Chart of the day: Europe dominates top of democracy index, North Korea lags in last

Updated

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has just released its annual democracy index, and there are a few things that might surprise you.

Australia and New Zealand are the only "full democracies" in the entire Asia-Pacific region, while the United States is among those that couldn't find its way into the top category.

There are also eight countries (Algeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, North Korea, Laos, Nepal and Sri Lanka) whose full titles include the word "democratic", but the EIU says not one of these countries is actually fully democratic.

To rank the countries the EIU gives a score out of 10 for a number of categories, such as political participation and the functioning of government, then classifies each country as either full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime or authoritarian.

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Topics: forms-of-government, government-and-politics, world-politics, australia, new-zealand, korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of, united-states, asia, pacific

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