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The government of the United States got a downgrade this week: We're no longer afull democracy,according to theEconomist Intelligence Unit's latest Democracy Index. For the first time, wewere bumped down to flawed, thanks to an erosion of public trust in political institutions.

According to the report's authors, a flawed democracy has free elections but weak governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation. Other countries that share this dubious honor include Italy,Japan, France and India. Rankings are based on a country's electoral process, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture.

That downgrade puts us at 21 in the rankings. Norway, Iceland and Sweden were ranked as the world's most vibrant democracies, followed byNew Zealand and Denmark;Canada and Ireland tied for sixth place. Syria and North Korea came, somewhat predictably, in last.

[Trump is the U.S.s first Latin American president]

Americans are days into Donald Trump's presidency and just a couple of months out from one of the most divisive elections in history. But the report caution that our problems go back much further. The country has been teetering on the brink for years, the report says. Faith in our public institutions including Congress, newspapers and banks has been in decline for decades. Just 19 percent of Americans trust the government most of the time. Three-quarters believe that most elected officials put their own interests ahead of the country.

Trust in political institutions is an essential component of well-functioning democracies. Yet surveys by Pew, Gallup and other polling agencies have confirmed that public confidence in government has slumped to historic lows in the U.S. This has had a corrosive effect on the quality of democracy, the report found. This has created a legitimacy crisis, the report says.

The United States is in good company.Democracy is looking sickly the world over. The scores of almost half of the world's 167 countries declined between 2006 and 2016, thanks to the increasing role played by nonelected technocrats, increased voter abstention and curbs on civil liberties. Just 5 percent of the world's population live in a full democracy; 2.6 billion live under authoritarian regimes.

Or, in the words of the EIU: Democracy is in trouble in the West, in the mature democracies of western Europe and the U.S., which are no longer obvious beacons for those striving for democracy in the nondemocratic world.

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The US is no longer a 'full democracy,' a new study warns - Washington Post

The Nation.

US democracy is having a 'legitimacy crisis' New York Post America now joins nations such as Italy, Japan, and India as a flawed democracy which has free elections but weak governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation, according to Economist Intelligence Unit ... 'The Economist' Just Downgraded the US From a 'Full Democracy' to a 'Flawed Democracy'The Nation. U.S. demoted by analyst group from 'full democracy' to 'flawed democracy'UPI.com The U.S. has been downgraded from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy"VICE News Mother Jones -Salon -Christian Science Monitor -Economist Intelligence Unit all 90 news articles »

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US democracy is having a 'legitimacy crisis' - New York Post

Foreign Policy (blog)

Forget Dow 20000 the Boom Times Are Over. Is Democracy Foreign Policy (blog) With the swearing in of the Republican-dominated 115th Congress and the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, we are now faced with a series of unknowns about the future of liberalism and democracy. The politics of nationalism are one aggravating ... and more »

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Forget Dow 20000 the Boom Times Are Over. Is Democracy - Foreign Policy (blog)

Ashundreds of thousands of protesters shut down the streets of Washington, D.C., the day after Donald Trump's inauguration, and millions more marched all over the country and the world, America's new president sent his press secretary to attack the White House press corps and claim Trump's inauguration crowd was the "biggest ever." This strange and obvious lie was taken by some commentators to be a warning aimed at the press a defiant statement that Trump intends to propagate his preferred reality and vilify reporters who contradict it.

That may be true, but what Trump proudly calls his "running war with the media" obscures an even more fundamental threat to U.S. democracy: He's trying to silence and erase citizens who don't support his message and policies by claiming he alone speaks for "real" Americans and can tell us who qualifies as such. Attacking the press is a more palatable way to go after his real target: "We the People."

Trump told the country what he thinks of dissenters in a snide tweet in response to Saturday's massive protests, saying he "was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn't these people vote?" Well, they did, as evidenced by the marchers chanting, "We are the popular vote!" past the White House. Regardless, the implication in Trump's tweet is that once you've been outvoted, you should shut up. Needless to say, that is not how democracy works.

Trump repeatedly claimed in his inauguration speech that he speaks for and will govern for "the people." He referred to his oath of office as an "oath of allegiance to all Americans." In fact, the oath he took isn't one of allegiance to "the people" he took an oath to uphold the Constitution. "The people" disagree about lots of things; the document structures how the country navigates those disagreements, and restricts what those in the majority can do to those in the minority. But Trump has made it clear he plans to justify whatever he wants to do as the will of "the people" while portraying anyone who disagrees with him as too crooked and corrupt to be among them.

Democracy requires competition among opposing ideas. There can't be a debate if those in power refuse to acknowledge facts or dissenting viewpoints. Elections have consequences, of course, but it is still the president's job to serve all the people including those who didn't vote for him, or who did vote for him but oppose particular policies (like Trump voters whodon't want him to take away their health careor defund Planned Parenthood). Trump is instead purporting to have a mandate for radical and unconstitutional acts promoting an alternative political reality in which he isn't deeply unpopular by fabricating crowd numbers, while dismissing those who've taken to the streets to express their fear and dissent in unprecedented numbers.

On Wednesday, Trump doubled down on an even more frightening strategy to deny facts he doesn't like and define anyone who doesn't support him as un-American when he repeated the widely debunked conspiracy theory that he would have won the popular vote if not for widespread voter fraud. Trump went on to call for a "major investigation" into his claim of illegal voting, for which there is absolutely no evidence.

This lie about the election represents an expansion of Trump's delegitimization campaign against Barack Obama, to new targets. Trump is claiming millions of people who voted against him are either literally not American or un-American fraudsters who voted in two states or under fake names.

This fits a pattern of trump attempting to discredit or silence those he deems enemies. After promising to release his tax returns, Trump's camp declared he didn't need to because only reporters care about them. The 74 percent of Americans who told pollsters he should release his returns, and the thousands who marched on Washington chanting, "Show us your tax returns!" or who signed the WhiteHouse.gov petition demanding transparency apparently don't count. (The petition, which is still open, quickly hit the 100,000 signatures needed for a White House response. After initially saying Trump wouldn't release his returns, adviser Kellyanne Conway now says he may release them once he's no longer under audit. Trump has refused to explain why an audit prevents him from releasing his returns, or to provide proof that he is even being audited though he will be soon, because the IRS audits the president every year.)

Trump targets individuals who question him as well. When a union leader corrected the record about the jobs at an Indiana factory Trump claimed to have saved, Trump used his megaphone to try to discredit and silence him. When women spoke out to allege that Trump did commit the kinds of sexual assaults he was caught on tape bragging about, he characterized them as lying political enemies and threatened to sue.

We can now expect official actions to keep inconvenient information out of the public sphere: The Trump administration reportedly ordered the EPA to remove its webpage about climate change and the National Parks Service to stop tweeting after it retweeted a picture comparing Trump's and Obama's inauguration crowds.

The outlandishness of Trump's crowd size and vote count claims are enough to make one wonder if he's delusional, and it's tempting to chalk up his attacks on the press to his wounded ego. But the experience of other countries suggests his campaign of disinformation and delegitimization is more nefarious. Norms protecting freedom of information, speech and the press are essential for a functioning democracy; to Trump, they are a threat. Populist dictators get away with extralegal and unconstitutional acts by claiming authorization from "the people." The first step in that anti-democratic effort is to make sure people with inconvenient facts and contrary ideas are silenced, discredited or erased. That's what Trump is doing now. Don't stop paying attention.

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Trump's Anti-Democratic War on Facts and Free Speech - RollingStone.com

TEODORO OBIANG, the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, is used to shady guests. A decade ago, his Black Beach prison held Simon Mann, a British mercenary who was sentenced to 34 years for his role in the botched Wonga coup that tried to topple him. (Mr Mann won a presidential pardon in 2009.) In a fresh act of mercy, Mr Obiang has taken in another guest, whose quarters will doubtless be cushier. On January 21st he welcomed Yahya Jammeh, the former dictator of Gambia, whose people had tired of him after 22 years.

Mr Jammeh fled Gambia after a month-long stand-off with West Africas regional power bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). It had threatened to send troops in after Mr Jammeh reneged on a pledge to hand over power to Adama Barrow (pictured), an opposition politician who won a presidential election in December.

Mr Jammeh and his new host are not known to have been close before, but they may find many reasons to get along. Both seized power in coups, and both have clung to it for decades: Mr Obiang, who has been in office for 37 years, is the worlds longest-serving political leader. Both also care little for human rights: Mr Jammeh withdrew Gambia from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court last year; Mr Obiang never signed up in the first place. So Mr Jammeh may be free to enjoy his retirement without the threat of extradition and prosecution for all the dissidents who had plastic bags tied over their heads in his jails. As part of his luggage from Gambia, Mr Jammeh is said to have shipped out two Rolls-Royces, a Bentley and $11m in cash, so he should be comfortable too.

The allegations about Mr Jammehs last-minute looting were made by an adviser to Mr Barrow, Mai Ahmad Fatty, who claimed that the states coffers had been all but emptied. And this is only one of the problems facing Mr Barrow. As Egypt and Libya recently learned, there is more to ending a dictatorship than getting rid of the despot. Mr Barrow, who has never held office, inherits a country with little experience of democracy. He will govern via a shaky, seven-sided coalition whose only real common ground was an intense dislike of Mr Jammeh. Most Gambians also concede that for all its faults, Mr Jammehs police state managed to keep civil war, Ebola and jihadist terrorism at bay.

Mindful of the challenges, Mr Barrow plans to focus on reforming the economy and security forces rather than trying to lock up his predecessor. Instead he has proposed a truth and reconciliation commission. Though odious, Mr Jammeh has far less blood on his hands than, say, Liberias former president, Charles Taylor. Even if Mr Obiang could be persuaded to give up his guest, ECOWAS may simply deem it not worth the effort of pursuing him, particularly if it risks reopening old wounds.

Even so, the way in which ECOWAS rallied to Gambias defence is cause for cheer. It cements the principle that no one in West Africa can stage a coup or steal an election without risking sanctions or worse from the neighbours.

It might seem surprising that a region that includes some of the poorest countries in the world should be so strict about enforcing democratic normsunlike some other parts of Africa. Paul Melly of Chatham House, a think-tank in London, notes that ECOWAS has been honing its interventionist skills for more than a quarter of a century. It began in 1990, when the outbreak of the first Gulf war meant that America and other Western powers were too busy to get involved in the Liberian civil war. Instead, ECOWAS had to pick up the baton and send in its own peacekeepers. Although that intervention was not an unqualified success (the fighting continued and peacekeepers were accused of rampant looting), it broke with a tradition of turning a blind eye. Countries in the region realised that their neighbours problems could soon become theirs, Mr Melly says.

Tiny Gambia, with a population of just 1.9m, may be only a small step in the right direction, but it is still an important one. Two years ago ECOWAS tried to get its 15 members to agree that no head of state should serve more than two terms. The measure was vetoed by just two countries: Gambia and Togo. With Mr Jammeh gone, it may not be long before no leader, no matter how popular he claims to be, can dream of breaking Mr Obiangs record in office.

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After Gambia's dictator, democracy? - The Economist