The United States has fallen to 25th place in the Democracy Index

[NoRoadUntravelled]

SNIP

"The highly partisan nature of Washington politics has contributed to this trend. Republicans and Democrats are increasingly seen as being focused on blocking each other’s agenda, to the detriment of policymaking. This trend has worsened under the current administration. Rising partisan tensions have left Congress in a stalemate: the passage of the revised US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was the only piece of major legislation to get through the divided legislature in 2019. Mr Trump has not been the dealmaker he had boasted he would be, at least not on the domestic front. His response to the consistent hostility of the opposition to his presidency from day one has been to go on the offensive and up the ante. He has been deliberately provocative in an effort to rally his political and voter base, particularly on issues such as immigration and security."

Here's a link to the white paper by The Economist
www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democracy-Index-2019.pdf&mode=wp&campaignid=democracyindex2019

[NoRoadUntravelled]

1. You may have to copy and paste the link into your browser.

Can't seem to get it to go live here.

[Mike 03]

2. This has happened with links I've posted too.

I keep getting referred back to https://www.eiu.com/n/

But it looks like a really important paper. Maybe you have to be a member/subscriber?

[Mike 03]

3. Here's a related story from earlier this year:

Low scores for U.S. government in two global scorecards (The Fulcrum)
https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/american-democracy-corruption

American democracy on the decline
Meanwhile the United States has only the 25th best democracy in the world, far from the "We're No. 1!" shouting of the typically prideful American view, according to the 14th annual Democracy Index published this week by the Economist Intelligence Unit, an arm of the British-based company that publishes the Economist magazine.

That ranking places the United States among the countries considered to be "flawed democracies" in 2019.

The good news is that the country's score of 7.96 (on a scale of 10) is the same as in 2018. But its score and ranking fell steadily during the past decade. In 2010 it was No. 17.

Still, North America retains the highest average score (8.59) of any region in the Democracy Index. That was thanks to Canada, with a score of 9.22 that pulled the region to the top.

The United States received a 9.17 for electoral process and pluralism but was dragged down by a 7.14 for functioning of government.

Americans' support for democracy remains strong, the report acknowledges, but adds that "popular dissatisfaction with how democracy is working in practice, both in terms of government dysfunction and a lack of political representation by the two main parties, has grown in recent years."

And where do the British authors rank their own country? No. 14, in the top tier of countries considered "full democracies." This from a country that still has a monarch as head of state and a Parliament paralyzed for much of the year over how to extract the country from the European Union

Overall, democracy is on the decline among the 165 independent states and two territories covered in the report. In fact, the average global score for democracy of 5.44 is the lowest since the index was first produced in 2006.

The top scorer was Norway. The rest of the top tier looked like a podium at the Winter Olympics: Sweden was No. 3, Finland No. 5 and Denmark and Canada tied for 7th. At the bottom was North Korea with a 1.08 — the latest reminder that President Trump sending a birthday card to Kim Jong-un was pretty unusual. (Russia, by the way, tied for 134th — which is 19 places ahead of China.)

Well at least we're still higher than Russia.

[NoRoadUntravelled]

4. Thank you.