This Is the No. 1 Democracy in the World

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 11, 8:30AM EST

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This Is the No. 1 Democracy in the World — © flickr

Two totalitarian nations currently threaten the world order. China has indicated its plans to take over Taiwan, an independent country with 25 million people. Also known as the Republic of China, it is just off the coast of the People’s Republic of China, which has the world’s largest standing army. The other unstable situation is in Ukraine, which has been threatened with invasion by Russia. This threat has put NATO on high alert and driven intervention by most European leaders and the United States.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s just released Democracy Index 2021 divides the world’s 167 largest countries into four categories. These are “full democracies” (12.6% of the total), “flawed democracies” (31.7%), “hybrid regimes” (20.4%) and “authoritarian regimes” (35.3%).

Russia, which is among the authoritarian regimes, ranks 124th among all nations. China, in the same category, ranks at 148. China is the focus of the entire study, which has a subtitle of “The China Challenge.”
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The governments on the list are rated by 1) electoral process and pluralism, 2) functioning of government, 3) political participation, 4) political culture and 5) civil liberties. Each of the nations is given a score, with a maximum score of 10. The United States is listed as a flawed democracy and ranks 26th. Only 21 nations make the cut as full democracies.

The United States has fallen on the list recently: “The US score declined further as its new president Joe Biden, struggled to arrest the democratic decline that has occurred over the past few decades.” The report adds that Bidens’s efforts to improve the American democracy have been greeted with “cynicism.”

Norway tops the list with a score of 9.75. Scandinavian nations dominate the top of the rankings, though New Zealand is in second place.

These are the world’s 21 full democracies:

Norway (9.75)
New Zealand (9.37)
Finland (9.27)
Sweden (9.26)
Iceland (9.18)
Denmark (9.09)
Ireland (9.00)
Taiwan (8.99)
Australia (8.90)
Switzerland (8.90)
Netherlands (8.88)
Canada (8.87)
Uruguay (8.85)
Luxembourg (8.68)
Germany (8.67)
South Korea (8.16)
Japan (8.15)
United Kingdom (8.10)
Mauritius (8.08)
Austria (8.07)
Costa Rica (8.07)

Click here to read about the world’s 27 poorest countries.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.