My own opinion is that Spain has a bit of a problem with some aspects of democracy. For instance a woman, who tweeted some old jokes about about ETA, the Basque terrorists, blowing up the admiral Carrero Blanco in 1973, was sentenced to a year in prison (time that she would never have served) though her sentence was quashed by a higher court. Similarly 14 musicians in Spain have been taken to court, presumably for the content of their songs, though, in the end, only two were locked up. Generally though it's a good place to live with all of the safeguards you would expect from a solid democracy even if there is a tendency to set those safeguards to the side every now and again and to be heavy handed and over authoritarian. There are far too many examples of the limitations on basic democratic expectations, like access to information, being able to complain or expressing an alternative opinion without coming up against insuperable obstacles or facing either a hefty fine or a jail sentence. Then again I remember that the UK locked up a couple of rappers for singing a song.
Freedom House, a US organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights begins its country profile for Spain with this summary paragraph: Spain’s parliamentary system features competitive multiparty elections and peaceful transfers of power between rival parties. The rule of law prevails, and civil liberties are generally respected. Although political corruption remains a concern, high-ranking politicians and other powerful figures have been successfully prosecuted. Restrictive legislation adopted in recent years poses a threat to otherwise robust freedoms of expression and assembly. A persistent separatist movement in Catalonia represents the leading challenge to the country’s constitutional system and territorial integrity.That sounds about right to me.
On Sunday morning I heard a piece on the radio based on the Economist Magazine's Democracy Index. I'd never heard of the Democracy Index but, apparently the UK magazine has been producing it since 2006. It quantifies the amount of democracy in 165 states. Not surprisingly their general, worldwide, conclusion is that the implementation of government imposed pandemic control measures led to a huge rollback of civil liberties in 2020.
The Democracy Index score is based on five categories:
- Electoral process and pluralism
- The functioning of government
- Political participation
- Political culture
- Civil liberties
There are a range of indicators within each of these categories and each indicator is scored. The questions are of this type: Are elections for the national legislature and head of government free?, Is the functioning of government open and transparent, with sufficient public access to information?, To what degree is the judiciary independent of government influence?
From the score given to each country they are placed in one of four types of regime and ranked: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime or authoritarian regime. Although the score is plotted on a ten point scale it is presented in decimal format, 7.65 for instance, so it's actually more like a thousand point scale. Countries that score 8 and 9 are classed as full democracies, those with 6 and 7 as flawed democracies, hybrid regimes generally score 4 and 5 and authoritarian regimes score in the 1,2 and part of the 3 scale.
The least democratic country on the scale for 2020 is North Korea with a score of 1.08. The most democratic country is Norway with a score of 9.81. Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Canada are right up there too. Surprisingly, in Western Europe, countries like Belgium, Italy, Greece and Cyprus are classed as flawed democracies because they score below 8 and, this time around, France slipped to that level. The best of Eastern Europe countries, Estonia, comes in as a flawed democracy as does the United States which is at position 25 with a score of 7.92. Just for a couple of my regular readers Russia is at 124, Qatar at 126 and Oman at position 136. Australia shares 9th position. In all the cases that's out of 167.
Spain does alright with a score of 8.12 and 22nd position. It's the lowest scoring full democracy in the table; teetering on the edge. The UK does better; full democracy with a score of 8.54 and position number 16. Ireland is better still, 9.05 and 8th place.
So the Economist almost agrees with Pablo.
