Daily chart: A new low for global democracy

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-low-for-global-democracy

36 80 4 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220210061127/https://www.econo...

Funny how a strong social safety net and lack of inequality tend to make societies with a norm of participation and solidarity. The Scandinavian countries aren't all the same, are dealing with their own problems of homogeneity and integration challenges, etc - but always funny when the Economist doesn't say the quiet part out loud.

rnk• 4 years ago

US one step behind Canada on the chart, sounds right. I'm saying that based on current attempts to change laws making it harder to vote here and also changes so state government could override election results.

beebmam• 4 years ago

I wouldn't presume causation in that direction. It could be that participation and solidarity leads to strong social safety net and egalitarian policies. Or maybe there are other causes of both

reilly3000• 4 years ago

They have never been shy about their opinions or coy about projecting them.

hamilyon2• 4 years ago

https://outline.com/s9zZUq

nonrandomstring2• 4 years ago

To what degree does technology play a part in these changes?

For the two main events cited, as I recall it Myanmar resulted from Facebook wilfully ignoring (indeed fuelling) a sectarian schism, and the Afghan Army basically conceded a post-withdrawal "peaceful Taliban takeover" by ad-hoc WhatsApp diplomacy, making a mockery of state power by an end-run around official communications.

Obviously there are other geopolitical forces at work, but what a turnaround from the Arab Spring when tech seemed to be spreading democracy. Schniere was right about the phase lag between technology empowering progressive actors and bolstering incumbent power. But something else is going on. We seem to be too comfortable funding and propagating what we know to be oppressive technologies, as the NSO debacle illustrates all too well.

Knowing that technology is very much NOT neutral, how can we fund tech that has a best chance of net positive outcomes for democracy? Aren't projects Tor, IPFS or Librem Phones the best "all round" horses to back? As well as an Eco/Carbon rating ought we to give technologies a "democracy rating"?

Cthulhu_5• 4 years ago

To what degree does technology play a part in these changes?

Pretty big; a lot more people are connected now, which allows for social media propaganda companies like Cambridge Analytica (which is now a fall guy; there are much more) to do campaigns to influence democracy. Examples are:

- Pushing the 'us vs them' mentality; you see this in many different areas, from left vs right, TERFS vs the rest, racial divides, but also things like flat earthers and anti-vaxxers (the pseudoscience division). This makes people fight among themselves while the higher ups take more power and money for themselves.

- Voter manipulation. There have been campaigns - mainly aimed at PoC - that told them their vote is wasted whatever they vote on, that they should vote for the 3rd candidate (nothing wrong with that, if only they had a chance in the broken US voting system), or even giving them misinformation about the date they should go vote or how to (incorrectly) vote by mail. This is pushed by the republicans, because PoC represent less than 10% of their voter base; it's better for the RNC to have people not vote than vote for the democrats.

Tor and co are great initiatives in theory, unfortunately they have been ruined by criminals on the one hand, and law enforcement honeypots on the other; there are plenty of instances by now of e.g. 'secure' phone networks getting taken over by law enforcement, causing for example the discovery of organized crime torture rooms: https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2339849-politie-geeft-... (video doesn't seem to work on google translate: direct link https://nos.nl/artikel/2339849-politie-geeft-meer-details-ov... )

yorwba• 4 years ago

as I recall it Myanmar resulted from Facebook wilfully ignoring (indeed fuelling) a sectarian schism

No. You may know something about Facebook, but clearly you don't know anything about Myanmar.

Here are some Wikipedia links to fill gaps in your knowledge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_conflict_in_Myanmar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Myanmar_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

nonrandomstring2• 4 years ago

Thank you. I know more about Myanmar than I do about Facebook now. And what a long upsetting read that was. There are hardly words to describe such total failure of humanity. I wonder if I may have offended you by understatement. I am sorry if that is so. In place of "sectarian conflict" I should have said:

A colossal hell-hole boasting almost a century [1] of uninterrupted brutality, millions of dead, hundreds of thousands of refugees, an intractable death-spiral of poverty, disease, natural disaster, religious division, foreign arms dealers, corporate profiteers, military maniacs, mercenaries, poisoned land, torture camps, rape as a systematic weapon of war, child soldiers, land mines, opium farmers, and.... Facebook.

Admittedly the last of those is the least of their worries.

Still, for the sake of brevity what phrase like "ongoing civil war" or "ethnic divisions" might succeed, because there are no few words that can describe such a situation or would be acceptable language on this polite board.

[1] All those articles seem to suppose things went bad _after_ the British left. Being British, I am supposing they may have started sooner.

ComradePhil• 4 years ago

Here's why this is complete and absolute nonsense fabricated for political reasons. The only people who think Scandinavian countries are "democracies" are those who haven't read their constitutions... and that includes most of their natives.

* Their monarchs have absolute power, the monarchs give right to the parliament to exist for example

* The monarch can decide who gets to run for elections

* The monarch can veto against any legal decision

All of them do have elections and they do appear to have some impact on policies... but the supreme power is hidden and made to look ceremonial to the masses when it is totally not the case.

iforgotpassword• 4 years ago

How often do those monarchs make use of that power and to what extend? Does it have negative impact on normal people?

sandgiant2• 4 years ago

Last time in Denmark was in 1920 [1]. It almost abolished the monarchy at the time. Since then no other monarch have dared interfere with politics.

Today all political interactions are purely ceremonial. The monarchy is still part of the power elite, and of ceremonial importance in domestic and international relations, but they have no direct power over political decisions or elections.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_X_of_Denmark#Easter_...

lozenge• 4 years ago

I can think of a few recent examples.

The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, where the Governor General (granted power by the Queen) dismissed the Prime Minister.

In 2019, when the British PM suspended Parliament - a provision that would not exist without a Monarchy, as it was technically done by the Queen on the PM s advice. This was later ruled illegal but there was no way to right the wrong.

Recently, Queen's Consent was exposed as a secret process where laws are changed in secret before coming to Parliament to gain the Queen's approval. One example being that the Queen can hire without complying with laws against race discrimination. She also has exceptions from environmental and COVID legislation.

Checking Wikipedia, it looks like Queens Consent was withheld in 1990 preventing debate of reforming the House of Lords. Probably the world's least democratic legislative chamber of any democracy.

colordrops5• 4 years ago

But have these supposed monarchs exercised this power at all in recent history, and are they even capable of exercising it? I'm guessing no, but even if they were capable of coming out of the shadows and interfering, this is basically true of any supposed democracy. Every country out there is run by the mafia that won, and they will get what they want if the system fails them.

eecc• 4 years ago

Uhm, if I remember correctly the UK removed an elected prime minister of Australia (on basis that he was a leftie) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitution...

diob• 4 years ago

I feel like this could technically apply to the USA as well. It's more of an oligarchy with the appearance of democracy. It's really weird looking at the connections between presidents, etc.

bryal• 4 years ago

I can write on a piece of paper, right now, that I have supreme power over the state. That doesn't actually make it so.

Most of the powers the monarchs in Scandinavia supposedly have can't actually be enforced in reality, so they really don't have as much power as you seem to think.

On the opposite end, is North Korea a democracy just because it says so in their constitution?

bryanrasmussen• 4 years ago

but the supreme power is hidden and made to look ceremonial to the masses when it is totally not the case.

no, the supreme power has moved from the time of writing and the codification of this change has not been completed. Many places in the world have laws that do not reflect actual practice.

brtkdotse• 4 years ago

Not sure what you're smoking, but I challenge you to find _one_ instance of any of the things you mentioned happening in modern time.

sandgiant2• 4 years ago

This is not true at all.

The constitutional powers of the monarchs in Scandinavian countries do not at all reflect reality. The monarchs have no power to influence politics or elections outside of public or international relations.

Epa095• 4 years ago

So, can you point to any case where this power has actually been used against the will of e.g. the parlament or the courts in the last 60 years? Don't misunderstand me, I am a republican, so against the monarchy, and it is clearly a relic from the past. But that is also all it is, in practice the norwegian king weilds political power until the moment he tries to use it, then its gone. Queen Elizabeth is the Head of state of Canada, is Canada also not a democracy?

wxx• 4 years ago

In Sweden, as head of state, the King is Sweden’s foremost unifying symbol. According to the 1974 constitution, the monarch has no political affinity and no formal powers. The King’s duties are mainly of a ceremonial and representative nature.

You have provided no reference to your claim whatsoever, if you are arguing this point, please provide what you are referring to specifically.

Furthermore, Finland does not have a monarch at all (all though you might argue that they are not formally part of Scandinavia, but that's up for debate)

herio• 4 years ago

I can't say for the other Nordic countries, but this statement is utterly wrong as far as Sweden is concerned.

The Swedish monarch has no power at all in the Swedish Grundlag (constitution). He is the titular head of state, holds a few honorary military titles and opens the government every year.

It's a marketing function, nothing more. He has no power over the election process, legal system etc.

Cthulhu_5• 4 years ago

I mean, just because these clauses exist don't mean they are put into practice. That said, I think all countries could do with a revision of their constitution - the US first and foremost; while it was one of the first countries with a progressive constitution at the time, it hasn't aged well to the point where the US is now considered a backtracking democracy.

cerfirm• 4 years ago

The Swedish monarchy has only ceremonial power. There is as far as i know nothing in the Swedish constitution that gives the monarchy any real power.

Non of your examples above exist in the Swedish constitution.

colordrops5• 4 years ago

It goes to show the biases of The Economist that Israel is marked as a "flawed democracy" rather than a "hybrid regime". Israel is a hybrid regime if there ever was one.

0xedd• 4 years ago

The brainwashed majority of this board is amazing. The previous comment here is true and people judge, from their leather sofas, thousands of kilometers away, a culture as well as a country without knowing the least bit of history about them outside of mainstream media.

In a political context, we can't have political discourse that doesn't align with the Western fantasy? How far have you fallen. Freedom, free speech and all those slogans are just a disgusting lie.

For those who downvoted it and reported it are invited to turn off their TVs and read Time Immemorial. A book written about the recent (decades) history of the region. With quotes and sources cited at the end of it. Ranging from UN, public announcements and other documents.

For example, absolutely everyone ignores the fact that the region of Palestine includes Jordan. A country 4 times the size of Israel with much less populace. When they shriek Palestinians, no one thinks of Jordanians. Strange? Nah, brainwashed. In Israel, 20% of the population are Arabs. 20% of parliament members are Arabs. Arabs are exempt from the mandatory 2-3 years military service. Arabs receive a special scholarship to universities, regardless of their SAT score. No wonder the heads of hospital departments and country's top doctors are Arabs. Yet, the west is somehow convinced there's apartheid here. Successful propaganda is successful.

You must understand there are over 7 billion people on this earth and most are different than you. In addition, it isn't a defacto rule that everyone alive in 2022 is civilized, will not lie and let you live. Something that the West assumes like some knee jerk reaction.

A small anecdote - my colleague is Arab, works as a DevOps engineer, makes 150k USD a year, had an onboarding bonus of 40k in stocks and receives a "top up" additional stocks every 6 months after 2 years. How much do you make compared to the "oppressed"?

Anyway, ignore your ego and finish that book.

Mizza• 4 years ago

"Israel is not a state of all its citizens, but rather the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them." - Benjamin Netanyahu, 2019

You are deliberately excluding the passportless, subjugated people who are forced to live in permanent poverty because of Israel's brutal and illegal occupation. Your rich colleague doesn't mean those people don't exist.

darebak4• 4 years ago

I know nothing about the Palestinian conflict but I have to say that a lot of what you are saying is repeated by Europeans about Roma people and about other Europeans who happen to be a sizable minority in another European country. It almost seems like it's better to be a minority than a majority.

I don't know if that's factual or not, but it doesn't seem that way, the simplest answer would be that is just pure tribalism.

colordrops5• 4 years ago

I don't see anything in your comments that justifies apartheid. You could say many of the same things about South Africa.

sndman• 4 years ago

Time Immemorial? You must mean the book From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. While that's perhaps the single most common narrative people believe, it's full of myths that most historians have dispelled back in the 1990s. The author attempted to “prove” the laughable proposition that the land was uninhabited before Zionist immigration created the jobs that attracted Arabs from other regions. Much worse were the claims that the exodus of indigenous Palestinian people was due entirely to the orders of advancing Arab armies, who invaded the new Jewish state of Israel. The sad reality is that almost half of those expelled (300,000) were driven off their land before the war started (my parents included).

One would be much better off reading actual historical accounts the region: The Hundred Years War on Palestine (Rashid Khaldi) and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Ilan Pappe).

sam_lowry_6• 4 years ago

The map feels somewhat outdated. Belarus is on par with North Korea since 2020, Russia became much less democratic in 2021 and continues its descent in 2022.

Poland and Hungary are both hybrid regimes now, with Hungary leaning on the authoritarian side.

renw0rp2• 4 years ago

What is the difference between democracy and hybrid regime?

Even though I don't like polish government, I really don't think the country is not democratic (but if course all depends on the definitions). I would even argue that many western countries are less democratic after seeing for example some videos from protests in the Netherlands[0]

[0] https://youtu.be/VICeJG_bayg

trasz• 4 years ago

Netherlands still have proper, independent courts. Poland doesn’t.

prometheon1• 4 years ago

Inferring data based on youtube videos is quite tricky, as the algorithm favors more sensational data points. Protesting in the Netherlands is great as long as you ask for permission (which is not difficult to get) and don't go rioting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLNnK5q9pfQ

foxfluff• 4 years ago

Arguably democracy is tyranny of the majority against a minority. Sometimes this gets people riled up enough to start an illegal protest, which the authorities try to snuff out.

I don't think videos of protest say much about how democratic a country is. It just demonstrates a shortcoming of democracy.

ilogik• 4 years ago

seriously, how are Hungary and Poland ranked higher than Romania?

javajosh• 4 years ago

Belarus is on par with North Korea since 2020

Why? What changed? Realize that Kim Jong-un is worshipped like a living God in the DPRK; Lukashenko is powerful and corrupt, but he's not worshipped. It is very difficult to get into and out of the DPRK; it is (relatively) easy to get in and out of Belarus. Kim Jong-un is really in a class of his own, and it would be remarkable for any other country on Earth to become like the DPRK.

sam_lowry_6• 4 years ago

In Belarus, citizens are put in jail literally for a smiley, let alone private chat messages. Before they are jailed, they are beaten up and are forced to present public excuses on camera. These public excuses are then aired on state TV, Telegram channels and published on Youtube as advertising.

Some things are better in Belarus than in North Korea, some are worse, but politically, the regimes are similarily totalitarian.

LatteLazy4• 4 years ago

Sorry to get political but...

Democracy has been a disaster for my country (the UK) for the last 30 years. It's given us endless bad policy. It's wrecking every institution that made the UK livable. It's increased taxes and cut spending on anything not for small select groups. We're going backwards socially.

I don't think ye-olde, people voting by fptp for someone to represent them on a party basis, for years when they can't actually tell you policies or names of those representatives democracy works anymore. Maybe social media or just media in general has broken it. Maybe people have just gotten really shitty.

But it's not working...

sam_lowry_6• 4 years ago

I understand your frustraction with British democratic processes, but you should probably travel to North Korea or Belarus once to see how UK fares on the world scale.

Perspective matters.

colordrops5• 4 years ago

I've been to NK, and it's as bad as they say. I still think US democracy is abhorrent. It's not a perspective or relativistic thing. Democracy is not a competition.

Cthulhu_5• 4 years ago

It's not a dichotomy, and just because someone else has it worse doesn't mean one shouldn't strive for better.

LatteLazy4• 4 years ago

I don't think it's as simple as either/or. I think we're headed towards Belarus exactly because our current system is performing so so poorly.

I'm 37, I've never missed a vote except for 1 for London Mayor. I almost didn't bother last time. I'm just done with the whole system. Theres never been an election where the new government actually did anything for people like me (and I am very average). My vote has never counted (I've lived in three different safe seats). And I think our government is so poorly run, that frankly, a randomly selected general who happened to seize power could do no worse.

That's how you end up with Belarus: Run democracy so badly, so undemocratically and produce such poor governments that people just stop believing.

That's my complaint here: it's not that I think we're too democratic, it's that we're neither democratic nor effective but because we occasionally hold "elections" people just blindly accept the undemocratic shitshow.

echevil2• 4 years ago

Democracy is overrated, period

rjtavares• 4 years ago

In the sense that some people treat it as perfect, yes. But, as they say, it's the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.

darebak4• 4 years ago

Yes, democracy is cumbersome but I don't see any better alternatives. You could argue that Singapore is doing great without them being a democracy but it has it's fair share of problems and it's not for everybody.

Do you have any alternatives in mind?

n4r94• 4 years ago

They gave a couple of ideas: breaking up the media and increasing the number of viable political parties. Reforming the voting system would greatly aid the latter

marcyb5st2• 4 years ago

I am looking forward for a day where policy making is aided by AI or some advanced modeling that estimates impact over long time spans.

The reality is that a lot of terrible policies have been applied over the years due to short term gains (e.g. being re-elected) and no one thought 20+ years down the line. For example, the Italian phenomenon of the so-called baby-pensioni (people that retired when less than 50y and some even 40). At the time it was great, unemployment drop to ~0% overnight and everybody was happy. 40ish years down the line Italy has a crippling debt also because we are still maintaining millions that have been unproductive for almost 40 years now.

Someone or something looking at long term repercussions could have avoided this altogether. The same can be said for subsidising travel industry, ... . True, not applying these policies will slow down economic growth in the short term, but if they create such an outcome they probably were never sustainable to begin with. And it's better to have 40years at 2% growth than 15 years at 5% and then 0 for 25.

LatteLazy4• 4 years ago

I won't pretend I know an answer. But I do think we need major reform.

I'd like to see:

* A Ban on political parties at least on their names on ballots (so you have to at least know your MPs name, no one can just vote Labour/Conservative) and funding for local campaigns (so local MPs rely on the local party not national donors to get elected).

* We need to break up foreign owned and corporate media (newspapers and TV are mostly controlled by the Murdoch family here, the person he blesses wins most elections).

* Scrapping FPTP and constituencies or at least making constituencies bigger and getting them to select multiple reps. Right now, you can win a seat with 30% of the vote and 70% of people are not represented. It's even worse when you know you'll get 25% just because of your party, so you desperately chase about 5% of voters who might "swing" to you. 95% of people might as well not exist.

* There is a good argument to divide reps based not on head of population but on groups like we used to (commoners vs lords etc). But to do it based on age. Right now, the UK hasn't had an election NOT decided by one demographic bulge for about 50 years. When they were young they demanded (and got) free university, housing and healthcare. Now they're old we have scrapped all that and we're just enlessly throwing money at pensioners and closing everything else. Maybe we should have 100 employees elected by voters 18-30, 100 for 30-40s, etc?

* If I were really radical, I'd scrap voting for most people and replace it with the equivalent of jury duty: pick 1 person per 1000 like for a jury (over 18, not in prison, not insane, eligible to vote, not related to a candidate etc that would be about 250 people for my borough), taken drag them to a hall somewhere 9-5 mon-fri for 6 weeks, and give all the candidates a day or two each to speak and answer questions. Let them request experts or further info etc. Then those 250 people can vote to pick the MP. Right now, there is zero incentive to know anything before you vote and most people have no idea what is going on. I arrogantly consider myself well informed, but I'd be a lot better informed if it had been the equivalent of a job for a few weeks before polling day.

* Maybe even replace our (messy, unelected but also full of failed politicians) second house with experts or even a random selection of citizens.

Again, these are just my ideas (mostly stolen from others, none original). But I think right now our governments are failing both practically (bad policy) AND democratically (they're unpopular and cannot secure the support of 51% of adults).

They are the the product of a very complex system that includes the occasional flawed vote BUT doesn't really make them democratic IMHO. The danger here is that eventually the majority of people will get so pissed off they will abandon the whole thing and we'll "elect" a strong man like Putin who is at least effective. Then there will be no more elections and his kids won't be effective and we'll be stuck with them...

mutatio• 4 years ago

Personally, I think it's merely increased individualism, exasperated by globalism.

You can still exercise your democratic right in the UK, Brexit being a good example, which was both unsupported by any meanstream party and a totally unexpected outcome. The Tories are in power because the previous iteration of the Labour party was simply a joke.

If you mean to say we're going backwards because you don't like such events, then personally I think that's something else.

n4r94• 4 years ago

Brexit is a good example of how democratic processes need improvement. Regardless of the outcome it's embarrassing that such a poorly regulated process with ill-defined outcomes, misinformation, and fraud, has led to a dramatic change in direction.

Also worth noting that the mainstream parties having a position does not somehow make it more democratic. Cameron's government was facing a lot of criticism at the time and there's a strong argument that some of the pro-Brexit votes were in protest against the government.

LatteLazy4• 4 years ago

I think Brexit is a perfect example of what I am talking about.

People think Brexit was democratic because there was a vote.

But only something like 37% of eligible people voted for it. over a third didn't turn out (in part because no one expected it to pass?).

And the vote was very regional: Scotland and London wanted to stay. But we're getting dragged out.

And the people who voted for brexit didn't vote for brexit, they collectively voted for one of at least 3 different, mutually exclusive things all called brexit, so they are mostly disappointed.

So you have less than 10 percent of voters getting what they actually voted "for". And that's for a permanent change, not a government who's policies can be reversed next election.

And that's without getting into the fake news, lies, impossible promises, broken promises, etc.

You may be a brexiteer, or a remainer like me. But we should all agree, the only thing democratic about brexit was that there was technically a vote. Which is about the same as North Korea or China manages...

earthbee• 4 years ago

Democracy doesn't work well when you're realistically only given only two options to vote for (or two and a half in the UK), and the bulk of the media is owned by a small group of extremely rich people who use their media empire to push their world view.

For a better functioning democracy we'd need to break up media monopolies to help democracy thrive on a variety of viewpoints instead of just two, and we'd need more options of people or parties to vote for.

But even still, do you think the UK would be functioning better if it was a straight up dictatorship? Looking at dictatorships around the world, it seems unlikely.

Even a very broken cruddy democracy is better than the alternative.

Cthulhu_5• 4 years ago

I want to believe a dictatorship by a good guy could work, but that's probably not realistic. I mean what even is a good guy? It's a philosophical question, I'm not very good / learned in that.

andi9992• 4 years ago

So from rank 22 or so the countries are labeled 'flawed democracy', arent the standards a bit too high?

Cthulhu_5• 4 years ago

So instead of making things better you think lowering the standards is a solution?

Just another data point showing that democracy and morals are backsliding fast.

pingsl• 4 years ago

This article is behind a paywall. I know there is a Chrome extension called "Bypass Paywalls". But I really don't want to use it, as it breaks the business model of the writers.

Daily chart: A new low for global democracy

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