What makes a democracy? In this video, members of the public discuss what constitutes a democratic country, and how many true democracies exist.

According to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, there were only 19 countries that had a full democracy in 2016. Based on the Unit’s report, a country is said to have a full democracy when the functioning of a government is satisfactory, political freedoms are respected, and the media and judiciary are independent.

An infographic showing how each of the 167 countries analyzed by The Economist Intelligence Unit scored, on a scale of 0 to 10 based on 60 indicators, can be found here.

The 19 countries judged to have full democracies were as follows:
Norway; Iceland; Sweden; New Zealand; Denmark; Canada; Ireland; Switzerland; Finland; Australia; Luxembourg; Netherlands; Germany; Austria; Malta; United Kingdom; Spain; Mauritius and Uruguay.

Notably, not one of the 167 countries analyzed achieved a perfect 10 out of 10!

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s full Democracy Index report for 2016 can be found here.

Be the first to learn about more videos like this: Subscribe to receive the Dr. Rath Health Foundation’s weekly newsletter.

A non-profit organization, the Dr. Rath Health Foundation is the coordinator of the Movement of Life project.

If you like this video, please share it on social media using the share buttons above! By sharing this video you support our mission to encourage people to create hands-on pilot projects in the areas of #health, #food, #water, #energy, #knowledge, and #work.