The Economist has appointed Sweden the world's most democratic country. Sweden gets 9.88 of 10 possible points. The Economist calls it "an almost perfect democracy". Sweden is followed by Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland.
Factors taken into account are how the electoral system and the political administration works, level of political participation, the nature of the political culture and the status of civic rights. Sweden gets top grades in all categories except for one: political culture, i.e. the number of politically active citizens and how losers in an election accepts the results. But the points were still 9.38 in that category.
The Economist divides the world in four categories:
- 28 countries are complete democracies (in Eastern Europe, only the Czech Republic and Slovenia belong here) (two Latin American states qualify: Costa Rica and Uruguay)
- 54 are deficient democracies (Italy is the only EU country in this category)
- 30 are called hybrid regimes
- 55 are authoritarian regimes
USA gets 8.22 points and lands in place 17 of the complete democracies. It would have scored higher if citizenship rights had not been hollowed out as a result of the war on terror. The UK does not score very well either - place 23 - which depends on a substantial decrease of e.g. voter turnout and membership in political parties.
Russia is a hybrid with weighing in at 5.02 points and North Korea gets a full 1.03 points.
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