A democracy is not democratic

Arturo Bris 

Today, only 4.5% of the world’s population live in a fully democratic country, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. About 45% live in flawed democracies, while 33% are citizens in authoritarian regimes.

Some of us have been raised with the accepted wisdom that, starting under the ancient Greeks, democracy is the best system of governance in the world. Indeed, among the top 10 most competitive economies in the 2016 IMD World Competitiveness rankings, only two economies (Hong Kong and Singapore) are not full democracies. Yet the data show that, today, the world is less – not more – democratic than it was 10 years ago; the countries whose competitiveness has improved the most in the period are non-democratic. And these – Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – are role models for many public-sector officials around the world.