The latest edition of the Economist’s Democracy Index reveals that the Scandinavian countries rank among the most democratic nations in the world. Norway is on the top of the list followed by Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark.
The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the UK-based company the Economist Intelligence Unit(EIU) that intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states.
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Scandinavia – the Most Democratic Nations in the World
The eleventh edition of the Democracy Index reveals that political participation is on the rise in almost every region of the world. The most striking advance has been in the participation of women – in the past decade the indicator has improved more than any other single indicator in the model.
A total of 20 countries (home to only 4.5 percent of the global population) were judged to be ‘fully democratic’ while the rest of the 167 countries included in the survey were classed as ‘flawed democracies’.
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The Democracy Index
The Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture. Based on their scores on 60 indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: full democracy; flawed democracy; hybrid regime; and authoritarian regime.
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The index was first produced in 2006, with updates for 2008, 2010 and the following years since then.
Scandinavia – the Most Democratic Countries in the World, compiled by Tor Kjolberg