The United States has entered the list of returning democracies for the first time

The United States has been added to the annual list of “backward democracies” in support of international democracy and elections in Stockholm.

This study points to the “visible degeneration” that began in the country in 2019. It also says that more than a quarter of the world’s population live in backward democracy.

This research is based on 50 years of democratic indicators in about 160 countries and can be classified as democracies – including backward countries – hybrid governments and dictatorial regimes.

“Some countries, especially Hungary, India, the Philippines and the United States, have imposed quantitative measures for democratic violations – that is, actions that are unequal, illegal, undefined or unrelated to the nature of the emergency,” the document said.

The number of retiring democracies has doubled in the last decade and now accounts for a quarter of the world’s population. Countries like Poland and Slovenia are also on the list. Meanwhile, Mali and Serbia withdrew from the division as they were no longer considered democracies.

Afghanistan left the list of mixed governments and went to authoritarian governments. The same thing happened to Myanmar, which is considered a democracy.

“This year, we marked the US recession for the first time, but our data suggests that the recession chapter began at least in 2019,” the report said.

According to the document, a historic turning point occurred in the United States between 2020 and 2021, when former President Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the results of the presidential election.

“The United States is a high-performing democracy and has improved its performance on fair governance (corruption and predictable implementation) indicators by 2020. However, the decline in civil liberties and trials in government indicate serious problems in the very foundations of democracy,” said Alexander Hudson, co-author of the report.

He pointed out that following the police assassination of George Floyd, “the quality of union and assembly freedom was declining during the summer struggles of 2020.”

For the fifth year in a row, dictatorial nations outnumbered democracies. This trend is expected to continue until 2021.

By 2021, the group’s provisional estimates put the world at 98 democracies – the smallest in many years – with 20 hybrid governments and 47 dictatorships.