Democracy Index 2016 | Hacker News Reader

Democracy Index 2016

eiu.com

69 pointsJyefet44 comments

The only surprising thing is that the US was ever classed as a "full" democracy. The US system largely inherits from the UK's system, which is also a largely broken version of democracy (with the Tories getting a disproportionate number of seats per vote, and smaller parties getting no seats in spite of having millions of voters).

Sweden is one country who has what I'd call a "full" democracy. You can read about seat distribution here[0] and the method here[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Sweden#Seat_alloc... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_meth...

The US and UK likely won't fix their flawed system because it is perfectly designed to direct power to an elite few while locking out everyone else. The biggest problem is that people vote for parties, so the parties in most areas select the winner for the voter (i.e. if an area is a Tory/Republican/whatever stronghold, the voters are going to tick that box no matter the name, making the political party itself the ultimate kingmaker).

I've lived in multiple areas where the winner of the election had never set foot in that area before. They were literally plucked from thin air, placed in a "safe" area, and got the win. Because people vote political party, and political parties pick who gets the seats. Thus allowing an elite to pick our leadership.

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

No: " The downgrade was not a consequence of Donald Trump, states the report. Rather, it was caused by the same factors that led Mr Trump to the White House: a continued erosion of trust in government and elected officials, which the index measures using data from global surveys. In total, it incorporates 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties." [1]

That link also has a really nice interactive world map.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-c...

However had Hillary won, this report would be different.

I wish that they had chosen colors for their "really nice interactive world map" that weren't so similar on the ends for the colorblind population of the world.

> because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there.

Guessing it is actually a combination of very low approval ratings across the board and the fact that the guy who was elected is encouraging distrust in the system.

So if you don't approve of / trust him, you don't trust the government. If you do trust him, you don't trust the government.

"So if you don't approve of / trust him, you don't trust the government. If you do trust him, you don't trust the government.", are you talking about Obama/Clinton?

The ones who have destroyed the Middle East, armed the syrian terrorists, buried Osama Bin Laden without showing its corpse ( but they showed Gaddafi's one, and he was muslim too, really strange ).

And the same who are spouting nonsense on the "russian hacking" without showing proof.

Seriously, if the american people distrust the government, it is because of the globalist oligarchs puppets actions.

What you're describing is the first half of what I said. And you're right, there has consistently been a sizable percentage of the electorate who doesn't trust the government.

What's relatively new is that now, the President is asking people who are on his side to distrust the rest of the government.

This is the scariest part.

I have a hard time seeing how his team's assertion of "alternative facts" (seemingly designed/delivered to undermine trust in every system we have built for the last 200 years) can lead to anything other than descent into fascism.

> because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there.

As perceived by the media... the same media who wanted the other candidate to be elected.

Well functioning media are also an important factor for a democracy. Apparently many people doubt the US has that. No matter how you look at it something important is broken. The difference in perception is what's the broken part.

I'll assume you downvoted me because you think that the article is wrong and not because you think I am wrong in my assessment of what the article is saying.

I don't disagree that the media at large would have preferred the other candidate. That would be true if the media was a perfect statistical representation of the country, and the media is not, it's largely focused in population centers, where the preference was overwhelming.

I can't even downvote.

No. The new administration is systematically undermining the norms that held up our strong democracy, on purpose. Any student of history recognizes moves like lying about crowd sizes, delegitimizing peaceful protests, and undermining the press. The president is lying daily about millions of people voting fraudulently; why should anyone have any confidence in our democracy, whether you somehow crazily believe him, or whether you know he's lying?

You seem to be going with the assumption that previous presidents told the truth. Trump is not as charismatic with the lies like Obama.

No. Any reasonable analysis comparing the two presidents shows immediately that Trump is in a whole other league. I'm not saying Obama was perfect, but he was most often misleading. Trump is saying the sky isn't blue, over and over again, and then forcing his communications team to say so as a loyalty test. The New York Times has now put "lie" in headlines describing Trump multiple times, and he's been in office less than a week. In a long campaign and then eight years governing that never once happened with Obama.

You knew when you wrote this that the only response will be "Thats because the NYT wants Obummer and hates Trump"

How is it even possible to come to the table when we cant both agree "Most large news sources come close enough to the truth"?

Just look at the crowd size thing. We can't even agree on a basic simple fact. We have to fix that before we can even think about starting to discus larger issues. But the issue of "We can't agree on basic simple facts" is a large issue so I guess we are just boned.

Looking at the data in Wikipedia[1], USA seems to be getting low scores for "Functioning of government" and "Political participation".

Also notice that the US score only fell from 8.05 to 7.98 [2] from last year, so the difference isn't that big. It was barely in the top category (8+) to begin with.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index [2]: http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democr...

I think they're trying to say that the democracy is now worse because we have a leader who is lying to the media, threatening voting rights based on unsupported claims, silencing scientists from sharing publicly funded research, and is charging journalists with felony charges for covering protests against him.

How about the previous President who ignored the Constitution blatantly (4th Amendment anyone?) and continued the global surveillance of US Citizens without any due process (unless you consider Secret Courts one?), and lying blatantly about it in the first place? Does that count for anything?

Certainly does, which is why our score went down last year before Trump took office.

It's more to do with people's trust in the government than Trump being elected. As an example - Trump's lies about the size of the crowd at inauguration.

How about trusting Obama when voting for him and then seeing him suing whistleblowers like never before, and continuing the never-ending trail of War in the Middle-East (without ANY Congress approval) despite getting a Nobel peace prize (let's not forget his personal "kill-list" for drone strikes too) ? And while he was supposed to be progressive about drug use, he has intensified the War on Drugs in practice to a level that even Bush did not even dream to go to. So, can we be honest a second about "trust in elected officials" ?

No, as the very short article says it's "because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there".

Nope. You'll be surprised to know that the article said nothing even remotely close to the thing you just made up!

Basically.

"Indices" like these are a pretty reliable way for interest groups to score press coverage.

Why would this be flagged? It is a good report with lot of information and analysis to gratify intellectual curiosity.

[flagged] on a post means > N users flagged it for a fairly large value of N. We don't know why users flagged it, but in this case I'd guess it's either because the material is politicized or because it requires a registration to download.

HN hasn't proven capable of discussing articles like this without devolving into a partisan spat, so I'd say the flags are reasonable.

It is probably the first case because I can download (view the pdf) without registering.

I was asked to register, so I suppose some others were too.

Ah, never mind, I see the "Welcome, [my university name] user." message on the top header.

Direct link: http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democr...

@US people: Are you aware of how election campaigns in other countries are like? It is no stars'n'stripes confetti craze with hot-air "discussions" and no more than two 'choices' everywhere. I was quite surprised by how much hot air was changing the sides when I saw one of the famous US television duels for the first time in the 2012 campaign. I almost completely ignored the 2016 campaign (apart from the results) given that it was looking much worse. How can an event with such a lack of serious discussion refer to itself as a democratic procedure?

That should have happened 16 years ago.

It should have happened 200 years ago. It ain't like our political system has really changed all that much since then (if anything, it's only gotten more democratic, what with the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement and women's suffrage). There has always been the opportunity for a President to be elected without the popular vote.

This exact situation happened in the 1876 and 1888 elections (and a similar but not exact case happened in 1824). The whole "fake news" epidemic also reeks strongly of the 1800 election.

Oh sure, I just don't think Democracy Index was around back then.

electors being chosen by party completely changes the dynamic. they are chosen and bound based on their loyalty

Does "erosion of trust" actually represent a quantifiable failure in the system of government itself?

Is 'trust' actually a metric? And if so, how is it measured? It sounds awfully subjective to me.

Oh so that's the "Trump effect" at play right? In reality the democracy has been eroding for many years in the US, especially if you consider all the concessions made to individuals rights since the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism - and that's nothing new, it dates back to the 70s already, and it should have been degraded to flawed democracy rating for a while now, regardless of whoever is the President.

So just another meaningless index that's playing politics instead of looking at facts.

> Oh so that's the "Trump effect" at play right?

Nope.

> In reality the democracy has been eroding for many years in the US, especially if you consider all the concessions made to individuals rights since the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism - and that's nothing new, it dates back to the 70s already, and it should have been degraded to flawed democracy rating for a while now, regardless of whoever is the President.

They essentially note this in the report, and say that the US score would have fallen below 8 regardless of who won the 2016 election.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

It's difficult to take the report seriously when it's titled Revenge of the Deplorables.

That said, America's place in the Democracy Index been downgraded based solely on some people(?) losing trust in the government rather than actual hard data. Personally I think this is no more authoritative than a Facebook survey.

Their method deserves investigating though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Method

Example questions:

* "Whether national elections are free and fair";

* "The security of voters";

* "The influence of foreign powers on government";

* "The capability of the civil servants to implement policies".

This poll reeks of the same polls claiming 98% chance of Clinton winning the Presidential election, namely fudging it by sampling only folks with a certain political leaning.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/electio...

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