The US Is No Longer A “Full Democracy” According To The Economist
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Jan 25, 2017
While the Economist’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton – and its antipathy toward Donald Trump – is no secret, we are “confident” there is little connection between the economic publication’s ideological leanings and the just released report by the Economist’s in house Intelligence unit, which has officially demoted the US to a second-class democracy.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the US has lost its status as a “full democracy” and is now what the research group calls a “flawed democracy,” as a result of an erosion of public trust in political institutions which, luckily, pre-dates Trump’s victory.
In the EIU’s ninth annual Democracy Index, the number of full democracies around the world fell to 19, from 20 the year before. America’s downgrade puts it at 21 in the rankings, below Japan and even with Italy.
The US has been “teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy” for years, the report says quoted by Quartz. Regardless of the result of the 2016 presidential election, the US was due a downgrade. Trust has been declining in the US for decades, leaving the country’s institutions battling a “legitimacy crisis” and struggling to sustain representative democracy in its current form, the report says.
“Democracy is in trouble in the West, in the mature democracies of western Europe and the US, which are no longer obvious beacons for those striving for democracy in the nondemocratic world,” the EIU said.
The Rest…HERE
