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Here's the criteria that the score is build on.
From a quick glance, I'd say US is majorly lacking in:
What do you mean what's the catch?
Nobody is more free than America!!!! There has to be some kind of gimmick!!! What are they doing, bribing people with basic protections and social services that counteract the crushing forces of poverty???
Dang straight. Freedom is having every opportunity to fall into poverty. Thats what those other countries don't understand
Freedom means nothing without rights. Every society is a "free" society to kings and billionaires, not so much for the poor. Freedoms are rights plus allowance. We allow for much in the US, but we do not universally uphold rights.
suprisingly close to my thought process
Looking at the list, less a catch more a difference of ethos. Higher taxes for better public services and more even wealth distribution for social cohesion.
Many are less diverse than the USA, which brings pros and cons too.
Do you mean "okay, but why is it still better to live on America than those places?" The answer to that one is, for the most part, it's not. (I have lived a fairly sketchy life but the three times I've had guns drawn on me have all been in my brief visits to America.)
Do you mean, how are they more democratic? Gerrymandering, unlimited campaign contributions to "PAC" which are absolutely totally not working with parties and of course, the obscenely impressive ways pork gets stuffed into the most innocuous of bills by design all come leaping to mind.
In the US there are 2 political parties
In Denmark theres many more. The current government is 3 parties, and theres a total of 13 iirc, currently elected parties.
You can (most likely) find a political party to represent you.
Democracy in the US hasn't been in a worse state in a very long time. There's not much of a trick to having a stronger democracy than that...
Why should there be a catch?
Speaking for NZ, while we do have things like:
Cheap or free healthcare
Roads in good condition
Low corruption/Limited power
Excellent conservation
Great public services
High level of safety
Very strong employment laws
Very low exploitation
Very open press
Free speech
Almost nearly adequate climate policies
We are still stuck with a lot of people who have the red vs blue mindset. People often vote for the party that is most likely to stop the party they don't want getting in to power.
We have MMP here, which is of course the best system, we have political parties across the spectrum so that the largest amount of people have representation. But goddam it's always the same 2 in majority power.
There's delay in progressive change, eg decriminalizing weed, providing better health services.
When the wrong party is in (team blue) they focus on the wrong things ie building even more roads instead of improving public transport etc.
When the less wrong party is in (team red) they focus on appearing to do things that we care about but do a bad job.
It's difficult to nail down general specifics but I think you get the idea.
That list seems mostly right, however...
The UK, France and Spain ARE NOT working democracies.
They can be considered "functioning" goverments to a degree, (and great economies no doubt).
But those 3 countries have deep socio-political issues that their goverments should attent with outmost urgency.
I don't think i should describe the situation in France, as it has been spoken quite frequently in recent months.
In the case of UK and Spain, large fractions of their populations (Ireland, Scotland and Cataluña) do not feel a partriotic sentiment towards their country as a whole, but rather the region they live in, and consider that said region should be divided into an independent nation.
Before you dive into the negative aspects (and possible concequences) of such a division, let me remind you of the current conflict between Russia and Ucraine. In wich, Russia (or more accurately the Russian goverment) wants to claim Ucraine back as part of their territory despite most people in both countries being against that decision (and even more so about the idea of a war to resolve said conflict).
Back to the UK and Spain, inside those countries, elections have been held to decide if their regions should split and be independent. However, said elections weren't quite "fair" as most people in the regions that wanted to be independent did vote on favor of independence, however it was the mayority of the countries' populations (England and the rest of Spain), that voted to keep things as they are.
AKA People that don't live (and probably don't even interact with said regions) took the decision FOR THEM.
This is specially frustrating in the case of Cataluña because they speak AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LANGUAGE from the rest of Spain.
So in conclusion, i believe that for those 3 countries to be considered "working democracies" their goverments should focus on the true needs of their people, rather than deciding matters on economic factors.
In the case of UK and Spain, large fractions of their populations (Ireland, Scotland and Cataluña) do not feel a partriotic sentiment towards their country as a whole
Uh, you know Ireland hasn't been part of the UK since 1922, right?
Well yes, but actually no.
Northern Ireland is not Ireland.
Then why is it named "Ireland"?
It's named Northern Ireland.
Speaking about Ireland, you guys should totally watch this movie. It literally speaks about how things are going nowadays.
I literally live here.
Thus you know the name of the biggest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly? You know, the one with an Irish name.
Sinn Fein, yes. But what's that got to do with the point in hand?
You know the two biggest parties in the United States? You know, the ones with English names.
Back to the UK and Spain, inside those countries, elections have been held to decide if their regions should split and be independent. However, said elections weren't quite "fair" as most people in the regions that wanted to be independent did vote on favor of independence, however it was the mayority of the countries' populations (England and the rest of Spain), that voted to keep things as they are.
Which votes are you referring to? Speaking for the UK, only the people of Scotland got a vote on their independence.
Warning to non-Europeans: This is fringe separatist scaremongering.
The Confederacy of Independent Systems entered the chat
I agree, those countries have internal problems. Said that, when they talk about democracy most of the time they are talking about freedom of speech and clean elections. When you have millions of people complaining and political parties that want the independence it proves there is a lot of freedom.
AKA People that don’t live (and probably don’t even interact with said regions) took the decision FOR THEM
How granular need it be to truly he considered democratic? Does it go against democracy that my neighbors have an equal vote in city elections for what I do with my own house? Should I be able to unilaterally declare sovereignty so long as a majority of people involved agree?
As akward as it feels to say this... i think the US's representative system would work better for these regions.
That way, each region would have an equally valid vote, (with each individual vote still being counted and measured.)
To some extent, the same question still arises: what is the "appropriate" determination of regions as to give them representation, given that it ultimately has to be a solid, defined area,
Please back up what you've said here. There was a referendum on Welsh devolution, which only people in Wales voted for. There was a referendum on Scottish independence, which only people in Scotland voted for. Afaik there has never been a vote in Northern Ireland on independence / rejoining Ireland.
The vote on Catalán independence was held by the Catalán government, voted on only in Catalonia, Spain and it's validity was rejected by the Spanish government. And Catalonia is not the only region of Spain to have its own language, and it's very common for multiple languages to be spoken within a country, I'm not really sure what the relevance of that is here.
I mean, Galicia, País Vasco, Valencia, Baleares, Asturias... also have different languages. There's plenty of regional languages in Spain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Spain
India has heaps of languages and it doesn't seem to be an issue (now, religion, on the other hand...).
The catch is that more democracy is not guaranteed to result in better government. But less democracy has way worse side effects.
With a few exceptions, I’d rather be a random citizen in any of the countries on your list than in the US.
What is this score based on? I had a quick skim of their site but my eyes kinda glazed over, polsci isn't my background. Can someone ELI5?
From my "took a couple polisci courses in college" perspective, this type of index is generally taken with a heavy grain of salt. Basically, the people writing the index take a bunch of stuff the consider important, and rate the countries on it. It's a slightly more formalized version of you looking at two countries with entirely different systems, and saying "I think that one works better"
Events in the UK, specifically tightening protest restrictions after Lizzy died and JK Rowling silencing critics through legal threats (just so you know, Trump wanted the US's libel laws to be more like the UK's but it never happened,) solidified my opinion that the first amendment is a net good.
I would maybe put Israel below the US based on what I know (since these kind of rankings are shaky) but that's about the only thing I genuinely think the US does best on a governmental level.
Some of my (uneducated) guesses:
It does depend on the country, we have quite high immigration in NZ.
I wouldn't really call it a "catch", but these kinds of indexes are heavily colored by the political persuasion of those creating the metrics by which the index judges. For instance, they judge various social inequalities as being a "worse democracy", which you may or may not agree with.