We go back to the International Democracy Survey of 2022 and focus in more detail on countries of current concern to understand how they have entrapped and suppressed their populations to live in dictatorships.
The first two components are the Electoral Democracy Index (EDI) of 40 components, and the Liberal Component Index (LCI) of 29 components. These are combined into the main Liberal Democracy Index (LDI). Then there are the Egalitarian Component Index (ECI), the Participatory Component Index (PCI), and the Deliberative Component Index (DCI).
We start with Iran, which theocracy is seriously beating, arresting, and killing women and men and the youth protesting the total religious control of all aspects of their lives. They are also selling modern drone bombs to Russia to kill civilians and destroy their infrastructure in the invasion of Ukraine. These are just their new offenses. They are still enriching Uranium and not signing a new nuclear development ban. Iran has cut its internet.
We then follow this with Russia, which has invaded Ukraine with false excuses and new laws to imprison protesters, and even those who say the word “war”. They have censored the regular internet. As part of their urging Ukraine to concede, they are committing all manner of war crimes. They will now force Belarus to join and also continue to be a launching territory. We contrast this to the young democracy of Ukraine. Russia has also cut off most natural gas to Europe, with winter coming.
Finally, the OPEC+, which includes Russia, has cut international oil production by 2 million barrels per day, or 2%. This will send the price of gasoline up increasing inflation, just 1 month before the US midterm election. Despite the fact that the US oil industry has not recovered its refining capacity which keeps US prices high, Democrats and President Biden are being blamed for this part of the recurrence of the price increase of gasoline. Inflation is a world-wide occurrence. It is occurring by Russian cutbacks and sanctions on Russian oil and natural gas, as well as supply chain disruptions from the pandemic. We have an article on the many ways that drivers can save gas, which is the appropriate answer to fight OPEC+.
We add the oil countries of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to our Democracy table. Venezuela also is the source of many seeking asylum at our Southern Border. Saudi Arabia has been generously funding Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump’s golf courses.
We also throw in China, where President Xi is about to give himself an unprecedented third 5 year term. They also heavily censor the internet.
For comparison, we add a struggling democracy, the United States, which has an open internet, but that turns out to also be a source of voluntary misinformation and propaganda, as well as truth.
The Democracy component table has the Country and the LDI, EDI, LCI, ECI, PCI, and DCI component values on a scale of 1 to 10. We also include the Ranking of the Country in each component. There are 179 countries ranked in the Survey.
| Country | LDI | EDI | LCI | ECI | PCI | DCI |
| Iran | 1.2 142 | 1.8 159 | 3.3 136 | 5.5 108 | 1.3 170 | 5.0 127 |
| Russia | 1.0 151 | 2.6 139 | 2.4 155 | 5.4 110 | 4.3 125 | 3.0 151 |
| Belarus | 0.4 175 | 1.8 158 | 0.8 175 | 7.4 54 | 1.6 160 | 1.2 169 |
| Ukraine | 3.2 99 | 5.2 89 | 5.4 110 | 6.7 73 | 5.7 70 | 8.1 48 |
| Saudi Arabia | 0.4 171 | 0.2 179 | 1.7 162 | 4.6 130 | 0.7 177 | 2.5 154 |
| Venezuela | 0.7 161 | 2.2 148 | 1.7 165 | 4.0 137 | 5.0 106 | 0.4 178 |
| China | 0.4 172 | 0.8 176 | 1.5 168 | 3.4 151 | 1.4 168 | 3.6 144 |
| United States | 7.4 29 | 8.2 29 | 9.0 26 | 6.5 76 | 6.6 26 | 7.8 61 |
Our previous article on the Survey covering more countries but with less detail is here.
The main site for the Survey and other studies is at V-dem.net.
