Near the bottom, there's a link to the Economist's report http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Inde

Near the bottom, there's a link to the Economist's report http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf North Korea got 2.5 points on "Functioning Government". They aren't controlled by foreign powers, and they exert full control of their territory. That gives them a 2. Maybe they got a half point for the civil service. Also, a fair number of the points you get is the perception of the populace of their government. Depending on how Orwellian the country is, they can rank quite highly on those.