{"id":7664,"date":"2012-01-07T12:25:24","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T11:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7664"},"modified":"2012-01-07T12:25:24","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T11:25:24","slug":"how-democratic-is-your-country-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7664","title":{"rendered":"How democratic is your country?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In its annual review of the state of democracy in the world, the Economist Intelligence Unit finds a mere 25 countries to be &#8220;fully democratic&#8221; with the UK coming in 18th and the USA at 19th.<\/p>\n<p>The compilers of the survey comment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;In 2011 there has been little change at the top of the rankings, which unsurprisingly are dominated by Scandinavian countries and other affluent liberal democracies such as New Zealand and Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Equally, the countries bringing up the very bottom of the list\u2014that is, those we consider to be the world&#8217;s most repressive and authoritarian regimes\u2014still include the usual suspects. North Korea is bottom, in 167th position, with Chad, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan just above it.<\/p>\n<p>But the 2011 index also sees significant changes, both for better and for worse. The biggest gainer is Tunisia, which not only initiated the Arab Spring but which has had the most success so far in translating revolution into democratic progress.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can see the full list <a href=\"http:\/\/viewswire.eiu.com\/index.asp?layout=VWArticleVW3&amp;article_id=568674641&amp;region_id=1510000351&amp;refm=vwReg&amp;page_title=Latest+regional+analysis&amp;fs=true&amp;mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokuqzKZKXonjHpfsX74usoWaKg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YECScp0dvycMRAVFZl5nQlRD7I%3D&amp;rf=0\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In its annual review of the state of democracy in the world, the Economist Intelligence Unit finds a mere 25 countries to be &#8220;fully democratic&#8221; with the UK coming in 18th and the USA at 19th. The compilers of the survey comment: &#8220;In 2011 there has been little change at the top of the rankings, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7664"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7682,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7664\/revisions\/7682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}