Lovin’ democracy? You’re probably doing all right, then |
Lovin’ democracy? You’re probably doing all right, then
April 22, 2026 — 5:00am
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Journalists realised long ago that people find bad news more interesting than good news. I think this is because we search our environment for threats to our wellbeing so we can do something about them. Fortunately for the news media, it’s rarely hard to find something new to worry about.
But you can have too much of a bad thing. Unless we leaven the bad news with something nice, we risk having our customers wonder why they’re paying to be depressed.
The good souls at the Grattan Institute have been researching the state of our democracy, but the best I can do is report that the news is mixed.
The first bit of news is bad: the number of democracies had been growing in the last decades of the 20th century, but since then, the number’s been declining. According to America’s V-Dem Institute, by last year the world was down to only 31 liberal democracies out of the 179 countries assessed, with almost three-quarters of the world’s population living in autocracies.
The figures aren’t helped by the United States – soon to be renamed the Kingdom of Donald. The status of what used to be the poster child for democracy has been lowered from “liberal democracy” to “electoral democracy” thanks mainly to the way Trump has been gathering power to the presidency, weakening America’s much-lauded “checks and balances”.
The good news, however, is that our status as a liberal democracy remains unchanged. According to........