Renmin University Releases Results of 2022 Democracy Index The results of the 2022 Democracy Index have now been fully tabulated. As a pilot study, this analysis focused largely on ostensibly democratic states—countries ranging from dictatorships to strong democracies that claim to incorporate democratic principles into their government. However, Yu Yuhua, the leader of the study effort, hopes that future versions of the study will encompass more states around Mundus. “We made good progress on this pilot,” she said, “but the goal, of course, is to be able to evaluate every country. As the World Studies department gains more international connections, this should hopefully become possible.”
The results of the study are as follows:
The researchers also created a map to show the classifications of each country in the study:
Of the 18 countries and autonomous regions that were evaluated, five were classified as either “Hybrid Regimes”, governments that combine autocratic and democratic features, or “Authoritarian”. Due to the ongoing civil war, the competing factions of Centralia were evaluated separately, and found in general to all be completely lacking in democratic principles, a fact which may complicate our nation’s relations with Centralia.
The Democracy Index was developed to be applicable to as many nations as possible. Because the principle of direct democracy is so unique to our nation, the Index was created to measure representativeness of traditional democracies, rather than the level of direct democracy. This may be responsible for the surprisingly low rank of our nation compared to some of the parliamentary monarchies represented in the study.
In general, this pilot study was regarded as a success, demonstrating the basic principles of our metric and its applicability to many types of nations. Although some may dispute the exact numbers given in this study, the classifications assigned by the numbers are largely uncontroversial.
Future versions of the study may include questions intended to measure direct democracy more closely in order to better represent all democracies. The researchers also hope to be able to examine the progress of democracy over time and across different regions of the world by encompassing more nations. Code and raw data for the study is available from the Renmin University World Studies Department.
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