How is fucking Saudi Arabia not the darkest red unless you are blatantly giving them bonus points for being a western ally. SA is about as autocratic as you get.
Ukraine banned a Zelenskillion political parties in the time since the invasion lmao, with the exact reasoning of foreign/enemy influence that is deemed unacceptable for all the socialist "regimes"
So they mention that it is at it's "lowest point" since they started tracking it in 2006. I think it is pretty clear that this just measures how compliant or subservient to the US a nation is. Surely even the libbest of libs would notice how dumb it is that Russia dropped almost a whole point in a year, despite no actual changes to their government and therefore their democracy.
Democracy is when the bourgeoisie has full control over the political system but pretend they don’t by holding sham elections every few years apparently.
Britain, full democracy: Last two PMs elected by no one other than the Tory Party members, Leader of the opposition (and presumably next PM) elected to his role based on a completely fraudulent campaign that also broke campaign funding laws, previous leader of the opposition faced a coup from his own MPs only months after winning the leadership and then spent his entire tenure being smeared by them and their friends in the press
Europe alone getting a zoom in scope where other areas that are as dense with nations and therefore hard to read at this scale not getting one, while simultaneously just straight up blocking out other countries, is all you need to know about this map
Why is Paraguay, Mexico, Peru and Equador classified as Hybrid Regime? Is it because Paraguay and Mexico have been electing the same party for 70 years? Why is South Africa with 7.05 and fucking Japan with 8.33!? I mean, they do elect other parties sometimes so shouldn't it be a Flawed Democracy then?
Chile: 8.22
lol, the same country that privatized water and social security, literally pays nothing if you're old and retired.
I am very groggy, but the way a "democracy index" gets its scores is flawed - theoretically because they work with bourg definition of parliamentary democracy, methodologicaly because sometimes its shit like (S)Expats giving their vibes-based score of the press in a country where they mostly mingle with the upper class (it looks like ""average joe"" middle class to them) or other pretty invalid, subjective or unreliable methods. It's sometimes funny that the US is even failing the more scientific ones that have bourg democracy standards.
Politically, a lot of these indices are tied to letter agencies or corporations, which makes it very easy to clown on them (besides shit like Libya being more democratic than Venezuela)
Obviously it's a somewhat silly idea to measure "democracy" to begin with since "democracy" is a very contested notion.
On today's episode, we discuss the limits of democracy rankings, the oft-cited "Polity IV" metric devised by the CIA-funded Center for Systemic Peace, and more
Isn't Ukraine the place that has not only suspended elections but also banned political parties and seized media to become apparatus of the figuredhead of the state?