According to the Economic Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, will the U.S. be more democratic in 2024 than 2022?
Currently, the U.S. is ranked as a "flawed democracy" by the EIU, with an index of 7.85 in 2022, slightly below the 8.01 required to be considered a "full democracy". The U.S. has actually been rated as a flawed democracy every year since 2016, and it has been gradually getting lower over time since the democracy index was first published. Will the trend finally reverse, at least briefly?
2022 is the latest year for which the index has been released, but I figured it would be more meaningful to compare 2022 with 2024, rather than comparing either one to 2023, since both years include major elections.
This market will resolve YES if the 2024 democracy index for the United States released by the EIU is higher than 7.85, NO if it's less than or equal to 7.85, and N/A if the EIU doesn't release the U.S.'s democracy index for 2024 by the end of 2025 (unless there are stated plans to release it and it's just late).
The wealthy but crisis-plagued nation lacks the institutional capabilities to implement the kind of political reforms (e.g. one person, one vote) required to reverse its decline.
@TheBayesian And for anyone who's curious why it didn't occur to The Economist until 2006 that North American democracy needed tracking, there was a period roughly 1987 - 2001 when it was widely thought to be self-evidently permanent