It may surprise you (or not) that most countries we consider democracies, like India or the United States, are actually deemed flawed democracies. For full democracies, you’d have to look rather to Canada, Japan, or European countries like Spain and the United Kingdom.
Very little of the world’s population lives in a full democracy today, and Latin America is no exception. Citizens of the region’s largest country, Brazil, live in a flawed democracy marked by widespread polarization and corruption.
It is a miracle that Canada is still a full democracy given the flaws of FPTP. I give credit to Elections Canada, it’s a national treasure, and we need to be extremely wary of any of our governments attempting to attack or subvert it.
I have to question whether Canada genuinely deserves the “full democracy” label when our electoral system systematically discards millions of perfectly valid votes every election. While Elections Canada does excellent work administering our elections fairly and transparently, they’re simply executing a fundamentally flawed system.
In our current system, roughly 50% of ballots cast make absolutely no difference to the outcome of the election. How can we call that a “full democracy”? The majority of Canadians are regularly governed by a party that received a minority of votes.
I agree that Elections Canada is a national treasure that deserves protection. However, we shouldn’t confuse having well-run elections with having a truly democratic electoral system.
Until we implement proportional representation, where every vote genuinely counts, I’d argue our democracy remains significantly compromised - regardless of how international democracy indexes might classify us. In a true democracy, citizens are deserving of and entitled to representation in government, and only PR can dependably deliver that.
Canada’s Senate and the British House of Lords. Seems like even the “full” democracies are flawed.
The whole graph is bonkers. How is French level of democracy equivalent to that of Thailand!?
They’re broad categories.
Our Heads of State is the King
We don’t elect PMs, Canadians finding this out now but the King has to approve the position (Governor General acts on the King’s behalf in Canada)
Not sure how we beat out France where their head of state is elected with a runoff
The UKs first past the post system should not qualify as democracy
Lmao
The US is a mess, but it’s real weird to call monarchies “full democracies”. I feel like a king and a house of lords is at least as undemocratic as lobbyists, gerrymandering, and an electoral college.
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