Norway fourth best democracy

[baldguy]

Norway and the Nordic region are very highly ranked by the latest ratings from the Economist Intelligence Unit Index of Democracy.

Best functioning democracies
1. Sweden 9,88
2. Iceland 9,71
3. Netherlands 9.66
4. Norway 9,55
5. Denmark 9,52
6. Finland 9,25
7. Luxembourg 9,10
8. Australia 9,09
9. Canada 9.02
10. Switzerland 9.02

The Netherlands and the Nordic countries took the top six places in the study, which considers 60 factors divided over five general categories; free and fair election process, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture.

The study examined the state of democracy in 167 countries, with governments grouped in four categories, ranging from full democracies to authoritarian regimes.

more
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1543571....

The USA is 17th and Britain is 23rd

[originalpckelly]

1. Of course I'd like to know how many minorities and other differences...

those countries have. Homogeneity makes it easy to deal with dissent.

[Cleita]

3. Actually, a lot of immigrant workers have been integrated into

Scandanavian countries since WWII. I knew many Swedish, Danish and Norwegian immigrants when I lived in L.A. For awhile the neighborhood I lived in was teeming with them. They were very open to ethnic diversity, often shocking white people with their willingness to socialize with minorities even dating and marrying them.

[Demeter]

4. Dissent In Sweden

Last I heard dissent consisted of the greedy wanting to cut social programs so as to cut taxes, and there's the odd assassin.

The Finns flocked to Sweden for jobs, and resented having to learn Swedish, even though they all supposedly studied it in school (it's nothing like Finnish).

There were the political asylum seekers from all kinds of nations.

The sociopaths emigrate to the US because they feel so much more at home here....(I married one, unhappily).

[Jemmons]

10. Minorities is not really an issue here in scandinavia - but...

globalization is very much so. There is an instinctive fear that the nordic model based on high degree of trust between government, businesses and population will be lost if globalization brings too many changes. The nordic countries have the worlds bedst gini-index, which measures the degree of inequality in earnings for any country. Fear of loosing out to globalization in that way has made immigration a big issue for a while, but motivated by financial rather than cultural issues in most people.

[Stockholm]

11. A common misconception Originalpckelly

Sweden is in fact an immigrant country. Of the Swedish population, 12,5 percent where born in another country (Sweden Statistics - SCB 2005). This is in level with countries such as the US and Germany. It is higher than the Netherlands, France and Great Britain and substantially higher than our nordic neighbours Norway, Denmark and Finland (OECD 2005). According to calculations by the Board, by 2014 the figure of foreign born population will rise to 14,5 percent.

Pocket facts from the Integration Board which breaks down the figures into countries of origin, development over time etc.: http://www.integrationsverket.se/upload/Publikationer/P...

[angry_chuck]

15. that should shut pckelly up

numbers don't lie, politicians do.

[Vidar]

19. Switzerland is so homogeneous that it has four official languages:

French, German, Italian & Romansh (obscure romance language only spoken in tiny region of Switzerland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language ).

[Goat or Panic]

2. Iceland here I come

One of the highest life expectancy rates (higher than the US), little air pollution, geothermal energy great arts and music scene. Now if we could just keep them from killing whales.

[Cleita]

6. Before you go, read Jared Diamond's "Collapse, How Societies

Choose to Fail or Succeed". He devotes a large part of the book to the Norse expansion across Iceland, Greenland and even North America. Although, the Norse almost destroyed the fragile environment of Iceland, they realized what they were doing and stopped the erosion they started. Today they are attempting to undo the damage. It's remarkable because they have a booming economy in a place that could easily have ended up like Easter Island. Their government is very socially democratic and run for the people not the corporations like ours is.

[Goat or Panic]

14. Still catching up on my reading

I have "Collapse" just haven't read it yet.
Iceland is even trying to re-forrest. Would love to visit someday.

[LeftishBrit]

5. I have been to Norway a couple of times..

and although I may not have been there long enough, or travelled enough (I was mainly in Oslo) to get the full flavour, I was very impressed by it. It's a beautiful place physically - though I don't think I'd cope well with the cold dark winters; and socially and politically, I called it "The land that Thatcherism forgot".

I have to say I'm a bit surprised that Britain was rated WORSE for democracy than the USA.

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. Well, you know a majority of the Democats are now progressives.

If that's the case in the Labour Party in the UK now, they're keeping very quite about it. But I love your "The land that Thatcherism forgot"!

Both parties in the UK are now corporatist, though given the opportunity, there is no question that voters would vote back a Socialist party. In fact, they thought they had when they first voted for the corporatist chameleon. Where were they to go after that? It's difficult to imagine, isn't it, but the Tories would be still worse. They just learnt to be better, more purposeful liars and to tell people what they think they want to hear.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Full report here

One advantage of our index compared with others is
that it provides for considerable differentiation of scores,
including among developed countries. The “near-perfect”
democracy is Sweden, the country with the highest
score. The other Nordic countries also have high ranks.
By contrast, the United States and Britain are near the
bottom of the full democracy category, but for somewhat
different reasons. America falls down on some
aspects of governance and civil liberties. Despite low
election turnouts, political participation in the United
States is comparatively high. In Britain low political participation
(the lowest in the developed world) is a major
problem, and to a lesser extent, for now, so are eroding
civil liberties. The rating for France is also comparatively
low as a result of modest scores for the functioning of
government, political participation and political culture.
Italy performs even worse, and falls in the flawed
democracies category—as a result of problems in functioning
of government and the electoral process, as well
as weaknesses in the political culture.

http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_INDEX_2007...

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. We're #17!

One serious note: The population of the top ten.

1. Sweden 9M
2. Iceland 3M
3. Netherlands 16M
4. Norway 5M
5. Denmark 5M
6. Finland 5M
7. Luxembourg 500K
8. Australia 20M
9. Canada 33M
10. Switzerland 8M
_____________________
104.5 million people (rounded up)




The top 5 are the cumulative size of California.

[Cleita]

12. It's time for California to dump Arnold and the rest of the

corrupt and dug in politicans of both parties. Then we should turn it around into a social democracy and show the rest of the country how it is done. Some cities and counties are already beginning something like this. Of course my Republican majority county lets homeless men die of cancer in open fields without proper medical care. We have a long way to go in this county.

However, if California can do this. It's still the sixth most prosperous ecomomy in the world the last time I looked at the stats (we were fifth when Dimson and Arnold arrived on the scene)so we still can turn things around. I have traveled the state pretty extensively in the past and there needs to be an economic revival in our forested northern part of the state that is ecologically and environmentally solid to turn things around.

[Selatius]

17. You're talking about uprooting the two-party system in California

Good luck with convincing the Repub and the Dem leadership to give up their collective grip on power in favor of a governance model that could actually allow them to be removed from power. (like proportional representation)

The only way you could establish a functioning social democracy in California would be to secede. Otherwise, your scheme would be sapped by poorer states being given resources that were taxed from wealthier states like California. Rangel in NY complained about Mississippi getting more dollars in social spending than they pay out in taxes and that the difference was being made-up by wealthier states like NY. I can't imagine CA being any different with respect to poor states like Mississippi.

[Cleita]

18. Yes, a way of bringing in a multi-party system

would be to do run-off voting. Campaign finance reform along with other election reforms would go a long way to achieving that goal. As far as our economic resources being sapped by poor states like Mississippi, better them than a company like Enron cheating us on energy like they did. I think we can do it if our tax resources are redirected away from corporate interests and into social democracy. To do that we have to get rid of the grip the GOP has on this state.

And we have to raise property taxes on multi-billion properties. We have some of the most expensive real estate in the west and yet collect only 1% tax on it. Now I'm all for the single family home for working couples and the elderly to remain at 1%, but the mansions and vacation homes can pay more taxes IMHO. This would give us the income needed to reenergize places in the state that are in a depression especially in the northern part of the state.

[NorVegan]

20. Correction: Iceland 300K

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

21. My apologies.

Far be it for me to fraudulently diminish the uniqueness of the Icelandic peoples.

[Stockholm]

24. Just imagine what could be achieved

if Sweden had the population of Carlifornia. Imagine the level of health care, child care, housing etc.

Blows my mind.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

25. Trade Eliasson for Schwarzy?

[Ian David]

9. U.S.A.! We're Number 17! We're Number 17! YAY!

Can't wait to put that on a bumper-sticker.

In any case, we're the 9th best country in the world where it isn't too fucking cold.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. A step slow.

[fujiyama]

22. Notice

the US has the lowest civil liberties score of all the "full democracies".

Actually India and some other "flawed democracies" beat the US in this regard.

[upi402]

23. Animal bordellos draw Norwegians

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1458080....

also voted best place to live.


i presume that excludes cute animals.