International How does US democracy compare to the rest of world in 2025?

[avenue94]

I'm very familiar with them. I'm just laughing at you guys that have been harping on democracy dying after staying silent when the media and large corporations like Google were manipulating the 2020 election in favor of your party.

Don't mind me. Just pointing out the blatant hypocrisy again.

What's your definition of democracy and republic then?

The US has been backsliding for well over a decade at this point, as part of a larger global trend. Trump just happens to be the worst offender for this country.

 

[Cid]

No ranked voting.

 

[Andy Capp]

Not particularly.

An existence theorem is a mathematical proposition. It usually starts with something similar to,

Under a generalized set of circumstances, Y, there exists an X.

It doesn't specify the precise quantity, X, only that it exists. You'll know it when you see it because it satisfies all the conditions defined as Y. Note that these circumstances don't need to fully define all the qualities of Y, only the ones we care about to satisfy the condition that an X exists in the circumstances specified

Similarly, my opinion is that you don't need to have a complete definition of democracy to identify basic aspects of it or events which show those conditions are no longer satisfied in the current state of the nation.

 

[codfather]

It's not a perfect indicator, but I always thought one of the better ways to determine how democratic a country is, is to simply to look at the wealth share of the richest 1%. Here's how some select major economies faired in 2023:

1. Mexico - 45.3%
2. Brazil - 44.4%
3. Turkey - 42%
4. Saudi Arabia - 39.6%
5. USA - 35.5%
6. Russia - 35%
7. India - 34.1%
8. Indonesia - 32.3%
9. Switzerland - 31.4%
10. China - 30.4%
11. Poland - 30.2%
12. Germany - 27.8%
13. Taiwan - 27.8%
14. France - 27.3%
15. South Korea - 25.3%
16. Japan - 24.8%
17. Canada - 24.3%
18. Spain - 23.8%
19. Australia - 23.5%
20. Italy - 22.1%
21. UK - 21.3%
22. Netherlands - 13.9%

Interesting that 6 of those bottom 7 are constitutional monarchies. Italy is the only one that isn't.
I think having a highly-visible group that just explicity exists because of inherited privilege and the blatent pomp and circumstance of royal events like weddings, funerals and jubilees, ignites class conciousness in people, and actually serves left-wing politics. In the US, people would say "they have a right to privilege, because their forefathers worked hard to provide for their descendents".

In my personal opinion, every major economy could be classed as a flawed democracy, but it's much easier to class the US as one, than say the Netherlands or the UK, especially when you also consider things like incarceration rate.

 

[avenue94]

imilarly, my opinion is that you don't need to have a complete definition of democracy to identify basic aspects of it or events which show those conditions are no longer satisfied in the current state of the nation.

I think you need to have some guidelines, but more importantly I am wary of a concept of democracy where one strike is enough to fail it. Democracies are inherently very complex. That's also why I don't like quantitative definitions as much for this kind of stuff.