2024 has been declared the biggest year in history for good ol’ democracy. This year elections will take place in 50 countries across the globe (which make up over half of the world’s population), so we’ll really see it being put to the test. But before we see what comes of all of that, how did democracy do in 2023?
Well, every year, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) publishes its Democracy Index which, as you might have guessed, scores 167 countries based on their levels of democracy.
How the heck do you score that, you ask? Good question. Well, the EIU ranks nations out of ten in five different categories: ‘electoral process and pluralism’, ‘functioning of government’, ‘political participation’, ‘political culture’ and ‘civil liberties’. Then it calculates a final overall score.
Of course, you’ll want to know how the UK ranked for 2023. Well, not much has changed since last year, TBH. We placed 18th overall for the second time in a row and received the exact same overall score of 8.28 out of ten. So it’s not really bad news – staying put is certainly better than sliding down the table.
This time our top marks were given in the ‘electoral process and pluralism’ category, where we scored 9.58 out of ten. But on the flipside we scored the lowest in ‘political culture’ at 6.88 (compared to Norway and New Zealand’s perfect tens).
In the report, EIU suggested that the UK has enjoyed a much more politically stable year (congrats to us for keeping the same prime minister for a whole twelve months). It said: ‘There has been a small improvement in the country’s score for social cohesion: divisions over Brexit have receded and support for independence in Scotland has declined.
‘Meanwhile the UK’s scores for many indicators that measure things such as confidence in government and political parties, citizens’ control, and voter turnout are already low and either could not go lower or did not merit being downgraded further.’
At the top of the rankings Norway emerged in first place, followed by New Zealand and Iceland in second and third. Meanwhile, countries including Italy, the United States and Belgium scored less than eight out of ten and were categorised as ‘flawed democracies’.
You can find out more about this year’s ranking on the EIU website here.
Did you see that Edinburgh is getting a ‘night czar’?
Plus: This glam hotel has been named the most romantic in the UK.
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