I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it is norm for significant majority of countries in the world. Personally, I think that non-citizens should be allowed to vote on local elections (up to the city level), as they're impacted by local policies as residents, but on national level it is ok if only citizens can vote.
Citizenship (able to be gained after ~6 years of residency) is required for national elections.
Need to correct that the following is how this works in Iceland:
- Icelandic citizen, at least 18 years of age with legal domicile in the municipality in question
- They are either Finnish, Norwegian, Danish or Swedish citizens and fulfill later half of first requirement
- Any other citizen of another state that has had residency in Iceland for 3 years consecutively and fulfills the later half of the first requirement.
So any scandinavian, of age, who moves their domicile to Iceland can immediatly participate in the municipality votes, while others require a 3 year wait.
In Austria that's not the case. Any talks about easing up the restrictions on gaining citizenship, allowing dual citizenship or removing mandatory military service for citizens, end up smothered quickly by nationalistic and populist arguments along the lines of "foreigners should have to walk through glass to prove they're worthy for the privilege of becoming one of us".
Becoming a citizen in the UK or Belgium is a rubber stamp in comparison.
Check Austrian tech wages and number of successful Austrian tech companies to see what I mean. Anti-immigrant policies and conservative attitudes towards foreigners, cut both ways. There's a reason big-tech opened offices in Switzerland and Germany but avoids Austria.
Besides ETH, low corporate income taxes and one of the most secretive banking systems ... what? On open minded society? You've obviously never been to Switzerland. Swirzerland is one of the most cohesive and closed societies in the world.
Obviously. People and individuals value completely different things for their personal quality of life than whatever variables, weights and values The Economist uses to calculate their scores.
Their formula constantly puts Vienna at the top, a city which also comes out at the top of the least friendly cities for expats surveys, which is an important metric for many expats.
I don't give a damn how livable a city is on paper in some random statistic, and especially if the computed livability is disproportionately biased towards the locals and against the foreigners (FPÖ, the far right party in Austria founded by Nazis, keeps getting 22% to 32% votes lately, and in Austria you can't vote in national elections if you're not a citizen and it's also disproportionately difficult to become a citizen to vote them out, compared to all other EU countries, so you'll be stuck in "taxation without representation" limbo, working to fund the coffers of a country where nearly a third of citizens hate your kind)
My point is, livability means far more for most people than whatever The Economist measures, and I'm tired their trope keeps being regurgitated every year everywhere like it's some ground truth on livability. It's not. Livability means so much more, that The Economist doesn't talk about.