The overall state of democracy in the US fell last year, according to an annual ranking published by Wednesday The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, which cited the ongoing erosion of trust in the country’s institutions.
The US retained its rank as the 25th most democratic nation out of 167 countries analyzed, but remains in the “flawed democracy” category after being demoted from the “full democracy” group in 2016, the report said.
According to The Economist, Norway was the highest ranked democracy.
The report measures five main categories – electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of the government; political participation; and political culture – and assigns scores to each.
The overall US score of 7.92 was lower than last year’s 7.96. Norway’s score was 9.81 in 2020.
“The overall US performance is held back by a number of weaknesses, including extremely low confidence in institutions and political parties; deep dysfunction in the functioning of the government; growing threats to freedom of expression; and a degree of social polarization that makes it nearly impossible to reach consensus on any issue, ”the report said.
The report cited the efforts of the former President Trump
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Those efforts follow increasing trends in other countries, according to the report, “to challenge the results of elections and referendums, and to discredit the outcome by accusing external interference and making conspiracy theories credible.”
The US improved its political participation score as the coronavirus pandemic, racial justice movements and other major events fueled high levels of participation in the 2020 election.
Aside from the US findings, the report noted the lowest average global democracy score since the index was first published in 2006. The Economist attributed the decline largely to “government-imposed restrictions on individual and civil liberties around the world. occurred in response to the corona pandemic. “
“In 2020, citizens around the world will experience the greatest rollback of individual freedoms that governments have ever undertaken in peacetime,” the report states. “Most people concluded, based on the evidence of a new, deadly disease, that the occurrence of a catastrophic loss of life justified a temporary loss of freedom.”
COVID-19 has infected more than 104 million people worldwide, with approximately 2.2 million deaths from the virus, according to Wednesday. data collected by Johns Hopkins University.