We need to discuss democracy (2/2)

This column will continue to discuss the topic of democracy. discussed in the previous column.The Economist Group, a British multinational company that owns The Economist magazine, one of the bibles of neoliberal thought, developed the Democracy Index. This is an index created by... Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis division of this group. It analyzes 167 countries and classifies them as "full democracies," "flawed democracies," "hybrid regimes," and "authoritarian regimes" based on 60 indicators grouped into five different categories that measure "pluralism," "civil liberties," and "cultural politics." Pluralism can be understood in several ways. The most common refers to a political-party system where more than one party has social representation. Another way to understand it is to comprehend social, political, and cultural systems as resulting from the clash of demands made and defended by different autonomous social groups. These groups are formed thanks to the conjunction of a plurality of factors present in the social and political environment of a given society. Their demands are manifested publicly and create a debate in the political arena. Civil liberties or individual liberties are those that protect the citizen from authoritarian power or the use of the State by authoritarian groups for their own benefit. There are several rights included in civil liberties: the right to liberty and Safety; freedom of conscience; to religious freedom; freedom of expression; freedom of association and assemblythe right to privacythe right to one legal process equitablethe right to a trial fair; the right to own property; or right to defend oneselfthe right not to be torturedthe right not to suffer a forced disappearance; to press freedom; to equality before the law; or Right to lifeThe right to bodily integrity. It is interesting to note that these rights protect some citizens more than others. Notable absences among these rights are the right to decent work, the right to a minimum income that allows for the social reproduction of the citizen, the right to quality public health, the right to quality public education, and the right of access to land for those who wish to work it.

Cultural policies must ensure that minority groups, non-hegemonic groups, and traditional peoples can reproduce themselves socially and culturally with freedom, counting on the same support as hegemonic groups. This means that non-hegemonic groups must be guaranteed the right to live according to the norms and rules established by the culture inherited from their ancestors, or according to their own cultural values ​​(if it is an urban social group, for example), or according to their religious principles, as well as being guaranteed the same forms of financing and access to the same cultural resources available to hegemonic social groups. 

The Democracy Index presents distortions, the origins of which may be linked to the fact that it was created according to values ​​dear to a capitalist company. 

Among the countries that enjoy the highest ratings are Canada and Australia, which, for example, have indigenous minorities fighting for the right to self-determination and to live according to their traditional culture. Canadian and Australian democracy does not reach these minorities or reaches them in a transversal way. The governments of these countries allow, for example, the extraction of minerals in the territories of traditional peoples, despite their opposition. What influence does this type of practice have on the elaboration of the Democracy Index? This index measures the categories of pluralism, civil liberties, and cultural politics in a way that values ​​the visible, tangible form of democracy, which is generally associated with state and government actions. It is easy to measure it according to the actions of governments, but there is a difference between the actions of the government and the actions of the national citizen or national social groups. When I lived in Canada, for example, I witnessed a series of everyday attitudes that reflected racism and/or disrespect for non-Christian religions. This type of everyday behavior, which reflects the exercise of micropowers, is impossible to record using indices that seek to construct general overviews, and it certainly wasn't identified by the Democracy Index with regard to Canada. 

Formal state and government institutions do not allow for a proper assessment of democracy. The Democracy Index classifies the US and Uruguay as full democracies, but classifying countries where white supremacy is a national institution, as is the case in the US, where there is a huge concentration of rural property that excludes peasants from access to land, and where poverty affects millions of people, seems like a fallacy.

Despite being the country with the highest number of LGBTQI+ murders, despite having the second highest income concentration in the world, despite 48% of its population lacking access to sanitation services, Brazil is considered an imperfect democracy. Brazil cannot be considered a democracy, either fully or imperfectly, and the current situation under Jair Bolsonaro's government exposes the open wounds of an authoritarian, intolerant, racist, and uncultured society where friendships and class origins ensure more rights than the country's legal system.

Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran are considered authoritarian regimes. However, if we consider the Human Development Index (HDI) and not the Democracy Index, these three countries are classified, along with Brazil, as countries with high human development. This index seeks to measure the degree of development of a given society in terms of education, health, and income. It is the result of the combination of three dimensions: a long and healthy life, and... life expectancy at birth of a population; access to knowledge through analysis of average years of schooling and expected years of schooling; the GDP per capita (PPP). According to these criteria, Cubans enjoy a life expectancy of over 79,1 years, the average years of schooling for a Cuban citizen is 9,9 years, and Cuba's PPP is equivalent to US$5.416. In Venezuela, life expectancy is 72,25 years, the average years of schooling is 9,4 years, and Venezuela's PPP reaches US$16.054. As for Iran, life expectancy is 75,13 years, and the PPP reaches US$5.627. Data on the average years of schooling in Iran were not available. 

It is important to highlight that all three indicators discussed above have been improving over the last 20 years in the three countries in question, despite all three being subject to economic sanctions imposed by countries considered full democracies or flawed democracies, led by the USA.

Would the HDI (Human Development Index) be a more suitable index for measuring the level of a democracy, given that a high HDI could represent greater popular participation in government control? The reality found in Brazil and the USA demonstrates that it is not.

Perhaps the best approach is to acknowledge that various models of democracy exist and that it is not appropriate to evaluate them and claim that one is better than another. It is up to the people of each country, autonomously and self-governingly, to define which model is most suitable for their reality. For this to be possible, it is necessary that indices such as the Democracy Index cease to exist or be used very critically and sparingly because they serve the very specific interests of investors and capitalists in rich countries, allowing them to decide where to invest their capital. 

A decontextualized index allows for distorted analyses. If we look at the Democracy Index, we see that the lowest democracy scores correspond to conflict-ridden African countries and Saudi Arabia. In all these countries, we find agents of full democracies or flawed democracies acting in a way that sustains authoritarian governments or armed groups that ensure good business and income transfer from these authoritarian regimes to Western democracies. The Democracy Index does not use this variable, foreign influence, in its classification, in the elaboration of its index. This generates serious distortions and imperfections, such as classifying as democracies regimes that do not ensure a good quality of life for citizens and classifying as autocracies regimes where the population enjoys a good quality of life.