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The Economist
The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international relations publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in London....
 has in a study examined the state of democracy
Democracy

Democracy is a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek language d?????at?a , "popular government" which was coined from d???? , "people" and ???t?? , "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political syst...
 in 167 countries and attempted to quantify this with an Economist Intelligence Unit Index of Democracy which focused on five general categories; electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture. According to Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2008 Sweden
Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
 scored a total of 9.88 on a scale from zero to ten, which was the highest result, while North Korea
North Korea

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula....
 scored the lowest with 0.86.






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The Economist
The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international relations publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in London....
 has in a study examined the state of democracy
Democracy

Democracy is a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek language d?????at?a , "popular government" which was coined from d???? , "people" and ???t?? , "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political syst...
 in 167 countries and attempted to quantify this with an Economist Intelligence Unit Index of Democracy which focused on five general categories; electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture. According to Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2008 Sweden
Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
 scored a total of 9.88 on a scale from zero to ten, which was the highest result, while North Korea
North Korea

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula....
 scored the lowest with 0.86. The countries are categorized into "Full Democracies", "Flawed Democracies", "Hybrid Regimes" (all considered democracies), and "Authoritarian Regimes" (considered dictatorial).

Methodology

As described in the report, the democracy index is a kind of weighted average based on the answers of 60 questions, each one with either two or three permitted alternative answers. Most answers are "experts' assessments"; the report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of The Economist
The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international relations publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in London....
 or e.g. independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts. Some answers are provided by public opinion surveys from the respective countries. "In the case of countries for which survey results are missing, survey results for similar countries and expert assessments are used in order to fill in gaps."

The questions are distributed into the five categories enumerated supra. Each answer is translated to a mark, either 0 or 1, or for the three answer alternative questions, 0.5. With the exceptions infra, seemingly, the sums are added within each category, multiplied by ten, and divided by the total number of questions within the category. There are a few modifying dependencies, which are explained much more precisely than the main rule procedures. In a few cases, an answer yielding zero for one question voids another question; e.g., if the elections for national legislation and head of government are not considered free (question 1), then the next question, "Are elections... fair?" is not considered, but automatically marked zero. Likewise, there are a few questions considered so important that a low score on them yields a penalty on the total score sum for their respective categories, namely
  1. "Whether nation
    Nation

    A nation is a cultural and social community. In as much as most members never meet each other, yet feel a common bond, it may be considered an imagined community....
    al elections are free and fair";
  2. "The security of voters";
  3. "The influence of foreign powers on government";
  4. "The capability of the civil servants to implement policies".
The five category indices, which all are listed in the report, are then averaged to find the democracy index for a given country. Finally, the democracy index, rounded
Rounding

Rounding involves reducing the number of significant digits in a number. The result of rounding is a "shorter" number having fewer non-zero digits yet similar in magnitude....
 to one decimal
Decimal

The decimal numeral system has 10 as its Base . It is the most widely used numeral system....
, decides the classification of the country, as quoted:
  1. Full democracies—scores of 8-10.
  2. Flawed democracies—scores of 6 to 7.9.
  3. Hybrid regimes—scores of 4 to 5.9.
  4. Authoritarian regimes—scores below 4.


The report discusses other indices of democracy, as defined e.g. by Freedom House
Freedom House

Freedom House is a United States-based international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, Freedom and human rights....
, and argues for some of the choices made by the team from The Economist. E.g., in this comparison, a higher emphasis has been put on the public opinion and attitudes, as measured by public survey
Public survey

A public survey is a list of questions aimed at extracting specific data from a particular group of people. Surveys may be conducted by phone, mail, via the internet, and sometimes face-to-face on busy street corners or in malls....
s, but on the other hand, economic living standard has not been weighted as one criterion of democracy (as seemingly some other investigators have done).

There is no indication that this report has been presented or is planned to be presented in any academic context, or has been checked by or will be checked by a peer review
Peer review

Peer review is the process of subjecting an author's Scholarly method work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field....
.

Democracy index by regime type


The following table constitutes the number of countries in each category according to 2008 survey.

Regime Type Countries % of countries % of world population
Full democracies 30 18.0 14.4
Flawed democracies 50 29.9 35.5
Hybrid regimes 36 21.6 15.2
Authoritarian regimes 51 30.5 34.9


World population refers to the total population of the 167 countries that are covered. Since this survey excludes only the micro states, this is nearly equal to the entire actual estimated world population in 2008.

2008 ranking


No. Location Index Category
1 9.88 Full democracy
2 9.68 Full democracy
3 9.65 Full democracy
4 9.53 Full democracy
5 9.52 Full democracy
6 9.25 Full democracy
7 9.19 Full democracy
8 9.15 Full democracy
9 9.10 Full democracy
10 9.09 Full democracy
11 9.07 Full democracy
12 9.01 Full democracy
13 8.82 Full democracy
14 8.49 Full democracy
15 8.45 Full democracy
16 8.39 Full democracy
17 8.25 Full democracy
18 8.22 Full democracy
19 8.19 Full democracy
20 8.16 Full democracy
21 8.15 Full democracy
22 8.13 Full democracy
23 8.08 Full democracy
24 8.07 Full democracy
25 8.05 Full democracy
26 8.04 Full democracy
27 8.04 Full democracy
28 8.01 Full democracy
29 7.98 Full democracy
30 7.96 Full democracy
31 7.91 Flawed democracy
32 7.89 Flawed democracy
33 7.82 Flawed democracy
34 7.81 Flawed democracy
35 7.80 Flawed democracy
36 7.70 Flawed democracy
37 7.68 Flawed democracy
38 7.48 Flawed democracy
39 7.47 Flawed democracy
40 7.44 Flawed democracy
41 7.38 Flawed democracy
42 7.36 Flawed democracy
43 7.35 Flawed democracy
44 7.33 Flawed democracy
45 7.30 Flawed democracy
46 7.23 Flawed democracy
47 7.22 Flawed democracy
48 7.21 Flawed democracy
49 7.21 Flawed democracy
50 7.06 Flawed democracy
51 7.04 Flawed democracy
52 7.02 Flawed democracy
53 6.94 Flawed democracy
54 6.81 Flawed democracy
55 6.78 Flawed democracy
56 6.63 Flawed democracy
57 6.61 Flawed democracy
58 6.60 Flawed democracy
59 6.58 Flawed democracy
60 6.54 Flawed democracy
61 6.54 Flawed democracy
62 6.50 Flawed democracy
63 6.49 Flawed democracy
64 6.48 Flawed democracy
65 6.43 Flawed democracy
66 6.40 Flawed democracy
67 6.40 Flawed democracy
68 6.36 Flawed democracy
69 6.34 Flawed democracy
70 6.31 Flawed democracy
71 6.29 Flawed democracy
72 6.21 Flawed democracy
73 6.20 Flawed democracy
74 6.18 Flawed democracy
75 6.15 Flawed democracy
76 6.12 Flawed democracy
77 6.12 Flawed democracy
78 6.07 Flawed democracy
79 6.07 Flawed democracy
80 6.06 Flawed democracy
81 5.91 Hybrid regime
82 5.89 Hybrid regime
83 5.87 Hybrid regime
84 5.85 Hybrid regime
85 5.83 Hybrid regime
86 5.70 Hybrid regime
87 5.69 Hybrid regime
88 5.64 Hybrid regime
89 5.62 Hybrid regime
90 5.57 Hybrid regime
91 5.52 Hybrid regime
92 5.49 Hybrid regime
93 5.37 Hybrid regime
94 5.35 Hybrid regime
95 5.34 Hybrid regime
96 5.28 Hybrid regime
97 5.25 Hybrid regime
98 5.25 Hybrid regime
99 5.13 Hybrid regime
100 5.11 Hybrid regime
101 5.03 Hybrid regime
102 4.87 Hybrid regime
103 4.79 Hybrid regime
104 4.62 Hybrid regime
105 4.52 Hybrid regime
106 4.51 Hybrid regime
107 4.48 Hybrid regime
108 4.46 Hybrid regime
109 4.30 Hybrid regime
110 4.19 Hybrid regime
111 4.19 Hybrid regime
112 4.11 Hybrid regime
113 4.09 Hybrid regime
114 4.05 Hybrid regime
115 4.05 Hybrid regime
116 4.00 Hybrid regime
117 3.93 Authoritarian regimes
118 3.91 Authoritarian regimes
119 3.89 Authoritarian regimes
120 3.88 Authoritarian regimes
121 3.71 Authoritarian regimes
122 3.60 Authoritarian regimes
123 3.58 Authoritarian regimes
124 3.53 Authoritarian regimes
125 3.52 Authoritarian regimes
126 3.46 Authoritarian regimes
127 3.45 Authoritarian regimes
128 3.41 Authoritarian regimes
129 3.39 Authoritarian regimes
130 3.38 Authoritarian regimes
131 3.35 Authoritarian regimes
132 3.34 Authoritarian regimes
133 3.32 Authoritarian regimes
134 3.27 Authoritarian regimes
135 3.19 Authoritarian regimes
136 3.04 Authoritarian regimes
137 3.04 Authoritarian regimes
138 3.02 Authoritarian regimes
139 3.00 Authoritarian regimes
140 2.98 Authoritarian regimes
141 2.96 Authoritarian regimes
142 2.95 Authoritarian regimes
143 2.94 Authoritarian regimes
144 2.92 Authoritarian regimes
145 2.83 Authoritarian regimes
146 2.81 Authoritarian regimes
147 2.60 Authoritarian regimes
148 2.53 Authoritarian regimes
149 2.53 Authoritarian regimes
150 2.45 Authoritarian regimes
151 2.43 Authoritarian regimes
152 2.37 Authoritarian regimes
153 2.31 Authoritarian regimes
154 2.28 Authoritarian regimes
155 2.19 Authoritarian regimes
156 2.18 Authoritarian regimes
157 2.10 Authoritarian regimes
158 2.09 Authoritarian regimes
159 2.00 Authoritarian regimes
160 1.99 Authoritarian regimes
161 1.90 Authoritarian regimes
162 1.86 Authoritarian regimes
163 1.77 Authoritarian regimes
164 1.74 Authoritarian regimes
165 1.72 Authoritarian regimes
166 1.52 Authoritarian regimes
167 0.86 Authoritarian regimes


See also

  • Freedom House
    Freedom House

    Freedom House is a United States-based international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, Freedom and human rights....
  • Gini coefficient
    Gini coefficient

    The Gini coefficient is a Statistical_dispersion#Measures_of_statistical_dispersion most prominently used as a income inequality metrics or Wealth condensation....
  • Gender-related Development Index
    Gender-related Development Index

    The Gender-related Development Index is an indication of the standard of living in a country, developed by the United Nations . It is one of the five indicators used by the United Nations Development Programme in its annual Human Development Report....
  • Gender Empowerment Measure
    Gender Empowerment Measure

    The Gender Empowerment Measure is a measure of inequalities between men's and women's opportunities in a country. It combines inequalities in three areas: political participation and decision making, economic participation and decision making, and power over economic resources....
  • Living Planet Index
    Living Planet Index

    The Living Planet Index is an indicator of the state of global biological diversity, based on trends in vertebrate populations of species from around the world....
  • Gross national happiness
    Gross national happiness

    Gross National Happiness is an attempt to define quality of life in more holistic and psychological terms than Gross National Product.The term was coined in 1972 by Bhutan's former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who has opened up Bhutan to the age of modernization, soon after the demise of his father King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk....
  • Happy Planet Index
    Happy Planet Index

    The Happy Planet Index is an index of human well-being and environmental impact, introduced by the New Economics Foundation , in July 2006. The index is designed to challenge well-established indices of countries? development, such as Gross Domestic Product and the Human Development Index , which are seen as not taking sustainability into...
  • Physical quality-of-life index
    Physical quality-of-life index

    The physical quality-of-life index is an attempt to measure the quality of life or well-being of a country. The value is the average of three statistics: basic literacy rate, infant mortality, and life expectancy at age one, all equally weighted on a 0 to 100 scale....
  • Human development (humanity)
    Human development (humanity)

    In the scope of humanity, human development is an international and economic development paradigm....
  • Human Development Index
    Human Development Index

    The Human Development Index is an index used to rank countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies to determine whether a country is a developed country, developing country....


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