Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Democracy Index 2016

eiu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 50 posts

Re: Democracy Index 2016

#11

Post by calvin_c »

agnsaft wrote: post #2

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

I think they're trying to say that the democracy is now worse because we have a leader who is lying to the media, threatening voting rights based on unsupported claims, silencing scientists from sharing publicly funded research, and is charging journalists with felony charges for covering protests against him.

Re: Democracy Index 2016

#12

Post by [deleted] »

ihsw wrote: post #3

It's difficult to take the report seriously when it's titled Revenge of the Deplorables . That said, America's place in the Democracy Index been downgraded based solely on some people(?) losing trust in the government rather than actual hard data. Personally I think this is no more authoritative than a Facebook survey. Their method deserves investigating though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#Method Ex…

[deleted]

Re: Democracy Index 2016

#13

Post by ForrestN »

agnsaft wrote: post #2

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

No. The new administration is systematically undermining the norms that held up our strong democracy, on purpose. Any student of history recognizes moves like lying about crowd sizes, delegitimizing peaceful protests, and undermining the press. The president is lying daily about millions of people voting fraudulently; why should anyone have any confidence in our democracy, whether you somehow crazily believe him, or whether you know he's lying?

Re: Democracy Index 2016

#16

Post by ekianjo »

Jyefet wrote: post #5
agnsaft wrote: post #2

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

It's more to do with people's trust in the government than Trump being elected. As an example - Trump's lies about the size of the crowd at inauguration.

How about trusting Obama when voting for him and then seeing him suing whistleblowers like never before, and continuing the never-ending trail of War in the Middle-East (without ANY Congress approval) despite getting a Nobel peace prize (let's not forget his personal "kill-list" for drone strikes too) ? And while he was supposed to be progressive about drug use, he has intensified the War on Drugs in practice to a level that even Bush did not even dream to go to. So, can we be honest a second about "trust in elected officials" ?

Re: Democracy Index 2016

#17

Post by bildung »

agnsaft wrote: post #2

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

No: " The downgrade was not a consequence of Donald Trump, states the report. Rather, it was caused by the same factors that led Mr Trump to the White House: a continued erosion of trust in government and elected officials, which the index measures using data from global surveys. In total, it incorporates 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties." [1]

That link also has a really nice interactive world map.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-c...

Re: Democracy Index 2016

#20

Post by briandear »

Does "erosion of trust" actually represent a quantifiable failure in the system of government itself?

Is 'trust' actually a metric? And if so, how is it measured? It sounds awfully subjective to me.

Post reply on HN