Love Letter to the USA: #3 Goodbye oldest democracy in the world

Hello, flawed and getting even more flawed ... and a suggested Step #1

Data/image source: Data source: Economist Intelligence Unit (2006-2024)

It shocks my system to learn that we here in the United States have lost “full democracy” status and are now in the “flawed democracy” or anocracy category … a 7.85 on a scale of 10!

Even more shocking was that we lost our “full democracy” designation in 2016 with this note as an explanation: “In 2016, the United States was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy; its score, which had been declining for some years, crossed the threshold from 8.05 in 2015 to 7.98 in 2016. The report stated that this was caused by myriad factors dating back to at least the late 1960s which have eroded Americans' trust in governmental institutions.”

This is not a soccer game and there’s no world cup for democracy

So, should we even care? What do these numbers mean to us in our everyday world? And, if our numbers had been “declining for some years,” why didn’t we know what the scorecard was? Why wasn’t our democracy score as big a topic as who won the Super Bowl? Why wasn’t it on the nightly news when we became “flawed?”

Suddenly, I recognize a shade of “American exceptionalism.” While I don’t think I went as far as thinking we invented democracy, but I’m sure I preened about our being the best at it. Now, here we are at #28 in the world … before the trump regime has even kicked in! To be fair … with 340 million population, we are far bigger than the other countries that are ranked as full democracies (Japan is #16 with 123 million population; Canada is #14 with 41 million, and #1 Norway has 5.6 million).

Suggested Step #1 for improving our democracy: come back together!

We have let our politics divide us, especially with the entry of Donald Trump. Now that things are falling apart rapidly, it could cause a hardening of that division. We can’t let that happen if we want to have any hope of living up to our potential. We all have a role to play in saving our democracy.

The trump regime is starting to make serious mistakes and people will start to see through the MAGA mask. We all make judgment mistakes … welcome them back!

And, speaking of trump, here are the rankings for some of the countries he seems to want to emulate:

FOR THOSE WHO WANT MORE: What do these numbers mean and where do they come from?

In 2006, the Economist Group, the private UK company that produces The Economist magazine, created an index on the quality of democracy in each country based on reports from experts on 60 indicators grouped into five categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties, and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorizes each country into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. There is a full wikipedia page that reports the results.

Until I read this report and realized we had slipped out of full democracy, I hadn’t thought much about the quality of a democracy … other than having elections and citizens participating in our own governance. Turns out that the qualities measured are pretty interesting.

Without getting too far into the weeds of how this index is created, the sixty questions are grouped into five categories

• electoral process and pluralism (12 indicators)

• functioning of government (14 indicators)

• political participation (9 indicators)

• political culture (8 indicators)

• civil liberties (17 indicators)

And the democracy definitions are:

• Full democracies are countries where civil liberties and fundamental political freedoms are not only respected but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, an independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and diverse and independent media. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.

• Flawed democracies are countries 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). These countries can have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.

• Hybrid regimes are countries with regular electoral frauds, preventing them from being fair and free democracies. These countries commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opposition, non-independent judiciaries, widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media, anaemic rule of law, and more pronounced faults than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.

• Authoritarian regimes are countries where political pluralism is nonexistent or severely limited. These nations are often absolute monarchies or dictatorships, may have some conventional institutions of democracy but with meagre significance, infringements and abuses of civil liberties are commonplace, elections (if they take place) are not fair or free (including sham elections), the media is often state-owned or controlled by groups associated with the ruling regime, the judiciary is not independent, and censorship and suppression of governmental criticism are commonplace.