Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left podcast.

democracies don't break all of a sudden in a moment of crisis.

They fail slowly over time and only by knowing the warning signs and

responding effectively to the threat before it's too late can the worst be

averted. And the US is not alone in facing threats of democracy.

So today we look both inwardly and outwardly at the practice of democracy.

Sources providing our top takes today include TLDR News Global Tufts University

Vox Velshi Democracy docket the Marxist project Democracy Paradox, why is this happening with Chris Hayes, the Chantsy-Davaga show, and dastardly cleverness in the service of good.

Then in the additional deeper dive half of the show there will be more on

the dissection of democracy, international democracy, a cult of Trump, and Democracy in Action.

How do you measure democracy?

Well, as a concept it goes beyond just elections and there are a range of possible

indices we could use. For the purpose of this video though we're going to use the

E I use index which includes electoral processes and pluralism, functioning of government, political

participation, political culture, and civil liberties. Globally, though, all factors, apart

from political participation, have declined since 2008 and

declined further during the pandemic when civil liberties were curtailed.

So with that in mind, is democracy at risk?

Unsurprisingly, war-torn countries and authoritarian regimes are at the bottom of the

EI-U's democracy list.

And most of this regression occurred among the non- democracies,

suggesting that the authoritarian regimes are becoming more entrenched and hybrid regimes are struggling to democratise.

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