2 ms·

You should not look at comparative rankings between countries; you should look at trends. The best current empirical source is: https://www.v-dem.net/ https://

You should not look at comparative rankings between countries; you should look at trends. The best current empirical source is: https://www.v-dem.net/ https://www.v-dem.net/ Accordingly, Australia is declining, like many other countries, unfortunately.

defrost 3y ago
> The best current empirical source is ... Is there any particular reason why > the V-Dem Institute at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden [...] With five Principal Investigators [...] etc. [1] is currently the best empirical source? I've been about for a few decades and I'm a fan of large helicopter views of global parameters, resource | energy use | trade movements | political trends | comparative intra country wealth distribution | etc. I can see it's a decent enough project, albeit influenced by both the University of Notre Dame and the Kellogg Institute, but I see no compelling reason to rank it as "the best" of it's kind and a few flags that suggest potential bias in viewpoint. > Accordingly, Australia is declining, like many other countries, unfortunately. Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries) [1] https://www.v-dem.net/about/v-dem-project/ https://www.v-dem.net/about/v-dem-project/
- jruohonen 3y ago
  > is currently the best empirical source? Yes: a lot of academic research on the topic. > I've been about for a few decades and I'm a fan of large helicopter views of > global parameters, resource | energy use | trade movements | political trends | > comparative intra country wealth distribution | etc. You can do that with V-Dem too. > I can see it's a decent enough project, albeit influenced by both the University of Notre Dame and the Kellogg Institute, but I see no compelling reason to rank it as "the best" of it's kind and a few flags that suggest potential bias in viewpoint. These are the same people; V-Dem was built upon the foundation done at the Kelogg Institute. Since then, V-Dem covers over ten universities and over two thousand academics. > Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described > as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries) I just briefly looked at the chart about liberal democracy rights; a slight downward trend from the late 2000s. You'd need to do a thorough analysis for a definite conclusion, of course.
- nirimda 3y ago
  > Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries) If Australia is declining "like many other countries" as the PP said, then it might not be called out specifically. You can go to their graphing tools like https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/VariableGraph/ https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/VariableGraph/ (this one focuses on a particular measure and shows you how it changes over time in different countries), enter the measure you want (for this I looked at "liberal democracy index") and some group of countries. I entered Australia and the G7 countries, and while there does seem to be a peak maybe 10-20 years ago for them all, it could easily be some artifact. On this basis, I would hardly agree with PP that there is a declining trend in Australia. Btw - once you've selected an indicator, you can click its name (white on dark grey) the box under the box under the graph and find information on it. In this case, it tells you it's an aggregate of liberal and polyarchy. Those in turn are also aggregates but it comes back to expert survey data. With survey data, you probably need to change the scale to original scale because otherwise the values in the graph won't correspond to the description in the text.

defrost 3y ago

> The best current empirical source is ... Is there any particular reason why > the V-Dem Institute at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden [...] With five Principal Investigators [...] etc. [1] is currently the best empirical source? I've been about for a few decades and I'm a fan of large helicopter views of global parameters, resource | energy use | trade movements | political trends | comparative intra country wealth distribution | etc. I can see it's a decent enough project, albeit influenced by both the University of Notre Dame and the Kellogg Institute, but I see no compelling reason to rank it as "the best" of it's kind and a few flags that suggest potential bias in viewpoint. > Accordingly, Australia is declining, like many other countries, unfortunately. Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries) [1] https://www.v-dem.net/about/v-dem-project/ https://www.v-dem.net/about/v-dem-project/

jruohonen 3y ago
> is currently the best empirical source? Yes: a lot of academic research on the topic. > I've been about for a few decades and I'm a fan of large helicopter views of > global parameters, resource | energy use | trade movements | political trends | > comparative intra country wealth distribution | etc. You can do that with V-Dem too. > I can see it's a decent enough project, albeit influenced by both the University of Notre Dame and the Kellogg Institute, but I see no compelling reason to rank it as "the best" of it's kind and a few flags that suggest potential bias in viewpoint. These are the same people; V-Dem was built upon the foundation done at the Kelogg Institute. Since then, V-Dem covers over ten universities and over two thousand academics. > Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described > as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries) I just briefly looked at the chart about liberal democracy rights; a slight downward trend from the late 2000s. You'd need to do a thorough analysis for a definite conclusion, of course.
nirimda 3y ago
> Err... I did look through the V-Dem 2023 Democracy report (56 pages), read several parts at length and looked at the four (4) mentions of Australia and while I agree that many parts of the world are backsliding to what is described as 1985 global democracy levels ... there is no mention there that Australia is one of those parts sliding back and indeed is rated there as on the world's more democratic nations (#11 of 190+ countries) If Australia is declining "like many other countries" as the PP said, then it might not be called out specifically. You can go to their graphing tools like https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/VariableGraph/ https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/VariableGraph/ (this one focuses on a particular measure and shows you how it changes over time in different countries), enter the measure you want (for this I looked at "liberal democracy index") and some group of countries. I entered Australia and the G7 countries, and while there does seem to be a peak maybe 10-20 years ago for them all, it could easily be some artifact. On this basis, I would hardly agree with PP that there is a declining trend in Australia. Btw - once you've selected an indicator, you can click its name (white on dark grey) the box under the box under the graph and find information on it. In this case, it tells you it's an aggregate of liberal and polyarchy. Those in turn are also aggregates but it comes back to expert survey data. With survey data, you probably need to change the scale to original scale because otherwise the values in the graph won't correspond to the description in the text.