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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

The news report is wildly misleading, the underlying study barely measures democracy at all. A more honest name would be the "governments that do what Bertelsmann Stiftung wants them to do index".

http://www.bti-project.org/en/index/methodology/

Various non-democratic elements that they include in the methodology are "No interference of religious dogmas", "market based competition", "anti-monopoly policy", "anti-inflation policy", "social safety nets", "equal opportunity" (under welfare regime), "GNI cc PPP rescaled", "education index", and all sorts of other things.

I'm all in favor of market based competition and anti-inflation, but you can totally have a democracy that lacks these things - Greece, for example. Voters might be influenced by religious dogmas and vote against market competition and equal opportunity; this is a feature of democracy.

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While I agree with you regarding the methodology, I think there is still some significant support for the overall premise. The thing that may be surprising and even rejected by many though is that my sense based on deep and broad insight is that the underpinning social attitudes are overshooting a correction triggered, really, by a negligence that had been allowed to permeate the west for a couple decades now.

"Democracy" is being eroded and undermined by the naive well intentioned types that wear their bleeding heart on their sleeves; the threat is really not even the "far right" or the "fascists". The real risk is the unseen, unrealized one that stares back at us when we look into the mirror. It is never the obvious risk that gets you. What is really eating its way through the "west" is a good example of unintended consequences and cascading failures that are permeating through society, politics, and government with elan.

"What is really eating its way through the "west" is a good example of unintended consequences and cascading failures that are permeating through society, politics, and government with elan."

Well put.

market based competition and anti-inflation, but you can totally have a democracy that lacks these things - Greece, for example.

What? Greece is part of the Euro area and therefore under the ECB anti-inflation umbrella. This resulted in moderate inflation until the crisis at which point it's experienced deflation.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/inflation-cpi

Greece also has market based competition under EU law; it's enshrined in the aquis communitaire.

Greece is very far from a market based economy. The article "Why is Greece so Successful" by Scott Sumner discusses in detail.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/07/why_is_greece_s....

Examining the ranks of economic freedom, we find Greece at 138. Italy, the next of the PIGS, is at 86. Only a couple of Euro nations (Bosnia and Croatia) are below Italy (102 and 108).

http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

You are right about inflation - I spoke badly. What I should have said is that the elected officials of Greece are not anti-inflation.

The ECB is not that strongly against inflation. They have a goal of 2% inflation. They've also received criticism from the German Bundesbank for risking to much inflation with their programs.

That is strongly against inflation - targeting 2% is the generally accepted optimum value, as price levels aren't uniform across the economy and targeting 0% requires actively driving down wages resulting in lots of needless strife.

(Also, think carefully about what a zero inflation target means in an economy coupled to the German economy: it would mean Greek wage and price levels below German price levels forever. In order for Europe to converge, local price levels have to change.)

I would disagree with your statement on religion.

Because the common religions tend not to be democratic(#), the influence of religious dogmas could make a nation less democratic.

EDIT: (#) but patriarchal / hierarchical / dogmatic / scripture-based / ...

That could be true, but if religion eliminates democracy then that should be reflected when measuring actual democracy.

Similarly, if you want to measure incidence of lung cancer, you measure "# of people with lung cancer" not "A x # of smokers + B x # of people with lung cancer".

I'll add "protection of private property rights", "liberalization of foreign trade", you mentioned "market band competition". These are largely ideological economic measurements.

The Bertelsmann Stiftung leans heavily towards being economically liberal. It would be surprising not to see that influence in the study.

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