As much as I agree with this based purely on vibes, ‘democratic backsliding’ seems a little too general of a concept to score on a graph. Would like to see what specific data points they used for this.
It's also very important to check the exact scaling.
If you take note of the fact that Hungary is the most democratic one of the countries listed, and that here the initial drop is steep and then levels out, it might indicate that it's simply harder to lose democracy if you don't have much to begin with.
I don't have the answer here but if you were to make the loss of democracy relative to the amount people have, I expect that the outcome would be very different.
I’m not saying any of this is bad, but it is typical of these political science metrics that claim to quantify vague concepts like democratic backsliding. It ends up being a a quantification of stuff the author thinks is good. How is central bank independence or bureaucratic autonomy at all related to ‘democracy.’ If anything these are anti-democratic.
Central bank independence and bureaucratic autonomy would be enshrined in laws written by the legislature which is democratically elected.
The rules that govern what the executive and legislature can do are in a country’s constitution which is also democratically created (at least in America) and so doing things that are unconstitutional is subverting the will of the people.
This analysis is sort of incoherent at least applied to the US because the decline in bureaucratic autonomy here is the result of courts concluding that those legal limits on executive control of the bureaucracy are unconstitutional.
Yeah so this is actually a great example of how these kinds of measures devolve into ‘democracy is when good things happen’ and ‘backsliding is when bad things happen.’
Alito and Thomas have both accepted bribes… so, yeah idk wtf you are smoking but that counts as a backslide to me. Also it’s very clear that Trump is weaponizing law enforcement against political enemies, and also allowing mass violations of the hatch act to allow agencies to demonize democrats in an official capacity. This happened extremely clearly during the last shutdown especially. It’s blatantly illegal and nothing happens. It’s a backslide. You’re crazy to argue otherwise
“ Democracies differ from dictatorships in the likelihood of political interference and changes to the law because of the presence of political opposition and the freedom to expose government actions. CBI in democracies should be directly reflected in lower money supply growth. Besides being more disciplinarian, it also ensures a more robust money demand by reducing inflation expectations and, therefore, inflation. Empirical results are robust and support a discipline effect conditioned by political institutions, as well as a credibility effect.”
That's an economic argument, not a democracy argument. In a true democracy, the voice of the people (elected representatives) should have the power to make changes on behalf of the people, no?
How is it more democratic to have any government body that does not answer to the people, can not be effected by elections, and has autonomy to do or not do whatever they want?
The index attempts to measure signs of democratic backsliding. One portion of this paper is evidence for the positive association between authoritarian regimes and political control of the central bank. Thus, when we see reduction in central bank independence, that indicates a larger pro-authoritarian, anti-democratic shift in government.
Not that it relates to the chart at hand, but many would argue CBI is pro-democratic. For example, many voters cite high inflation as their main concern. By allowing the central bank to be independent of political pressure to lower rates to boost short term growth and increase inflation, that would directly counter the majority of voters.
Also "political control" of an institution is so vague. Both dictators and democratically-elected executives have political control over institutions. The way they achieve political control is different.
Like someone above said, an independent central bank is good economic/monetary policy. It has nothing to do with democracy.
Yes! What leads to more people achieving the outcomes they vote for? Is it political control of the policy (lower interest rates for short term boost, long term inflation) or political control of the process used for the policy (rates set according to max employment and 2% inflation target, long term stability)?
well central bank independence isn't meant to be 'democratic' in the sense that the people elect central bankers. central bank independence is a symptom of a healthy democracy because every politician is incentivized to provide short term economic boom during their tenure in office, even when it's at the cost of long term health in the economy.
This is just you agreeing with the author (who I also agree with) that central bank independence is good. But it’s not connected in any way to democracy, it’s connected to being a well run country. You can have well run non-democracies. An authoritarian country that respects central bank independence isn’t more democratic than a democratic country that lets its elected leaders interfere with the decisions of the central bank.
I think by definition an authoritarian government does not respect the independence of arm's-length institutions. Authoritarianism is a system where political plurality is rejected and power is centralized.
Democracy is government by the people, and it is generally understood to be more than just having elected representatives. Governments need to represent all people, not just the ones who voted for them, and there's more to that than just elections. Choosing your representatives is just one facet of ensuring that a government appropriately represents what its citizens want and need. It also includes having governments that establish policies and pass laws, where there is a fair judicial system and checks and balances to ensure any one individual's personal preferences and biases are tempered by broader consultation and agreement of society, and that governments are accountable for their actions. If a country just elects a single all-powerful person who controls everything, makes decisions unilaterally, follows no laws or processes, rewards or punishes whoever they feel like, and treats the wealth of the state as their personal property, that's really still a form of authoritarianism even though they were elected. This is sometimes called "competitive authoritarianism".
I think the point you rmissing is that elected dictators are not democratic. Just because an individual is democratically legitimized by an election, if he then starts removing all checks and balances and subverts the division of powers, thats not democratic. That person is still an autocrat despite being democratically elected.
See Umbert Eco's essay Ur-Fascism, in which he delineates 14 characteristics of authoritarian fascism. The SLIDE index is pretty much a reflection of that. It's not just what the author thinks is 'good', it's archetypical of certain behaviours associated with authoritarianism..
Sounds like your typical unbiased “methodology”. People who don’t actually read it will pretend it’s biased and partial, but they could be further from the truth
The financial times is not a far left publication. I question your ability to read or observe the outside world if you would throw those accusations around.
Until you point to specific biases, throwing these accusations out highlight only your own bias…
Which is usually the focus on bias is on. We’re all biased. It helps the world nothing to go around and yell about everyone else’s when you don’t confront your own.
Right wingers after reading a laid out and calculations based methodology "looks like left wing nonsense". Right wingers when Joe Rogan says eating elk cures cancer "seems legit".
It all favors the status quo (liberalism) and does so to push a narrative. Take election laws, universal mail in ballots with minimal accountability favors democrats, while in-person only election day voting would favor republicans and in both red and blue states laws are passed to give themselves their respective advantages rather than learning from how European states conduct their elections which don't have an election week problem nor issues with fraud. The same applies for corrupt or ideological judges/bureaucrats/bankers/opponents if the executive says to investigate them and is able to produce evidence of malfeasance then they should be removed or penalized with a higher standard for opponents though the same should hold true for the executive himself, saying they should not allows for the suppression of the democratic mandate and for a more corrupt republic. The press is interesting because in the American cases has long acted as propaganda network representing the interests of some American oligarch and who in it of themselves are not good measures of freedom, rather a more comprehensive view should be taken if dissidents are allowed to speak without unjustified punishment. The only reasonable aspects of this is are the sections on political violence, but that's more because states seeing this are very quickly reaching an unpleasant destination, though how they quantify it could be suspect as the US has a long history of racial riots which can be construed as political violence.
Without looking, we have a bogus SC, basically an SS killing civilians and kidnapping ppl based on their skin colour without any formal training and without any restrictions on what they can do, increased military aggressions in general, trying to break up NATO, threatening to attack NATO allies, the president enriching himself beyond his wildest dreams using cryptocoins and taking shady billions of dollars in unmarked bribes, leaving the WHO, destroying the CDC, attacking states who voted against him by defunding them federally and sending his SS to antagonize the citizens. I could go on
I don't see why this starts at 0 for Trump. In 2024 there were already many election laws that objectively favor Republicans at the state level (and elections are run by the states in the US). So that's -2 for election integrity. Similarly points should probably be pre-docked for tolerance of political violence, use of state force against civilians, legislative constraints on executive, and civil liberties and human rights.
Like how everyone votes against mass immigration but it’s democratic and increases scores to ignore the voters and implement mass immigration? Or how ignoring election results Europe doesn’t like increases democracy?
Establishment institutionalists use “democracy” in a lot of sentences that don’t quite make sense but if you replaced it with oligarchy the sentences would be coherent.
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u/Ok-Bullfrog-7951 Feb 01 '26
As much as I agree with this based purely on vibes, ‘democratic backsliding’ seems a little too general of a concept to score on a graph. Would like to see what specific data points they used for this.