The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group.
The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its ranking of 94 a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia. It lagged far behind countries like the United Kingdom (93), Chile (93), Costa Rica (91) and Slovakia (90).https://www.theguardian.com/email/form/plaintone/minute-usSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletter
“Dropping 11 points is unusual, especially for an established democracy, because they tend to be more stable in our scores,” Sarah Repucci, Freedom House’s vice-president for research and analysis, told the Guardian. “It’s […]
It is getting worse, much worse. And it has been getting worse for 3 decades…
I remember Der Spiegel’s interview with Jimmy Carter in 2013…“America no longer has a functioning democracy.” and Carter literally musing whether the Carter Center could validate American elections.
Representative democracy has deteriorited even since the 2014 Gilens – Page Princeton study showed the peoples opinion counted statistically as zero regarding congressional decisions in the twenty years prior.
Now we are officially ranked a “flawed democracy.”
What may bother me most is that these rankings are coming independantly, not just from the radical left but from a beloved ex-president, respected social scientists and from establishment mainstays…Freedom House and The Economist magazine research arm.
BTW Carter was under-reported. https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2013-09-06/letters-at-3am-the-curious-case-of-the-missing-quotation/ On numerous occasions later he called the USA an oligarchy.
Is an oligarchy better than a dictatorship? Without a people powered movement creating real democracy we may be on our way to find out.