rule of law and human rights. Those three things
contradict each other sometimes, all “democracies” have compromises to deal
with those contradictions. (Protection of minorities and separation of powers
are seen by pretty much everyone as essential features of democracies.)

(Your point about checks and balances seems non-sensical, though. Checks and
balances are not essential democratic features following your definition –
they are more in the rule of law camp – but it strikes me as wrong to claim
that they contradict democratic principles. You point about wolves concerns
protection of minorities and checks and balances certainly don’t do that. The
president and the legislative are both elected, judges are sometimes, too
[checks and balances certainly don’t demand that judges not be elected, so you
can’t blame it on checks and balances when judges are not elected], so I don’t
really see how checks and balances are undemocratic.)

~~~
cabalamat
> _My perception is that “democracy” is most often used to refer to democracy
> (following your definition), rule of law and human rights._

I would refer to that as a "liberal democracy". Democracy means majority rule,
by definition ("people power" or "mob rule" from the Greek). Liberal democracy
is democracy plus human rights.

> _Those three things contradict each other sometimes, all “democracies” have
> compromises to deal with those contradictions._

Indeed; if the majority of the population are illiberal, then a country must
choose between being liberal or beinbg democratic; it can't be both.

~~~
gwright
> I would refer to that as a "liberal democracy".

It would be nice if everyone adhered to the rule you are describing but that
simply isn't what happens in the real world.

In acutal usage the unadorned term 'democracy' almost always should be
interpreted to mean 'representative government with constitutional protections
for individual rights'. Obviously the 'representative' part comes in all sorts
of flavors as well as the 'individual rights' part. Rarely does anyone using
the naked term 'democracy' really mean 'direct majority rule with no minority
rights'.

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nandemo
I wonder if a Political Science forum's discussion on web apps would have the
same quality as politics threads on HN.

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radagaisus
Check out that tiny little green island in the middle east.

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Entlin
Well, democracy is not everything. If the majority of the electorate wants to
fight wars, or repress a certain minority, then you've still got a problem
there.

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vorg
The same countries near the top of this index are the same as those at the top
of the Corruption Perceptions Index, i.e Scandinavia, Canada/Australia/NZ,
Switzerland.

See
[http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/...](http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results)
Any coincidence?

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alex_h
Sad that there are about twice as many authoritarian regimes as there are full
democracies.

~~~
hugh3
Maybe, but compare that to how the world looked one hundred or even twenty-
five years ago and the progress has been remarkable.

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Misha_B
I'd be interested to see a map that shows the countries by their current
trends to or from democracy (would better replace that with "personal
liberty") rather than the current state.

~~~
hugh3
Unfortunately I suspect the error bars are so large and the rate of change so
(usually) small that you'd either wind up just getting

(a) noise or

(b) whatever result you _want_ to get.

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impendia
Sobering that the U.S. only barely qualifies as a "full democracy".

Also, how the hell did North Korea score 1.08? What do you have to do to score
a zero?

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archgoon
Near the bottom, there's a link to the Economist's report

<http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf>

North Korea got 2.5 points on "Functioning Government". They aren't controlled
by foreign powers, and they exert full control of their territory. That gives
them a 2. Maybe they got a half point for the civil service.

Also, a fair number of the points you get is the perception of the populace of
their government. Depending on how Orwellian the country is, they can rank
quite highly on those.

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rburhum
"Constitutional" monarchies should loose points just on the simple merit of
being a theocracy by definition. Yet, they are the most "democratic" on this
list. Meh.

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blahedo
A theocracy "by definition" involves God (or, more broadly, a religion).
Constitutional monarchies do not, necessarily. Furthermore, at one end of the
constitutional monarchy spectrum you have the monarch who is purely figurehead
with only ceremonial and/or social responsibilities, and the monarchies with
high scores in that list are fairly close to that end of the spectrum. (There
are also some monarchies right down in the authoritarian end....)

