"democracy does not equal absence of civil unrest. Possibly even the opposite." This is next level thinking and reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#In_the_mil...

The index it's based on attempts to rank "civic spaces" - not levels of democracy.

The name implies how these organisations do their work - they watch. And the only way to watch is to read articles, watch TV news, etc.

Civil unrest shows that people are unhappy and government is not doing anything, is this democracy? The difference between France and poor countries is if you live in a poor country you fight to survive and have got no energy to protest, in Europe, basic rights (food, vote, etc) are provided and people can protest and then go to supermarkets to get food. So again is French government truly democratic? Should we use the same measures in France, Australia and Kongo?

That is absolutely not the only way to watch. These organisations talk to local activists, assess the court processes in countries, etc.

While I believe that these organisation do more good than harm I do believe that they are biased in some cases.

Are you implying that protests happening is less democracy? AFAIK there are always a group of people that are not happy about something and they will protests. Teachers are not happy about salaries and they protests, X is not happy abut petrol tax and protest etc.

I don't think that the number of protests were used anyway and from what I seen a there are countries like US were people are at most protesting on social media but I never seen major teachers,students,truck drivers,farmers protests in US either so I don't think is correlated if you are a poor country you are too busy to protest.