LOL, the first list also seems to use the US as the cut-off & first country that is a “deficient democracy”. The magic number must be between somewhere between 0.811 and 0.821.

Having spent a good chunk of my life in Canada and the US, a list that has Canada as more democratic doesn’t make any sense to me. In the end, it’s just a random mix of different measurements, weighted to tell whatever story you want to tell.

The Germans literally elected the Nazis, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions, and you think they’re better at democracy?

> The Germans literally elected the Nazis... you think they’re better at democracy

FYI - Germany changed their government after this regime fell, to ensure that it would become more democratic and harder to concentrate power in the executive. So they became more democratic as a learning process.

The US had an actual civil war (over slavery no less) and didn't change anything fundamental about their constitution nor government structure as a result. It was less deadly than the holocaust, but enduring a civil war is not a sign of a functioning democracy.

The US literally elected Trump.

Not that they had a wide field of choice and not that they can actually fire him.

Both reasons the US political system isn't all that great - it nosedived into a two party Hotelling's Law quagmire despite the founders being against party politics. It's hardly suprising a system centuries old and creaking failed to scale.

Washminster systems are a literal reaction to the cracks in the Westminster and Washington systems.

Maybe check those American Exceptionalism / Manifest Destiny blinkers and look about a little, it's hard to see out of a rut.

Washington captured many issues of the party system in his farewell address. This can relate to many times in history for both parties.

"They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/W...

Nice quote, cheers for that.

Ben Franklin on why the US Constitution is "Probably the best we can do for now" but will likely "fall to a Despot" is worth a revist in these Trumpian times.

Yes, and in part because of that. The way they teach history and make their citizens resistant to authoritarianism through schooling is different from the really basic ways history is taught in America.

The Germans have a new constitution and have kept the Nazis out of power with the new one.

So far. Between a quarter and a fifth of the country, however, currently votes for the Nazi party.

looks like objective data to me. Look at our democracy number, it's lower than a ton of other countries!

See also this metric, showing how fast the US is falling away from a democracy:

https://www.ft.com/content/b474855e-66b0-4e6e-9b73-7e252bd88...