Why The US May 'No Longer Qualify As A Democracy'

In case you were wondering, the US may not have been a democracy in the true sense of the word.

According to the Center for Systemic Peace (CSP) - which measures whether a nation constitutes a democracy by using a Polity scale - in the last weeks of Donald Trump's presidency, the US no longer qualified as a democracy.

It was actually found that the nation had become an 'anocracy', which is neither a fully democratic or autocratic state.

A democracy is a system of government where power rests with the people in that state or society, whereas an anocracy is typically defined as a state or society governed by one person with absolute power.

Essentially, anocracy is the uncertain middle ground under which citizens experience some features of a democracy like elections, while the likes of due process or freedom of the press suffer.

The Polity scale in question 'measures patterns of authority demonstrated and observed in political behaviours involving interaction events between and within state and non-state entities'.

The scale places countries between -10 (most autocratic) and +10 (most democratic), with anocracy falling in the middle between -5 and +5. According to the scale, the US dropped below the 'democracy threshold' in 2020.

Before 2019, the US had a score of +7 but this dropped at one point 'due to the executive's systematic rejection of congressional oversight', a reference to Trump's refusal to cooperate with congress at the end of his term.

The score also fell after the events of the January 6 Capitol riots, which the CSP listed as an 'attempted coup'.

While the score has since risen from +5 to +8 under President Joe Biden, it's deemed alarming that the US' Polity score fell so far.

According to The Washington Post, when a county slips into the anocracy zone, 'the risk of political violence reaches its peak'. Anocracies are also three times more likely to experience political instability and civil war when compared with democracies.

It's a slippery slope and while the US seems to have reclaimed its status as a democracy, this potential spiral is something to be aware of as Trump hints at another electoral run.

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