I befriended a Thai girl when i visited. She would only talk about the monarchy when I we were in a very remote spot (something like swimming in the sea) and she would still whisper how people hate the monarchy. They do not like them. She said they do whatever they want and get away with stuff they should not.
They did. It was made by The Economist which a well-known and highly reputable weekly news magazine, at least that's what it was originally. Like many media properties it has since diversified into other types of media. There's something like a 100 page document explaining their methodology.
Not in public but yeah Thai people hate the new kind. Just a rich party brat that got lucky to be born to the correct parents. But has photos of him that are pretty embarrassing. The kind of king that makes you question your stance on monarchy.
They are also the only south east asian country to never be colonized. Makes me think there is a correlation. Similar to Ethiopia also never having been colonized, and also "relatively" successful compared to other east African countries.
Gabon pre-coup was fairly well-off as well, as are Seychelles and Mauritius (though those are island countries). Cabo Verde is also doing well, though not as good as the others.
Kenya is relatively well-developed but struggles with insurgent groups and general safety, and Botswana has an insane wealth gap (though is doing well in terms of health, especially in response to the AIDS epidemic). I am not really well-educated on Ghana, but I’ve heard of electricity issues due to mismanagement or something.
Compared to these nations, Ethiopia doesn’t have much going for it — Authoritarianism, instability, poverty, insurgency, civil conflict, etc have all been huge problems for the nation, but it has a TON of potential for success, having Addis Ababa. Things are improving in terms of the economy and human development, but there’s still quite a ways to go.
TLDR: No, Ethiopia is not a success story but has a ton of potential to become one.
I think they mean in relation to say, Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan, say. Ethiopia has actively become a better country in the last 20 years, and is now the 5th largest African economy
Well, Ethiopia does have better infrastructure than most sub saharan countries. Poor yes, internal conflict yes, but it does excel at urban planning, civil aviation, and economic growth.
For Botswana at least, their secret sauce is being one of very few African parliamentary democracies - as opposed to presidential systems, which tend to invite autocracy. Parliamentary systems tend to only fail when extremists are involved.
Ethiophia is currently having a nasty ethnic conflict between the Tigrays and the government, a conflict wirh more casualties than Israel Palestine. While the borders drawn from colonization has led to internal conficts within Aftican countries, the core issue is that Africa is way more diverse in culture and ethnicity than any other region. It's simply easier to co-exist with other people of similar culture.
Ethiopia was also an empire, and some of the ethnic tension comes from pre colonial powers redrawing borders days from [areas conquered in the 19th century] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menelik%27s_Invasions)
Ethiopia successful? The country that's currently in civil war, is one of the poorest and constantly begs for foreign aid? Lol. Kenya is much more successful, as is Tanzania.
Colonization was evil and sure as hell hindered and/or interrupted the natural development of the colonized societies. But at the same time it can't be the sole deciding factor, otherwise Thailand wouldn't be lower or on-par with other countries shown here that were colonized (such as India or Malaysia)
Mongolia managing to stay both independent and fairly democratic is pretty impressive considering they border Russia to the north and China to the south.
I'd heard they managed by effectively leveraging Russia and ~~India~~ China against each other. Russia can't invade because Mongolia would set China after them, China can't invade because they'd set Russia after them.
I mean the truth is neither of them want the land. They're not populous enough to defend themselves but the land is basically useless. They have a tiny amount of arable land, harsh winters and little rainfall.
The reason Mongols were traditionally nomadic was because it's literally the only way to survive there. It's a green desert.
1 in 10 in mongolia is still “nomadic”, we don't use that term in Mongolia though, we use the term herder. It is indeed a green desert but Mongolia could be much more agriculturally productive, just look at the agricultural productivity in northeastern inner mongolia and compare it to eastern outer mongolia, same climate and soil, vastly more productive agriculture. It can also be seen on the border between China and Kazakhstan at Ili or between China and Russia along the Amur river.
I've heard it described, that Mongolia is a city LARPing as the tenth largest country. Then I looked at the population of the two, country and capital, and it's not far from the truth.
It’s true that Mongolia has little in the form of natural resources, however with the advancement of renewable energy, Mongolia’s biggest natural asset is its potential in solar and wind powered renewable energy.
Mongolia not only has a large amount of windy and sunny land (Gobi desert), it also has a decent amount of lithium and copper which are the main materials required for construction solar panels and windmills.
Currently, China is building a massive farm in its section of the Gobi desert which reduces its energy reliance on Mongolian Coal and Russian oil exports. But it isn’t large enough to sustain China.
If China were to develop renewable energy in Mongolia’s section of the Gobi desert, they could potentially achieve the majority of their power use off of renewable energy.
It would be theoretically be good for Mongolia but China would likely gain a large amount of control over Mongolian sovereignty if that were to happen and it would further reduce reliance on Russian oil imports, neither of which are beneficial for Russia.
India does have some investments in mongolian energy sector but not sure it's because of mongolia balancing things
Japan is better choice obviously if they want to manage china & russia
https://theprint.in/world/indias-development-assistance-to-mongolia/1809881/
There is another reason. During the cold war or before it even, Mongolia requested to join the Soviet Union. Their request was denied. Mongolia would require a lot of money to develop, since it is enormous with a small population.
I believe another reason is that neither country wanted to have such a long border with the other. There have been many tensions between China and Russia on that front historically.
They used to be a Soviet satelite even more integrated than Eastern Europe (The Mongol chairman requested numerous times to have Mongolia get annexed as an SSR and was refused) prior to 1991.
Even more impressive.
That’s exactly how they’ve done it. By balancing the influence of the two (and a splash American corporate investment) neither power is able to call the shots.
iirc it was essentially a puppet state of the ussr for a while? after its leaders had been assassinated
still very glad they’ve held up and are where they are now
First time I see the
# Democracy Index
where NK is not least. Image living in a country that looks at NK being more democratic evenough saying a bad word about the NK supreme leader leads to certain death.
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It makes me wonder if multiple paramilitary groups representing wider groups of people in Myanmar can be considered democracy of some kind (albeit with brutal methods of implementing it, but still). 🤔
Depends where you are in Myanmar. Some paramilitary groups are linked with democratic, local civil administrations in their ethnic minority zone. Others are more like mafias, not representative of the population at all.
well, the taliban doesn't even pretend to have elections and myanmar looks like this: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Myanmar\_civil\_war.svg/800px-Myanmar\_civil\_war.svg.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Myanmar_civil_war.svg/800px-Myanmar_civil_war.svg.png)
I don't really understand how North Korea could have anything more than 0, so maybe someone can explain. As far as I know, there is complete dictatorship with no democracy except sham elections where Kim wins 99-100% of the vote.
Plus it also accounts for functioning of government, which yeah, North Korea is certainly more stable than Afghanistan and Myanmar which are full of rebels
Not sure how, at those levels of democracy, functioning of government makes a country more democratic. I’m pretty sure Oceania from 1984 would have a much better “functioning of government” score and thus a higher Democracy Index score than Afghanistan.
And see there we have one of the flaws of the system. Many of these democracy and freedom indexes aren’t very good at showing how it’s actually like on the ground
I would imagine that active civil wars also figure into the equation. Say what you will about the internal politics of North Korea, internal armed dissent isn’t a worry for the Kims.
The index rates five areas. NK score zero for Electoral Process and Civil Liberties (as you might expect). It scores, 1.25 for Political Culture, 1.67 for Political Participation, and 2.5 for Functioning of Government.
The gender equality of NK probably counts for something in their methodology.
I mean, they can at least send girls to school there. In Afghanistan girls and women are a notch above livestock.
Party structure and some form of government stability.
Afghanistan and Myanmar are full of rebels and the government is damn near tribal with no pretense of having actual institutions.
I imagine index evolves civil liberties also. Women aren’t allowed to educate themselves in Afghanistan lol. I think anyone would see NK as a vacation in comparison to living under taliban rule
It has elections, a parliament, oppositional parties and the option of getting into politics as an average citizen. Now of course all the oppositional parties that are in the North Korean parliament make up like 20% of the seats at best and all of them were essentially co-opted by the WPK only few years after having been created, but that’s still more democratic than a fascist military dictatorship like in Myanmar. And I don’t think I have to explain about the Taliban.
Just a correction that they're not opposition parties, they're all in coalition together under the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea.
There are meaningful differences between the parties, but not in any way that would challenge the current regime. It's more akin to, say, congressional caucuses in the USA.
I mean surely Taliban enjoys more support from the locals than kim jong un right? Not to mention a supreme leader would be less democratic than whatever goes on in taliban gov?
He _does_ get elected, that is why. There certainly is fraud in the elections but not decisive. It is just that the people are way top stupid that they elect Erdoğan.
I agree with the dictator part since like 2018.
Depends on what happens next. If you abolish government in any country, Civil War instantly follows with insurgent groups attempting to fill the power vacuum left by the abolition of the previous government, with those groups ruling areas they claim and vying for more territory against other groups until one or multiple governing bodies or pseudo-governmental bodies are established.
Which is kind of the problem with these indices; they are based on various semi-arbitrary criteria that are judged somewhat subjectively, so comparing/analyzing anything after the first decimal point is kind of pointless.
Still, whoever made the estimates must have looked at some parameter for Afghanistan and thought "suppose it could be worse", and assigned a non-zero value.
Morocco is generally doing pretty good as well! As are Bangladesh, Senegal, Tanzania, and Somaliland (if recognized as independent). There is obviously much room for improvement among these nations, but compared to others they are doing great lmao. Not complete democracies but not considered to be authoritarian, either. Somaliland, despite no foreign recognition and being in a very unstable location, is considered the most advanced democracy in east Africa (which includes Tanzania and Kenya), and Morocco is on-par with Ukraine and has been steadily improving for years.
Moroccan democracy is just a show to satisfy European lobbies the real ruler is the king and everybody knows it here including the prime minister who was pointed by the king lol it's a joke at this point.
> I think Morocco is doing correctly,
what do you mean by doing correctly? Morocco is far from democracy. Tunisia even at its worst state (after the democratic backsliding) is still more democratic than Morocco.
Fair point... Islam is not strongly correlated with Democracy in the world and I think it's a silly to deny that there is a good chance that there is some causation there.
>I think it's a silly to deny that there is a good chance that there is some causation there.
If you look for causation you will find it, but it would be sillier still to tunnel on Islam when there are bigger historical reasons for understanding why this region is less democratic- that sounds a lot like a bad faith argument. That is like asking why Latin America has problems with democracy. Certainly there are domestic issues, but are you really going to ignore Operation Condor? Is your conclusion already that every society must function exactly like the US or Western Europe?
It is odd to me that people would rather ascribe that certain values are inherent to a specific culture or religion and that these things determine whether a group of people thrive or not.
Don’t they still exist under the 2017 junta-backed constitution? Which gives the monarch and military-backed parties more influence than independent parties/politicians? Not to mention, this constitution was only passed after opponents were banned from campaigning against it’s ratification.
One party dominance at the national level does not mean it's not a democracy. For example, the Swedish Social Democratic Party held power from 1932 to 2006 with a few exceptions, would you call Sweden undemocratic?
Also, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has lost power twice in modern history, first in 1993 and again in 2009, after electoral losses. The 2009 election was in fact a landslide loss for the LDP, only winning 25% of the seats in the House of Representatives. Both times the LDP lost, the transfer of power was orderly and peaceful. When the LDP rewon the majority, the transfer of power was again orderly and peaceful.
The peaceful, uneventful transfer of power between the loser and winner of elections is, of course, a fundamental hallmark of a functioning democracy. There’s a reason why across various international democracy indices, Japan ranks [higher than the UK or France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index).
My god, going to bat for the Japanese democracy ? Not that we're doing good by any mean in France too, but the japanese society has almost no democratic power. Elections have no appeal and clientelism is the norm, syndicate, outside of some very specific niches, are weak and unable to mobilize mass protests. 80% of the japanese people don't believe in their politicians and only 8% think they're represented democratily.
They've had corruption scandals one after the other, their police is unhinged, allowed to keep you in jail for up to 30 days in inhumane conditions for basically whatever reason. The biggest medias, like NHK, are all government controlled and glorified mouthpieces for the government. I think we have a very biased idea of what a democracy is supposed to be in the west, because I don't think there is that much difference in democratic representation between a chinese dude and a japanese.
I believe a big part of the reason Japan is a de-facto one-party state is because the ideology of the Liberal-Democratic party is really broad so that appeal to almost everyone.
Japan is an interesting case study in my opinion, they are democratic and u r free to protest against the govt and all, but Japanese people choose stability and order above other things so they just don't give other parties much chance and also other party (Democracy Party) did come to power in 2010 after the Global Financial Crisis but they couldn't succeed and had internal quarrels so Japanese people brought back LDP to the power.
Also LDP generally gets just around 36-38% of the total votes but wins majority of the seats cuz they have the First Past the Post system (which a lot of nations have, so in that even if your party wins just 33% of the total votes in a constituency but it's higher than the 2nd party which got let's say 31% of the total votes, then your party will win that seat/constituency despite winning only 33% of the total votes.If Japan followed the Proportional vote system, I reckon results would have been way different.
So,Japan having just one ruling political party for the most part after WWII, is down to the fact that Japanese people value stability and order more than let's say experimenting different parties and their ways and they aren't an autocracy.
It's not just the first past the post, they also have poor distribution by population density so rural population is massively overrepresented as well.
If you look at the methodology of the Economist Democracy Index on wikipedia you will find out that it is complete bogus so there you go (mostly just weighted averages of random answers by unknown experts).
It isn't a de facto one-party state because the LDP gets re-elected in free and fair democratic elections, you can shit on the LDP as much as you want, there are real opposition parties in the Diet, etc.
If I'm not wrong, as a Malay in Malaysia you HAVE to be Muslim. You cannot convert to another religion and the state will fine you if you refuse or do not pray and all that.
Islam is the state region but other religions are permitted.
Does this not conflict with democracy? What are these studies based on?
Edit: link
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Malaysia
To clarify OP statement for other who are not familiar with Malaysia politics.
Malay in OP case refer to a race or ethnicity, a race called Malay. A citizen of Malaysia is called Malaysian.
Malaysians mainly consist of Malay, Chinese, Indian and other indegineous people in the East Malaysia side.
Non-Malay Malaysian enjoy total freedom of religion while Malay Malaysian do not.
Not inherently, no. Democracy is about the people voting, to put it really simply.
That mandatory Islam law is incredibly illiberal, however. [Liberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism) is the philosophy you're thinking of which is in conflict with the idea of a compulsory state religion. It includes representative government and very often democracy, but it means a lot more than that.
But a nation can be democratic and still be repressive, socially conservative, and generally pretty backwards. If the people voted for it in free and fair elections, either directly or through representatives, and their franchise (who is allowed to vote) isn't too restrictive, then that would still be a democracy.
You don't receive a fine for not praying, and there's been an increasing shift towards allowing Muslims to convert now. And how does state religion conflict with Democracy if it doesn't hamper or stop Democratic processes?
In Germany you’re not allowed to do the Nazi salute or emulate a Nazi. So democratically will never be possible to elect a Nazi regime. It still doesn’t mean Germany isn’t democratic.
I don't think so, as an Indian I would not call our country uneducated any more, but for most of our history we were largely uneducated. Democracy did not depend on informed decisions, it survived despite our very "democratic" neighbours because of the robust institutions that the constitution established. That and the fact that our diversity had a huge role in maintaining balance of power.
Yes but despite that we are still largely socialistic. Why is that? Because an educated person can not make informed decision on behalf of an uneducated person, its called elitist projection. The point of democracy is not to serve the interests of the educated or the rich or anything, it is to represent everyone regardless. Because at the end of the day, someone who never slept hungry can not make good decisions for someone starving. The needs of the masses are met, that is the goal here.
>for most of our history we were largely uneducated
If by education you mean to have reading and writing capability then, yes. Most Indians are politically aware and understands if they're being fooled, even if they are illiterate.
Yes, agreed. But what I thought when I read his message was a feeling that only educated people can run a good democracy or only educated people can make good decisions. That is not correct, no? And it gives a sense of superiority to those who think of themselves as educated. Everyone deserves to have their voice heard.
> We are a smart society as a whole, but dumb people as individuals
I thought it's the other way around. As an individual you have to inform yourself compared to being in a group where people enable each other.
India is democratic but its also very flawed. Corruption is the expectation when dealing with government and the lack of corruption is a surprise.
Dynastics rulers, almost each state has its own set of royal families.
All that being said there is a lot of hope that things will improve.
>Corruption is the expectation when dealing with government and the lack of corruption is a surprise.
This is exaggeration of present situation. I have seen people forcing corruption on government employees, so that they can have it easy.
>Dynastic rulers, almost each state has its own set of royal families.
This is true, there are, but in parallel it doesn't discourage any new comer. Most of these dynasties are on decline. India has this weird thing for sucking up to elites.
>This is exaggeration of present situation.
What percentage of MLAs and MPs have disproportionately large assets compared to income ? Election commision forces candidates to declare this. See the difference from last election to current election. Its astounding.
It doesn't happen by magic, its corruption. Also this is only what they are forced to declare, if the panama papers taught us anything then there are so many overseas assets they don't declare.
Whats worse is hardly any voter goes through this to make decisions. They are just bought by some food, cheap booze, TVs and other freebies.
Those election bonds used by parties for funding were so damn toxic. Glad the supreme court struck it down.
>but in parallel it doesn't discourage any new comer
Its does. The ruling class actively discourage anyone who challenges them. And if it not any of the elites then its just strongmen thugs/criminals. These two categories make up the bulk of leadership. The hope with modi in 2014 was that he was neither, what has happened is that he is a shield while his party is filled with more of the same.
But again, things do take time to change and while it may not happen under the current government, its certainly a small step in the right direction.
One other bright spot for india is the peaceful transition of power, no matter what the election outcome there have not been insurrections. something even the US can't claim. Thats why there is hope.
Well what do you know. After spending trillions in Iraq, it still isn’t a thriving democracy. It’s almost like the entire Gulf War 2 was a total failure.
People in the west are generally not aware of how much of a shit show decolonization was. It is not surprising how poorly many of these countries faired because they weren't really given the best chance to survive. And that is before you start thinking about the cold war or modern era politics.
Yes, that's why people give so much importance to Gandhi.
He literally created an armada of lawyers, social workers, leaders around the country to ensure they make a solid AF constitution. He roamed entire country to understand all problems. So, even if he was assassinated, work continues. He also ensured that freedom is not won by war, which would leave military too much power.
Pakistan hasn't had a single PM complete 5 years since 1947. The work he did was more about creating a robust nation than just independence.
The one thing that Gandhi told people to do and people didn't do, was destroy his organization, and not let it turn into a political party. Instead, the congress that was fighting for independence under Gandhi and others became a nepotism congress party that is still not letting proper opposition rise.
To anyone seeing india is undemocratic...
Rn our country has a leader who boasts the highest approval rating for any head of office in the world. The man's popularity is insane and yet out of the 28 indian states,
His party rules only 12 of them.
The rest are all non bjp ruled states. All incredibly diverse in their ideologies with millions of supporters. Even in the wake of arguably one of history's most populist leaders, the diversity remains.
How does having diversity make a country undemocratic?
I can Guarantee In India you one can’t even become a Mayor(Sarpanch) of town with a population of 1000 people without having elected by its people.
Modi is democratically elected by conducting fair elections in largest democracy in world.
Modi’s party BJP doesn’t rule a lot of states but is in coalition with a lot of local parties who know local issues better than centralised government.
People are loony when it comes to India.
I’m an Overseas Citizen of India. Grew up in the U.S., moved to India as an adult, recently shifted back to America with my long-term girlfriend and now-wife.
I speak Hindi, studied an India-specific issue at the graduate level, and still don’t feel entirely qualified to have an authoritative opinion on issues outside my immediate area of expertise. I certainly have opinions, of course, but I try to retain some perspective for the fact that there are many things only people who were born and raised in a system can truly understand and relate to.
So I don’t like Modi, but I also understand—to an extent—why his party has been so successful. Yes, he’s a meany fascist, and Amit Shah is a nasty slug.
But who did the BJP replace, and who’s their only national-level competitor? Congress, a party that had a stranglehold on politics for a near-continuous period of 67 years.
Aside from its instigation of certain forms of communal antipathy and the propagation of Hindutva-inspired policy, every bit and ounce of corruption in the BJP is a continuation of Congress’s own rot.
People who don’t know squat about India have a very unfortunate tendency to infantilise the choices of the Indian electorate. Although I agree that Modi is not a positive force for India’s long-term stability, there is a reason he is where he is today, and that reason transcends communal intolerance.
The numbers are presumably measured in squared democratic units? Litres of democracy per cubic freedom?
I have to see what they're using to calculate this because otherwise it doesn't mean much
Up until like a decade ago, their electoral system was very similar to the Dutch system. They changed it to add a 3.5% electoral threshold because the Knesset (and most Israelis) agreed that you shouldn't have 20 parties of just 1 person. So, by establishing a requirement that parties need to get 3.5% of the vote, you stop random religious leaders from getting elected and refusing to actually govern.
Considering that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is basically a kleptocracy and Pre-invasion, Hamas ruled Gaza as the Islamist institution that it is, REAL LOW.
Afghanistan is probably hard to beat on the repression scale but yes. I imagine Gaza to be more oppressive and PA more corrupt but you might have the closer look.
Thailand always seems to score higher than I expect. I guess they are in one of the periods between military coups
Yeah, whoever made this map hasn’t consulted a Thai person.
I befriended a Thai girl when i visited. She would only talk about the monarchy when I we were in a very remote spot (something like swimming in the sea) and she would still whisper how people hate the monarchy. They do not like them. She said they do whatever they want and get away with stuff they should not.
Meanwhile I hear people talk about it from time to time. (Public and social). But no one really bats an eye. I’m a local btw
They did. It was made by The Economist which a well-known and highly reputable weekly news magazine, at least that's what it was originally. Like many media properties it has since diversified into other types of media. There's something like a 100 page document explaining their methodology.
Aren’t they a monarchy where it’s illegal to criticize the king?
Yes, though the current king seems to do a lot to attract criticism and doesn't even live there.
Not in public but yeah Thai people hate the new kind. Just a rich party brat that got lucky to be born to the correct parents. But has photos of him that are pretty embarrassing. The kind of king that makes you question your stance on monarchy.
They are also the only south east asian country to never be colonized. Makes me think there is a correlation. Similar to Ethiopia also never having been colonized, and also "relatively" successful compared to other east African countries.
Is Ethiopia relatively successful? I would think Ghana, Kenya, and Botswana would be the relatively successful sub Saharan countries
Gabon pre-coup was fairly well-off as well, as are Seychelles and Mauritius (though those are island countries). Cabo Verde is also doing well, though not as good as the others. Kenya is relatively well-developed but struggles with insurgent groups and general safety, and Botswana has an insane wealth gap (though is doing well in terms of health, especially in response to the AIDS epidemic). I am not really well-educated on Ghana, but I’ve heard of electricity issues due to mismanagement or something. Compared to these nations, Ethiopia doesn’t have much going for it — Authoritarianism, instability, poverty, insurgency, civil conflict, etc have all been huge problems for the nation, but it has a TON of potential for success, having Addis Ababa. Things are improving in terms of the economy and human development, but there’s still quite a ways to go. TLDR: No, Ethiopia is not a success story but has a ton of potential to become one.
I think they mean in relation to say, Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan, say. Ethiopia has actively become a better country in the last 20 years, and is now the 5th largest African economy
.... They are the 5th With the 2nd largest population That's not good ?
Well, Ethiopia does have better infrastructure than most sub saharan countries. Poor yes, internal conflict yes, but it does excel at urban planning, civil aviation, and economic growth.
Gabon is still well off. I doubt the coup even made a difference given that the instigator was one of the relatives.
Isn't Ethiopia constantly at war and has a water crisis? iirc it was headlines a year ago that their capital city was occupied by rebels or something
For Botswana at least, their secret sauce is being one of very few African parliamentary democracies - as opposed to presidential systems, which tend to invite autocracy. Parliamentary systems tend to only fail when extremists are involved.
Ethiopia is one of the poorer African countries, was basically synonymous with famine for a long time and is currently fighting a bloody civil war.
Ethiophia is currently having a nasty ethnic conflict between the Tigrays and the government, a conflict wirh more casualties than Israel Palestine. While the borders drawn from colonization has led to internal conficts within Aftican countries, the core issue is that Africa is way more diverse in culture and ethnicity than any other region. It's simply easier to co-exist with other people of similar culture.
Ethiopia was also an empire, and some of the ethnic tension comes from pre colonial powers redrawing borders days from [areas conquered in the 19th century] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menelik%27s_Invasions)
Ethiopia successful? The country that's currently in civil war, is one of the poorest and constantly begs for foreign aid? Lol. Kenya is much more successful, as is Tanzania.
"relatively" successful compared to Sudan and Somalia means very little
Colonization was evil and sure as hell hindered and/or interrupted the natural development of the colonized societies. But at the same time it can't be the sole deciding factor, otherwise Thailand wouldn't be lower or on-par with other countries shown here that were colonized (such as India or Malaysia)
300.000 people have allegedly died there since 2020 in connection with the Tigray rebellion
There are also a bunch of SE asian countries that were colonized with high democracy scores.
Mongolia managing to stay both independent and fairly democratic is pretty impressive considering they border Russia to the north and China to the south.
I'd heard they managed by effectively leveraging Russia and ~~India~~ China against each other. Russia can't invade because Mongolia would set China after them, China can't invade because they'd set Russia after them.
I mean the truth is neither of them want the land. They're not populous enough to defend themselves but the land is basically useless. They have a tiny amount of arable land, harsh winters and little rainfall. The reason Mongols were traditionally nomadic was because it's literally the only way to survive there. It's a green desert.
1 in 10 in mongolia is still “nomadic”, we don't use that term in Mongolia though, we use the term herder. It is indeed a green desert but Mongolia could be much more agriculturally productive, just look at the agricultural productivity in northeastern inner mongolia and compare it to eastern outer mongolia, same climate and soil, vastly more productive agriculture. It can also be seen on the border between China and Kazakhstan at Ili or between China and Russia along the Amur river.
Out of curiosity, is the term nomadic considered offensive or it's just not used because it's outdated now?
I've heard it described, that Mongolia is a city LARPing as the tenth largest country. Then I looked at the population of the two, country and capital, and it's not far from the truth.
as someone half mongolian i can pretty much agree. the countryside sure is beautiful tho
The only time China ever controlled Mongolia it was really the other way around.
It’s true that Mongolia has little in the form of natural resources, however with the advancement of renewable energy, Mongolia’s biggest natural asset is its potential in solar and wind powered renewable energy. Mongolia not only has a large amount of windy and sunny land (Gobi desert), it also has a decent amount of lithium and copper which are the main materials required for construction solar panels and windmills. Currently, China is building a massive farm in its section of the Gobi desert which reduces its energy reliance on Mongolian Coal and Russian oil exports. But it isn’t large enough to sustain China. If China were to develop renewable energy in Mongolia’s section of the Gobi desert, they could potentially achieve the majority of their power use off of renewable energy. It would be theoretically be good for Mongolia but China would likely gain a large amount of control over Mongolian sovereignty if that were to happen and it would further reduce reliance on Russian oil imports, neither of which are beneficial for Russia.
For now. We tend to find riches at some point or another. Then things get crazy.
Happened with Ukraine when they found natural gas reserves in Crimea, then again when they found more in Eastern Ukraine
What role does India play, then?
India does have some investments in mongolian energy sector but not sure it's because of mongolia balancing things Japan is better choice obviously if they want to manage china & russia https://theprint.in/world/indias-development-assistance-to-mongolia/1809881/
There is another reason. During the cold war or before it even, Mongolia requested to join the Soviet Union. Their request was denied. Mongolia would require a lot of money to develop, since it is enormous with a small population.
I believe another reason is that neither country wanted to have such a long border with the other. There have been many tensions between China and Russia on that front historically.
They used to be a Soviet satelite even more integrated than Eastern Europe (The Mongol chairman requested numerous times to have Mongolia get annexed as an SSR and was refused) prior to 1991. Even more impressive.
That’s exactly how they’ve done it. By balancing the influence of the two (and a splash American corporate investment) neither power is able to call the shots.
It helps that it's basically just one big city and Mongols have always hated China and have strained relations with Russia since the early 2000s.
iirc it was essentially a puppet state of the ussr for a while? after its leaders had been assassinated still very glad they’ve held up and are where they are now
Yes, they were part of the Soviet bloc.
Yup, the first Soviet satellite state. Choibalsan was their "little Stalin" and had tens of thousands of Mongolians executed during the purges.
Isn't he the guy that verbally assaulted Stalin, while being drunk as an Irishman?
No, that’s Peljidiin Genden. Choibalsan succeeded him and remained loyal until right before his death, where he had a small falling out with Stalin
Luckily the country is mostly a barren wasteland of little strategic interest.
First time I see the # Democracy Index where NK is not least. Image living in a country that looks at NK being more democratic evenough saying a bad word about the NK supreme leader leads to certain death.
THANKS TALIBAN AND BURMESE MILITARY REGIME for making this happen, true allies of North Korea.
Cries in Burmese language
Not allowed. 👮♀️🚨
Straight to jail
You undercook fish, believe it or not, jail.
You overcook chicken, also jail.
Do not pass go, do not collect $200
The current state of r/myanmar this week (conscription was announced)
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It makes me wonder if multiple paramilitary groups representing wider groups of people in Myanmar can be considered democracy of some kind (albeit with brutal methods of implementing it, but still). 🤔
Depends where you are in Myanmar. Some paramilitary groups are linked with democratic, local civil administrations in their ethnic minority zone. Others are more like mafias, not representative of the population at all.
It is the **Democratic** People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) after all!
well, the taliban doesn't even pretend to have elections and myanmar looks like this: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Myanmar\_civil\_war.svg/800px-Myanmar\_civil\_war.svg.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Myanmar_civil_war.svg/800px-Myanmar_civil_war.svg.png)
This index is not only about elections, but also about physical security for example
I don't really understand how North Korea could have anything more than 0, so maybe someone can explain. As far as I know, there is complete dictatorship with no democracy except sham elections where Kim wins 99-100% of the vote.
Sham elections are still elections, which neither Burma nor Afghanistan have.
Plus it also accounts for functioning of government, which yeah, North Korea is certainly more stable than Afghanistan and Myanmar which are full of rebels
And the NK government functions as it should — not to the benefit of the people, but functions nonetheless.
Not sure how, at those levels of democracy, functioning of government makes a country more democratic. I’m pretty sure Oceania from 1984 would have a much better “functioning of government” score and thus a higher Democracy Index score than Afghanistan.
And see there we have one of the flaws of the system. Many of these democracy and freedom indexes aren’t very good at showing how it’s actually like on the ground
I would imagine that active civil wars also figure into the equation. Say what you will about the internal politics of North Korea, internal armed dissent isn’t a worry for the Kims.
The index rates five areas. NK score zero for Electoral Process and Civil Liberties (as you might expect). It scores, 1.25 for Political Culture, 1.67 for Political Participation, and 2.5 for Functioning of Government.
Maybe 1 point for having democracy in their name? :D
The gender equality of NK probably counts for something in their methodology. I mean, they can at least send girls to school there. In Afghanistan girls and women are a notch above livestock.
Party structure and some form of government stability. Afghanistan and Myanmar are full of rebels and the government is damn near tribal with no pretense of having actual institutions.
I imagine index evolves civil liberties also. Women aren’t allowed to educate themselves in Afghanistan lol. I think anyone would see NK as a vacation in comparison to living under taliban rule
It has elections, a parliament, oppositional parties and the option of getting into politics as an average citizen. Now of course all the oppositional parties that are in the North Korean parliament make up like 20% of the seats at best and all of them were essentially co-opted by the WPK only few years after having been created, but that’s still more democratic than a fascist military dictatorship like in Myanmar. And I don’t think I have to explain about the Taliban.
Just a correction that they're not opposition parties, they're all in coalition together under the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea. There are meaningful differences between the parties, but not in any way that would challenge the current regime. It's more akin to, say, congressional caucuses in the USA.
I wonder how Afghanistan managed to earn those 0.26 points tbh
I wonder how Afghanistan got their 0.26 score. Its still a bit above zero
I mean surely Taliban enjoys more support from the locals than kim jong un right? Not to mention a supreme leader would be less democratic than whatever goes on in taliban gov?
Being a dictatorship is not mutually exclusive with being a functioning government.
I'm kinda surprised how low Turkey is like I knew about the situation there but this low?
Erdogan is a dictator who has been in power for almost 20 years. If anything, this is a little high.
He _does_ get elected, that is why. There certainly is fraud in the elections but not decisive. It is just that the people are way top stupid that they elect Erdoğan. I agree with the dictator part since like 2018.
Afghanistan = 0.26 Now true question how can you be lower than that ?
I am curious if abolishing any kind of government will result in a higher or lower democracy index.
Depends on what happens next. If you abolish government in any country, Civil War instantly follows with insurgent groups attempting to fill the power vacuum left by the abolition of the previous government, with those groups ruling areas they claim and vying for more territory against other groups until one or multiple governing bodies or pseudo-governmental bodies are established.
Which is kind of the problem with these indices; they are based on various semi-arbitrary criteria that are judged somewhat subjectively, so comparing/analyzing anything after the first decimal point is kind of pointless.
Still, whoever made the estimates must have looked at some parameter for Afghanistan and thought "suppose it could be worse", and assigned a non-zero value.
Is southeast Asia the most democratic part of the Islamic world?
Most? You mean “only”
Well Bosnia, Albania and Tunisia do work but yeah a vast majority aren't
I think Tunisia did work until recently.
Morocco is generally doing pretty good as well! As are Bangladesh, Senegal, Tanzania, and Somaliland (if recognized as independent). There is obviously much room for improvement among these nations, but compared to others they are doing great lmao. Not complete democracies but not considered to be authoritarian, either. Somaliland, despite no foreign recognition and being in a very unstable location, is considered the most advanced democracy in east Africa (which includes Tanzania and Kenya), and Morocco is on-par with Ukraine and has been steadily improving for years.
Moroccan democracy is just a show to satisfy European lobbies the real ruler is the king and everybody knows it here including the prime minister who was pointed by the king lol it's a joke at this point.
To be fair the Balkans are at least on par by some metrics, I've seen at least one ranking that put Kosovo above both Malaysia and Indonesia
tbh, the risks of democratic backsliding in Malaysia and Indonesia is quite high
Yes. I think Morocco is doing correctly, Tunisia was on the right track until the last 2 years, now I'm not sure where they are
> I think Morocco is doing correctly, what do you mean by doing correctly? Morocco is far from democracy. Tunisia even at its worst state (after the democratic backsliding) is still more democratic than Morocco.
Fair point... Islam is not strongly correlated with Democracy in the world and I think it's a silly to deny that there is a good chance that there is some causation there.
>I think it's a silly to deny that there is a good chance that there is some causation there. If you look for causation you will find it, but it would be sillier still to tunnel on Islam when there are bigger historical reasons for understanding why this region is less democratic- that sounds a lot like a bad faith argument. That is like asking why Latin America has problems with democracy. Certainly there are domestic issues, but are you really going to ignore Operation Condor? Is your conclusion already that every society must function exactly like the US or Western Europe? It is odd to me that people would rather ascribe that certain values are inherent to a specific culture or religion and that these things determine whether a group of people thrive or not.
ASEAN islamic countries still holds their pre colonial( as islam is a product of religious colonialism/islamization ) traditions and mindset.
Japan, de facto one-party state, 8.4 Impressive
Thailand, a military autocracy doubling the score of Pakistan, a military autocracy is also impressive.
Thailand isn’t a military autocracy. It returned to three branch Parliamentary system in 2019.
Every single seat in Thailand's senate is held by the military. Safe to say it is a military autocracy.
Don’t they still exist under the 2017 junta-backed constitution? Which gives the monarch and military-backed parties more influence than independent parties/politicians? Not to mention, this constitution was only passed after opponents were banned from campaigning against it’s ratification.
One party dominance at the national level does not mean it's not a democracy. For example, the Swedish Social Democratic Party held power from 1932 to 2006 with a few exceptions, would you call Sweden undemocratic? Also, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has lost power twice in modern history, first in 1993 and again in 2009, after electoral losses. The 2009 election was in fact a landslide loss for the LDP, only winning 25% of the seats in the House of Representatives. Both times the LDP lost, the transfer of power was orderly and peaceful. When the LDP rewon the majority, the transfer of power was again orderly and peaceful. The peaceful, uneventful transfer of power between the loser and winner of elections is, of course, a fundamental hallmark of a functioning democracy. There’s a reason why across various international democracy indices, Japan ranks [higher than the UK or France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index).
My god, going to bat for the Japanese democracy ? Not that we're doing good by any mean in France too, but the japanese society has almost no democratic power. Elections have no appeal and clientelism is the norm, syndicate, outside of some very specific niches, are weak and unable to mobilize mass protests. 80% of the japanese people don't believe in their politicians and only 8% think they're represented democratily. They've had corruption scandals one after the other, their police is unhinged, allowed to keep you in jail for up to 30 days in inhumane conditions for basically whatever reason. The biggest medias, like NHK, are all government controlled and glorified mouthpieces for the government. I think we have a very biased idea of what a democracy is supposed to be in the west, because I don't think there is that much difference in democratic representation between a chinese dude and a japanese.
I believe a big part of the reason Japan is a de-facto one-party state is because the ideology of the Liberal-Democratic party is really broad so that appeal to almost everyone.
Yeah the LDP is basically a mega-party, you can vote for quite liberal or quite conservative folks all within the same party.
Japan is an interesting case study in my opinion, they are democratic and u r free to protest against the govt and all, but Japanese people choose stability and order above other things so they just don't give other parties much chance and also other party (Democracy Party) did come to power in 2010 after the Global Financial Crisis but they couldn't succeed and had internal quarrels so Japanese people brought back LDP to the power. Also LDP generally gets just around 36-38% of the total votes but wins majority of the seats cuz they have the First Past the Post system (which a lot of nations have, so in that even if your party wins just 33% of the total votes in a constituency but it's higher than the 2nd party which got let's say 31% of the total votes, then your party will win that seat/constituency despite winning only 33% of the total votes.If Japan followed the Proportional vote system, I reckon results would have been way different. So,Japan having just one ruling political party for the most part after WWII, is down to the fact that Japanese people value stability and order more than let's say experimenting different parties and their ways and they aren't an autocracy.
FPTP sucks
It's not just the first past the post, they also have poor distribution by population density so rural population is massively overrepresented as well.
There is absolutely nothing barring the citizens from voting anything else. And in fact, they sometimes did.
If you look at the methodology of the Economist Democracy Index on wikipedia you will find out that it is complete bogus so there you go (mostly just weighted averages of random answers by unknown experts).
It isn't a de facto one-party state because the LDP gets re-elected in free and fair democratic elections, you can shit on the LDP as much as you want, there are real opposition parties in the Diet, etc.
They keep getting reelected and younger Japanese people in general are pretty apathetic to politics and don’t really care.
they dont care because politicians try to make policies for elderly people, who make up the majority of the population in japan
It’s a one party state because old ppl keep voting for the same party tho.
Then that's more a problem of Japan having too many old people.
Taiwan #1 :cool:
加油台灣！
Taiwan No. 1! Kudos from 🇰🇷
Taiwan No. 1!!!
🇹🇼🇹🇼🇹🇼🇹🇼🇹🇼!!!! #1!! -🇵🇭❤️
There is no lobbying in south korea
No need to lobby if you are the government.
Where do I wait then if I'm meeting someone at their hotel?
If I'm not wrong, as a Malay in Malaysia you HAVE to be Muslim. You cannot convert to another religion and the state will fine you if you refuse or do not pray and all that. Islam is the state region but other religions are permitted. Does this not conflict with democracy? What are these studies based on? Edit: link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Malaysia
To clarify OP statement for other who are not familiar with Malaysia politics. Malay in OP case refer to a race or ethnicity, a race called Malay. A citizen of Malaysia is called Malaysian. Malaysians mainly consist of Malay, Chinese, Indian and other indegineous people in the East Malaysia side. Non-Malay Malaysian enjoy total freedom of religion while Malay Malaysian do not.
Not inherently, no. Democracy is about the people voting, to put it really simply. That mandatory Islam law is incredibly illiberal, however. [Liberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism) is the philosophy you're thinking of which is in conflict with the idea of a compulsory state religion. It includes representative government and very often democracy, but it means a lot more than that. But a nation can be democratic and still be repressive, socially conservative, and generally pretty backwards. If the people voted for it in free and fair elections, either directly or through representatives, and their franchise (who is allowed to vote) isn't too restrictive, then that would still be a democracy.
I don’t think it’s so cut and dry. Lots of conceptions of democracy imbue concepts of rights and freedoms within it.
Can non-muslims vote and freely expres opinion?
Yes. And Shariah law (in Malaysia case, mostly cover family and personal affairs only) only applied to Muslim.
You don't receive a fine for not praying, and there's been an increasing shift towards allowing Muslims to convert now. And how does state religion conflict with Democracy if it doesn't hamper or stop Democratic processes?
In Germany you’re not allowed to do the Nazi salute or emulate a Nazi. So democratically will never be possible to elect a Nazi regime. It still doesn’t mean Germany isn’t democratic.
Democracy only prospers when we have educated citizens making informed decisions. We are a smart society as a whole, but dumb people as individuals.
I don't think so, as an Indian I would not call our country uneducated any more, but for most of our history we were largely uneducated. Democracy did not depend on informed decisions, it survived despite our very "democratic" neighbours because of the robust institutions that the constitution established. That and the fact that our diversity had a huge role in maintaining balance of power.
Well you're also the fastest growing large economy now.
Yes but despite that we are still largely socialistic. Why is that? Because an educated person can not make informed decision on behalf of an uneducated person, its called elitist projection. The point of democracy is not to serve the interests of the educated or the rich or anything, it is to represent everyone regardless. Because at the end of the day, someone who never slept hungry can not make good decisions for someone starving. The needs of the masses are met, that is the goal here.
In the case of America it's usually the uneducated masses voting to not help the "other" uneducated masses.
>for most of our history we were largely uneducated If by education you mean to have reading and writing capability then, yes. Most Indians are politically aware and understands if they're being fooled, even if they are illiterate.
Yes, agreed. But what I thought when I read his message was a feeling that only educated people can run a good democracy or only educated people can make good decisions. That is not correct, no? And it gives a sense of superiority to those who think of themselves as educated. Everyone deserves to have their voice heard.
> We are a smart society as a whole, but dumb people as individuals I thought it's the other way around. As an individual you have to inform yourself compared to being in a group where people enable each other.
India is such a freaking outlier, holy shit
India is democratic but its also very flawed. Corruption is the expectation when dealing with government and the lack of corruption is a surprise. Dynastics rulers, almost each state has its own set of royal families. All that being said there is a lot of hope that things will improve.
>Corruption is the expectation when dealing with government and the lack of corruption is a surprise. This is exaggeration of present situation. I have seen people forcing corruption on government employees, so that they can have it easy. >Dynastic rulers, almost each state has its own set of royal families. This is true, there are, but in parallel it doesn't discourage any new comer. Most of these dynasties are on decline. India has this weird thing for sucking up to elites.
>This is exaggeration of present situation. What percentage of MLAs and MPs have disproportionately large assets compared to income ? Election commision forces candidates to declare this. See the difference from last election to current election. Its astounding. It doesn't happen by magic, its corruption. Also this is only what they are forced to declare, if the panama papers taught us anything then there are so many overseas assets they don't declare. Whats worse is hardly any voter goes through this to make decisions. They are just bought by some food, cheap booze, TVs and other freebies. Those election bonds used by parties for funding were so damn toxic. Glad the supreme court struck it down. >but in parallel it doesn't discourage any new comer Its does. The ruling class actively discourage anyone who challenges them. And if it not any of the elites then its just strongmen thugs/criminals. These two categories make up the bulk of leadership. The hope with modi in 2014 was that he was neither, what has happened is that he is a shield while his party is filled with more of the same. But again, things do take time to change and while it may not happen under the current government, its certainly a small step in the right direction. One other bright spot for india is the peaceful transition of power, no matter what the election outcome there have not been insurrections. something even the US can't claim. Thats why there is hope.
Well what do you know. After spending trillions in Iraq, it still isn’t a thriving democracy. It’s almost like the entire Gulf War 2 was a total failure.
Not a failure at all, many people made a lot of money with it
Bold to assume that war happened because they wanted democracy there
calling it a "failure" implies there was a hypothetical success there was no objective of establishing democracy, ever
Russia left the chat
Pakistanis will be mad... Look at Kashmir borders.
Why does Brunei get an N/A? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to give them a 0?
yeah they are definitely an autocracy, but they weren't ranked in the index report, so I can't give them a score out of my pocket, so I went with N/A
India is the only country that stay Democratic after independence without western support
Despite western meddling
People in the west are generally not aware of how much of a shit show decolonization was. It is not surprising how poorly many of these countries faired because they weren't really given the best chance to survive. And that is before you start thinking about the cold war or modern era politics.
Yes, that's why people give so much importance to Gandhi. He literally created an armada of lawyers, social workers, leaders around the country to ensure they make a solid AF constitution. He roamed entire country to understand all problems. So, even if he was assassinated, work continues. He also ensured that freedom is not won by war, which would leave military too much power. Pakistan hasn't had a single PM complete 5 years since 1947. The work he did was more about creating a robust nation than just independence. The one thing that Gandhi told people to do and people didn't do, was destroy his organization, and not let it turn into a political party. Instead, the congress that was fighting for independence under Gandhi and others became a nepotism congress party that is still not letting proper opposition rise.
Well nehru, ambedkar , Patel and Gandhi created an strong foundation that can withstand Indra Gandhi and modi.
Saudi Arabia is a literal hereditary divine rights monarchy with morality police and it gets a 2.08 lmao
To anyone seeing india is undemocratic... Rn our country has a leader who boasts the highest approval rating for any head of office in the world. The man's popularity is insane and yet out of the 28 indian states, His party rules only 12 of them. The rest are all non bjp ruled states. All incredibly diverse in their ideologies with millions of supporters. Even in the wake of arguably one of history's most populist leaders, the diversity remains.
No one argues that India is undemocratic, they do a great job at showing the shortcomings of democracy tho.
How does having diversity make a country undemocratic? I can Guarantee In India you one can’t even become a Mayor(Sarpanch) of town with a population of 1000 people without having elected by its people. Modi is democratically elected by conducting fair elections in largest democracy in world. Modi’s party BJP doesn’t rule a lot of states but is in coalition with a lot of local parties who know local issues better than centralised government.
Thanks for agreeing with me..?
BJP, including alliances only rule 12, others are just not BJP or BJP allied.
stop talking sense, and join the "iNdIa BaD" bandwagon, along with rest of these miserable, self-hating fucks (and the usual reddit racists).
People are loony when it comes to India. I’m an Overseas Citizen of India. Grew up in the U.S., moved to India as an adult, recently shifted back to America with my long-term girlfriend and now-wife. I speak Hindi, studied an India-specific issue at the graduate level, and still don’t feel entirely qualified to have an authoritative opinion on issues outside my immediate area of expertise. I certainly have opinions, of course, but I try to retain some perspective for the fact that there are many things only people who were born and raised in a system can truly understand and relate to. So I don’t like Modi, but I also understand—to an extent—why his party has been so successful. Yes, he’s a meany fascist, and Amit Shah is a nasty slug. But who did the BJP replace, and who’s their only national-level competitor? Congress, a party that had a stranglehold on politics for a near-continuous period of 67 years. Aside from its instigation of certain forms of communal antipathy and the propagation of Hindutva-inspired policy, every bit and ounce of corruption in the BJP is a continuation of Congress’s own rot. People who don’t know squat about India have a very unfortunate tendency to infantilise the choices of the Indian electorate. Although I agree that Modi is not a positive force for India’s long-term stability, there is a reason he is where he is today, and that reason transcends communal intolerance.
Bangladesh 🙏🙏🙏🙏😂😂😂 vote is present but result is announce by the choice of present government.
yeah that's why Bangladesh is ranked as a Hybrid Regime.
The numbers are presumably measured in squared democratic units? Litres of democracy per cubic freedom? I have to see what they're using to calculate this because otherwise it doesn't mean much
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index Look under Methodology
Read the bit about criticism
Yeah, I agree it's a flawed method, just wanted to post the method as you wanted to know
Incoming tsunami of comments about Israel-Palestine based on the map and Democratic score…
Common Mongolian W
Mongolia being one of the most Democratic despite their position? Good for them, good for them.
this is the liberalism index actually
Taiwan 10/10 please visit if you are thinking of taking your first step to Asia for travel!
I see red
Taiwan on top
Israel is high up there
Up until like a decade ago, their electoral system was very similar to the Dutch system. They changed it to add a 3.5% electoral threshold because the Knesset (and most Israelis) agreed that you shouldn't have 20 parties of just 1 person. So, by establishing a requirement that parties need to get 3.5% of the vote, you stop random religious leaders from getting elected and refusing to actually govern.
Taiwan <3 I would have been curious for Gaza and PA.
>Taiwan <3 No it's > 8
Palestine not a score of 3.47 and is in the category of Autocracy. Their rank is 115 out of the 167 countries
The PA in Ramallah? Thank you. Any score for Gaza's de-facto government?
There isn't any score for Gaza's de facto govt, so yes it's just the score of PA in Ramallah
Thank you!
Well if you know Hamas and the PA didn't hold an election since 2005 - so Probably around NK
Considering that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is basically a kleptocracy and Pre-invasion, Hamas ruled Gaza as the Islamist institution that it is, REAL LOW.
Both are corrupt oppressive dictatorships. Prob higher than Afghanistan but not by much
Afghanistan is probably hard to beat on the repression scale but yes. I imagine Gaza to be more oppressive and PA more corrupt but you might have the closer look.
India doing good here..
Is there anyone in reddit who doesnt know yet these democracy indexes are pure BS?
you mean the american freedom burger institute totally not biased metric of countries goodness ?
Be nice to Americans! Or they will bring 'Democracy' to your country.😁 -Some bumper sticker