Democracy Index

How does the systemic rot of the Roman Republic actually map onto the statistical realities of the United States in 2026?

The memo achieves this by looking at highly respected quantitative expert democracy indices, specifically the Varieties of Democracy, or VDEM project, and the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index.

And what do these indices measure?

They measure the actual health of democratic institutions, civil liberties and checks and balances.

Can a country that relies so heavily on trighead be competitive in a rapidly changing world? As a trig-driven society, Denmark is often described as stable and high-trust, yet it also performs remarkably well across measures such as innovation and economic performance.

While liberal democracies are in decline, Denmark also consistently ranks high on the Democracy Index.

Democracies are many things, but they depend heavily on systems of emotional regulation.

When institutions and norms foster predictability and shared responsibility, trust and cooperation emerge.

The trend continued in the following elections of 1997 and 2001 as violence marred both occasions.

Nevertheless, Guyana has remained a democracy, albeit a concerningly frail one as it ranks 67th on the Economist Democracy Index where it's categorized as a flawed democracy.

And it's these types of indicators that have onlookers worried that newfound wealth may well tip the country over.

But Guyana, for its part, has so far backed its commitment to democracy in its burgeoning oil boom.

What she hoped viewers would carry away, she said, was a restored will to engage, though she held open the question of what form that energy might take.

Documentary participant Stacey Abrams said before the premiere that the United States had fallen outside the full democracy tier, according to the Democracy Index, one of a number of international frameworks designed to measure democratic governance, while adding that the capacity to reclaim that standing remains within reach.

Abrams also said the documentary carries an obligation to remind audiences that the Constitution functions both as a pledge and as a duty, and that the midterm elections represent a starting point for grasping the challenges ahead and the responses available to address them.

Fellow participant Sherrilyn Ifill, whose prior role leading the NAACP Legal Defense Fund shaped her perspective on constitutional rights, told a television news program at the red carpet event that the country had experienced a comparable rupture before, one that claimed roughly 600,000 lives, and that the decisions now facing voters carried comparable weight.

Because perhaps we may not have pure authoritarian regimes around.

Every index that I've looked at, that I've consulted over...

I mean, you're the scholar, I'm just asking questions.

[laughs]

Um, but every index that I've looked at, the Freedom House index, the Democracy Index, Reporters Without Borders, all say that freedoms are on the wane and have been for 20 years, that the Democratic Index is the lowest it's been in 20 years, that even f- democratic countries have also slipped on the Democratic Index.

It, I, I guess my contention, and I would love to hear your thought on this, is that it actually feels like we perhaps live in the most authoritarian era, but it looks different, and maybe it's just a matter of degree of authoritarianism.

Well, first of all, it depends on the baseline.

Yeah, I could do that for two months.

By the way, we always say the free money one, the one that we've talked about the most is the Democracy Index.

The Democracy Index has actually dropped.

So when we did the episode, the dropping below 7.5 was at 63 cents.

It's actually gone down to 61 cents.

But, you know, Mike, we've talked about this like the very first one of these podcasts.

If I had infinite money, I might throw some in that because I think that's a well-structured bet.

But since I don't sadly have infinite money, I'm going to put my money on propositions that I feel much more confident about, like the economist's rating of the democracy of America and the democracy index.