> From V-Dem, we use two measures of democratic quality: the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification and the Liberal Democracy Index. The RoW (Lührmann et al., 2018) is a categorical measure distinguishing closed autocracies (no multiparty elections), electoral autocracies (multiparty elections that are not free and fair), electoral democracies (free elections but limited liberal protections), and liberal democracies (free elections with strong liberal protections).
by "democracy" they of course mean liberalism
Yes. In this sense the cold war never ended.
The country I live in consistently ranks as rather non-corrupt but I would disagree with this assessment since I know that our biggest party (where I was a member for some years) is slavishly loyal to one of our main 'stock market owner families', and would consider a lot of legal practices and regulations highly corrupt. Clearly this is also outside of the scope of this study.
They classify Germany and the UK as democracies. That's precious. Germany has sanctioned its own journalists as has the UK. I don't remember the number of ordinary citizens arrested in Germany for social media posts but I know the UK number was 12000 per year.
Now let's look at the US:
Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy.
https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-foreign-agent-charge...
Do you have a source for the 12k arrested in the UK?
I'm asking because all I could find was a list on Twitter that didn't cite any sources itself and also had very implausible numbers (including he 12k/year for the UK). Implausible based on the lived reality of friends of mine living in e.g. the UK or Germany.