US Is
No Longer A Full Democracy, EIU Warns
By
Nyshka Chandran
January
25, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"CNBC"
-
The U.S.
has been demoted from a full democracy to a
flawed democracy for the first time, according
to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
Every
year, the firm's Democracy Index provides a
snapshot of global democracy by scoring
countries on five categories: electoral process
and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning
of government; political participation; and
political culture. Nations are then classified
under four types of governments: full democracy,
flawed democracy, hybrid regime and
authoritarian regime.
America's
score fell to 7.98 last year from 8.05 in 2015,
below the 8.00 threshold for a full democracy,
the EIU announced in a report on Wednesday. That
put the world's largest economy on the same
footing as Italy,
a country known for its fractious politics.
A
flawed democracy is a country with free
elections but weighed down by weak governance,
an underdeveloped political culture and low
levels of political participation, according to
the EIU. Other flawed democracies in 2016
included Japan, France, Singapore, South Korea
and India, the report said.
However, Washington can't point fingers at
President Donald Trump for the nation's
downgrade.
"The
U.S. has been teetering on the brink of becoming
a flawed democracy for several years, and even
if there had been no presidential election in
2016, its score would have slipped below 8.00,"
the report explained. Instead, dwindling trust
in government, elected representatives and
political parties is to blame.
"Trust
in political institutions is an essential
component of well-functioning democracies. Yet
surveys by Pew, Gallup and other polling
agencies have confirmed that public confidence
in government has slumped to historic lows in
the U.S. This has had a corrosive effect on the
quality of democracy," the report found.
As other
developed countries experience a similar trust deficit,
contemporary democracy is undergoing a crisis, the EIU
said.
The increasing
role played by non-elected technocrats, increased voter
abstention and curbs on civil liberties are among the
main symptoms of this global malaise, the EIU said,
noting that almost half of the 167 countries covered by
its index registered a decline in overall scores between
2006 and 2016.
Countries that
scored between 4 to 5.9 on the index were classified as
hybrid regimes, i.e. nations whose elections possess
several irregularities. Examples on the EIU's list
included Turkey, Thailand, Myanmar and Morocco.
Norway topped
the EIU's list of full democracies last year, followed
by Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark; Canada and
Ireland tied for sixth place. The U.K., which also
experienced a volatile 2016 with its
Brexit referendum, was ranked 16th amid a rise in
popular engagement and membership of political parties.
Meanwhile,
North Korea, Syria, Chad and the Central African
Republic were among the EIU's authoritarian regimes.
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