They give us zero points for “voter participation” because we have mandatory voting. If anything is flawed, it’s their methodology.
Quite correctly so.
Every year they release this and each time I think it’s rubbish, as the UK is considered a full democracy even though during the 2015 election a party got 13% of the votes but only one seat in parliamant.
I mean it was UKIP so I was kinda glad they only got one seat, but it is hardly democratic in my opinion.
> To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts.
Says enough I feel.
Also, lol at UK being a perfect democracy 😀 Of course they’re just figures from a UK private company but still.
And the US being above us, etc, etc.
Overall a nice bucketload of numbers, I give it 3/10. Try again with the definition of democracy used.
6 governments, 10 provinces to do what New York has one mayor for.
You could have fooled me…
IIRC, that’s from The Economist (right-wing UK newspaper), and they consider our mandatory elections a massive problem.
The fact that FPTP systems score higher is a complete joke. Anyone who knows a tiny bit about electoral systems would tell you so.
Edit: oh, and the fact that Saudi Arabia is not the absolute lowest country in “civil liberties” is insane. It scores higher than fucking China! Compare the rights of Chinese women to those of Saudi women. Or LBGT people in China vs Saudi…
And let’s not even mention the nightmare of atheists in Saudi.
But you have heard of our democracy?
Tyranny of minority comes to mind when thinking of Belgian politics, a lot of room for improvement if people want there to be a Belgium in a few decades time.
Right now and every passing year it feels more like Belgium in name only and this feelings stems from long before there were multiple crisis and social media that further exposed our divisiveness.
Than again I am of opinion at the current rate we are due for an EU appointed technocratic government in the future.
“Considered” by one publication. Last week it was the same, but Belgium wasn’t alone…did you feel the difference around you? 😮
Random website says something .. I don’t care, nor should anyone.
Democracy is a joke. A country where 50.1% of the inhabitants always get the party they voted for as a party in the government, and 49.9% never gets their vote useful, is considered a democracy.
The only thing that bothers me is that our ministers could be people you couldn’t vote on from a party you couldn’t vote on.
Not every Belgian has the same amount of voting power, so it’s normal we don’t score high
As a Belgian I prefer our system. We are a small, very divided country. Our current system forces the different parties to work together and ‘meet in the middle’, preventing the extremes from taking over. Because we are so divided, it’s a good thing to have several parties represent multiple opinions.
So we aren’t “flawed” the Economist method is “flawed”.
I find it’s interesting that the point where we loose the most points is “political participation”. There are some obvious issues with the scoring ( mandatory voting having the same impact as having <50% voter turnout ) but that still suggests that we might be less politicaly engaged than our neighbors.
From experience, it’s clear that most people in this sub would agree that this country’s governmental system needs a sure upgrade/reform.. but recognizing the system is (even more) flawed (than it might even seem) is a bridge too far apparently..
Anyone that can’t see why/how this country is not a full democracy needs to urgently re-educate themselves.. and learn to look through the rose-coloured b*llsh*t..
22 comments
And portugal ofcourse
Seems about right..
They give us zero points for “voter participation” because we have mandatory voting. If anything is flawed, it’s their methodology.
Quite correctly so.
Every year they release this and each time I think it’s rubbish, as the UK is considered a full democracy even though during the 2015 election a party got 13% of the votes but only one seat in parliamant.
I mean it was UKIP so I was kinda glad they only got one seat, but it is hardly democratic in my opinion.
> To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts.
Says enough I feel.
Also, lol at UK being a perfect democracy 😀 Of course they’re just figures from a UK private company but still.
And the US being above us, etc, etc.
Overall a nice bucketload of numbers, I give it 3/10. Try again with the definition of democracy used.
6 governments, 10 provinces to do what New York has one mayor for.
You could have fooled me…
IIRC, that’s from The Economist (right-wing UK newspaper), and they consider our mandatory elections a massive problem.
The fact that FPTP systems score higher is a complete joke. Anyone who knows a tiny bit about electoral systems would tell you so.
Edit: oh, and the fact that Saudi Arabia is not the absolute lowest country in “civil liberties” is insane. It scores higher than fucking China! Compare the rights of Chinese women to those of Saudi women. Or LBGT people in China vs Saudi…
And let’s not even mention the nightmare of atheists in Saudi.
But you have heard of our democracy?
Tyranny of minority comes to mind when thinking of Belgian politics, a lot of room for improvement if people want there to be a Belgium in a few decades time.
Right now and every passing year it feels more like Belgium in name only and this feelings stems from long before there were multiple crisis and social media that further exposed our divisiveness.
Than again I am of opinion at the current rate we are due for an EU appointed technocratic government in the future.
“Considered” by one publication. Last week it was the same, but Belgium wasn’t alone…did you feel the difference around you? 😮
Random website says something .. I don’t care, nor should anyone.
Democracy is a joke. A country where 50.1% of the inhabitants always get the party they voted for as a party in the government, and 49.9% never gets their vote useful, is considered a democracy.
The only thing that bothers me is that our ministers could be people you couldn’t vote on from a party you couldn’t vote on.
Not every Belgian has the same amount of voting power, so it’s normal we don’t score high
As a Belgian I prefer our system. We are a small, very divided country. Our current system forces the different parties to work together and ‘meet in the middle’, preventing the extremes from taking over. Because we are so divided, it’s a good thing to have several parties represent multiple opinions.
This list is flawed, tbh…
Ridiculous
This comment made a great breakdown:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/comment/j6x1dl7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/10rm8h6/comment/j6x1dl7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
So we aren’t “flawed” the Economist method is “flawed”.
I find it’s interesting that the point where we loose the most points is “political participation”. There are some obvious issues with the scoring ( mandatory voting having the same impact as having <50% voter turnout ) but that still suggests that we might be less politicaly engaged than our neighbors.
quite funny to see [my own previous comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/belgium/comments/10s2v8l/comment/j6z5ub1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), and [another one](https://www.reddit.com/r/belgium/comments/10s2v8l/comment/j6z8qlx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) stating the same being downvoted so much..
From experience, it’s clear that most people in this sub would agree that this country’s governmental system needs a sure upgrade/reform.. but recognizing the system is (even more) flawed (than it might even seem) is a bridge too far apparently..
Anyone that can’t see why/how this country is not a full democracy needs to urgently re-educate themselves.. and learn to look through the rose-coloured b*llsh*t..
How dare they