A New Report Finds America Is No Longer a “Full Democracy”

And Donald Trump isn’t to blame.

Ringo Chiu/ZUMA


For the first time, the United States has been downgraded from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” by the Economic Intelligence Unit, a group that annually measures the strength of democracies across the world. According to the EIU, the country’s decline as a liberal democracy can be attributed to the “further erosion of trust in government and elected officials”—the same factors that led to the election of President Donald Trump.

The report found similar score declines and patterns of lower “popular confidence in political elites and institution” throughout Europe, especially in eastern Europe. Shortly after the US presidential election, one Harvard lecturer warned that the United States and European liberal democracies were under such a serious threat of a democratic decline that current trends resembled Venezuela’s political climate before its own crisis.

The findings, which were released on Wednesday, come amid increased alarm over Trump’s continued demonstration of authoritarian tendencies, as he issues gag orders across federal agencies and signs an expanding list of executive orders during his first few days in office.

The new commander-in-chief added fuel to such concerns this week when he repeated the debunked claim that voter fraud led him to lose the 2016 popular vote. Government officials and voting experts slammed the president for the assertion, saying any investigation into the falsehood will only further undermine voter confidence in future elections and will likely lead the new administration to make policy changes that make it even more difficult for many people to vote.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate