149 countries are ranked by this organization, and here are some notables:-
*Finland is No. 1, making it the most democratic country in the world?
USA is No. 10
UK is No. 15
Mali is No. 36, making it the most democratic Muslim-majority country.
Israel is No. 39
India is No. 64
Pakistan is No. 102 (though I am sure that ranking will improve over the coming months. 
)
Russia is No. 108
Afghanistan is No. 149, making it the least democratic counry in the world.*
Re: World Democracy Rankings
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*Originally posted by Mursalin: *
Pakistan is No. 102 (though I am sure that ranking will improve over the coming months. :) )
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So, Mursalin the site says Pakistan has democracy with the presence of Military Regime. Right?
How does it count dear?
and pakistan is listed above bangladesh and egypt in democracy index? these are from this month..so whats the deal here.
Seems they use quite a wide methodology from a wide array of sources to make their rankings. Its opening page says In our fourth world audit of the millennium we re-examine elements of corruption, human rights, political rights and the rule of law in 149 nations (all those exceeding one million population). From this we arrive at the world democracy table.
Mursalin
So basically, Pakistan is well better in Military Regime than it wasn't in Nawaz and Bhutto Govt.
Ouch! :D
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
and pakistan is listed above bangladesh and egypt in democracy index? these are from this month..so whats the deal here.
[/QUOTE]
It's a very interesting methodology they use to determine "democracy." They categorize countries on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 being good and 7 being bad) on Political Rights and Civil Liberties. They then refine these statistics based on Press Freedom and Lack of Corruption. Corruption is borrowed from the index posted in another thread.
What they rank you on in terms of press freedom is pretty interesting too. They include issues of access to information and sources, censorship, and the intimidation of journalists by the state or other actors. They examine economic influences on media content, including pressure by government funding, corruption, withholding of government advertising as a selective pressure point, or bias in licensing, or quotas for newsprint or other material needs of the media.
Comparing Pakistan with Egypt, they give both countries a very low score of 6 on Political Rights. Pak is ahead of Egypt on Civil Liberties (5 vs 6) and Pakistan is credited with more press freedom than Egypt (86 vs 124). Only in having less corruption does Egypt outrank Pakistan (51 vs 76). Put all those scores in a blender and Pak rates better on the democracy index than Egypt (102 to 112).
Not to get too excited here though as both are really lousy scores and the researchers note that small differences at any point in the rating scale don't make much of a qualitative difference.
yeah I am not interested in knowing whether it is lousy or not but trying to find out how it is used.
I guess we all have a lot to learn from the scandinavians
The figures show that democracy is much more than about elections and parliaments. I believe, this survey takes into account all kinds of factors i.e. human rights, freedom of the press, corruption etc. Hence Pakistan ends up more democratic than Russia, Egypt, Bangladesh and others.
A quick plot based on the World Audit figures, they make a pretty convincing case for la ack of Democracy contributing to increased corruption.
Any clearer?
I thought it would be interesting to plot a chart with increasing corruption on the Y axis and increasing poverty on the X axis. I apologize for being too technologically challenged to figure out how to share it.
However, there is an equally clear relationship between poverty and government corruption. The greater the government corruption, the greater is the poverty rate.
Does this indicate that democracies are better at addressing poverty than non-democracies?
Alternatively,
Are people who live in poverty less inclined to demand and adopt democratic institutions?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by myvoice: *
Does this indicate that democracies are better at addressing poverty than non-democracies?
Alternatively,
Are people who live in poverty less inclined to demand and adopt democratic institutions?
[/QUOTE]
It could be a bit of both..since the 2 sentences have different meanings.
are democracies more likely to take care of their citizens..probably so.
but then people living in poverty...they may or may not be less inclined to push for democracy...and it may depend on the level of poverty as well. By maslows hierarchy of needs, my initial concern would be to be able to feed myself and to find a place to live..having my say in what goes on may come later when i am able to meet my basic needs. However..if the poverty is not widespread there will be soem sort of democratic movements somewhere, and at the same time, if the poverty is so bad that I feel that I dont really have the ability to feed myself, and I cant have any say..then we have revolutions.
MyVoice,
Yes a similar correlation for Economic freedom versus Democracy and Corruption.
I agree Fraudz it’s having the luxury to voice your concerns when it’s not a matter of life and death.
On the corruption versus economic freedom correlation interestingly enough Central and South American countries (Argentina, Bolivia) and Asian Countries (Thailand, South Korea) and the Czech Republic, buck the trend, where wealth doesn’t necessarily decrease rates of corruption amongst the populous.
From the various cross plots I drew up it appears that the major controlling factor on rates of corruption appears to be a democracy. The main controlling factor on democracy appears to be economy. They’re all interrelated but having a wealthy populace led by people whom they want to govern them seems to decrease the rates of corruption.
Which makes sense.
I’m coming from the angle of corruption as it impacts on what I’m doing right now and has implications for where I decide to move next, so this little exercise has helped in sketching out no go areas with a broad brush as far as I’m concerned for work purposes.
I’m not sure how exactly all the indices are calculated by the audit, but from what I’ve experienced on my travels they’re roughly on track.
Thap:
Some really good stuff you've done there. Thanks for sharing it.
Thap..you are my hero :) good work with the graphs here.
Thanks gentlemen, as I say I enjoyed doing it. I think it would be a great idea to expand this sort of thing any of you know of more global stats websites (Murs?) around which discussions could be based?
It's always good to have some data to base debate around and who knows something new may drop out?
An additional note out of the 149 countries included in the World Audit my plots represent those which have all three data sets (Democracy, Corruption and Economic Freedom data) consequently my list of countries is reduced to 85. However, for the purposes of looking at trends they're still valid.
Fraudz,
Thought you’d appreciate some data on Burkina Faso, but sadly we only have Democracy and Press Freedom rankings, from which the state ranks fair to middling in both, 70 and 61 respectively.
Good work Thap. :k:
I am also in agreement with you that lack of democracy means more corruption in general. Additionally, as has been noted by other participants above ‘democracy’ as analyzed by this think tank, is more than just about free elections and representative assemblies, though that is the major demonstration of it. The World Audit people have carried out an analysis based on various criteria i.e. political rights, civil liberties, press freedom, rule of law, corruption and human rights before giving their overall democracy ranking for each country. Hence you have Pakistan with a higher democracy rating than Bangladesh, Russia and Ukraine for instance, even though these states have had elected governments for all of the last decade, which Pakistan has not. It seems in the case of Russia corruption and organized crime has actually increased manifold in this period despite the existence of elected institutions and such? Obviously it has been very much lacking in protecting civil liberties, press freedoms, human rights and ensuring rule of law?
And yes inshallah, I will be posting more global stats websites form which we can promote such productive discussions. 
Dang Thap!
You are the best :k:
Nice work