The Economist has released it’s 2024 Democracy Index a few weeks ago, and it is disconcerting, though not unsurprising, to see that the average democracy index for the world has fallen once again this year.  The average has dropped from 5.23 to 5.17, a continuation of the worrying trend since a peak of 5.55 in 2014.  In fact, it is also below the average of 5.52 when the index was started back in 2006.

The index rates 167 countries, states or territories on a scale of 0 to 10.  It is based on five categories:

• electoral process and pluralism
• functioning of government
• political participation
• political culture and 
• civil liberties

Norway is in the top ranked position once again with a score of 9.81, followed by New Zealand, Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands, being the 9 countries with a score of 9.00 or above. Countries need a score of 8.00 or above to be a considered a full democracy, of which there are 25 countries.

Canada achieved a score of 8.69 and 14th place and the UK a score of 8.34 for 17th place. Canada’s lower rate is due to the increasing dissatisfaction with the traditional two main parties, and increasing lack of confidence in the government.

It is interesting to note the United States received a score of only 7.85 (28th) so is still considered a flawed democracy for another year. This score is due to the two low scores of 6.43 and 6.25 for the functioning of government and the political culture, respectively. This low score is due to, “low levels of trust in political institutions and the media; institutional gridlock; excessive influence of lobbyists, interest groups and the mega-rich; sharp economic and social inequalities; and an absence of social consensus on core national values.”, as stated in the report. Political sectarianism continues to make the US more polarized, and creates increasing animosity between opposing sides, and increasingly fueled by mainstream media and independent platforms such as podcasts.

The number of authoritarian regimes is up to 60, from 52 back in 2014, so another very worrying trend.

But why is this happening, with reduced poverty world wide over the past 20 or 30 years (albeit a backslide post-covid) and higher education rates, why are economies not improving and therefore democracy and wealth inequality not improving even more?  The Democracy Index report states that this is caused by a variety of issues, stating such results as the loss of confidence in governments and the rise in populist parties. (Those parties considered fringe compared to incumbent or leading parties, and which are typically more right-wing.)  

They make the argument that one of the reasons for voter dissatisfaction is that decisions on inflation and monetary policy have been moved from politicians to technocrats and economists. Whether this is true or not, I don’t think it is big factor at all in voter dissatisfaction, as it has not prevented many politicians to continue to make changes benefiting corporations and the wealthy over the welfare of citizens, especially with respect to climate change goals.

I feel this one sentence from the report captures the essence of the issue.

The smooth functioning of democratic political systems is probably not compatible with extremes of social and economic inequality.

Well of course this is the issue! If wealth is getting more and more concentrated, which is certainly is across the world, at least with the increase in massive wealth of the top 0.1%, then citizens see this clearly and blame governments for it. Considering that governments are sometimes lowering taxes for wealthy, failing to implement a sufficient (or any) tax on wealth for those very wealthy families, failing to close tax loop holes, or allowing tax havens in other countries to thrive, then it is a clear sign that governments are fundamentally not representing the values of their citizens.

It certainly resonates as a truth when the report states that democracies fail when they don’t represent the beliefs of nation’s citizens. Of significance, is the fact that the top 10 democracies all have proportional representation, a system designed to have members of parliament which are more representative of the vote. Countries like the United States and Canada which are former British colonies, still use plurality voting, also know as first past the post.  Australia used to have plurality for a number of years, but switched its system after world war I.

Also of particular note is France, which has fallen to a score of 7.99, into the flawed democracy, and not for the first time, as it has been on the cusp of 8.00 for most of the index’s existence.

There are many interesting observations in the report but I don’t see much in the way of broad conclusions of why democracy seems to be stagnating.  While there is some mention of social media and it’s tendency to increase polarization, there is nothing on how media in general, corporations, wealth of the uber rich, and ownership of media is contribution to the sluggish improvements in democracy, but this is not the purpose of the report, nor this article.  Though it is a topic that dearly needs to be addressed.

The Our World In Data organization contains a very nice world map showing a colour coded democracy value for each country.

Lots of information on this index can also be found on the Economist Democracy Index on Wikipedia, which has a great year over year comparison of every country.

— R. S. MacGillivary