Public Sector Corruption: We’re Number 24

Transparency International annually publishes its list of public sector corruption. It measures 180 countries using a variety of data and formulates an index (100 being best; 0 being the worst), as perceived by experts and business executives.

Transparency International states that “corruption generally comprises illegal activities, which are deliberately hidden and only come to light through scandals, investigations or prosecutions.” Among the data captured by this Index are evidence of bribery, diversion of public funds, prevalence of public officials using public office for private gain without facing consequences, government’s ability to contain corruption, effective criminal prosecution of corrupt officials, and legal protection for whistleblowers, journalists and investigators when they report corruption. Not included in these rankings are citizens’ perceptions of corruption, tax fraud, private sector corruption, and other measures.

The United States ranked 24th. The question yet to be answered, what will be the public sector corruption score during a second Trump term as president?

Source: “Corruption Perceptions Index,” Transparency International, https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022.

Democratic Institutions (Economist Intelligence Study): We’re Number 25

Another analysis and ranking of democratic institutions comes from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a research group affiliated with the Economist media group. The EIU used five broad measures of democratic institutions: (1) electoral process and pluralism; (2) functioning of government; (3) political participation; (4) political culture; and (5) civil liberties. It categorizes countries according to four fields: “Full Democracies” (23 countries); “Flawed Democracies” (52 countries); “Hybrid Regimes” (35 countries); and “Authoritarian Regimes” (57 countries).

The United States is ranked 25th in the world and is labelled a “flawed democracy.” The top-ranked democracies, labelled “full democracies,” were Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, and Australia.

Source: “Democracy Index 2020: In Sickness and In Health, Economist Intelligence Unit, https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/democracy-index-2020.pdf?mkt_tok=NzUzLVJJUS00MzgAAAGLz8pJxdvi-Ch0FU7h6gFETu8H5QZtpqwss-0_e6BkQHUswSruQE0C1atHVEw-_4ATGr6i0uZjfqQfTz6yd-D2HUzrELRpQcYQesiqGjnj_7hplA

Democratic Institutions (Würzburg Study): We’re Number 37

Since 2016, researchers under the direction of Professor Hans-Joachim Lauth at the University of Würzburg in Germany have developed the Democracy Matrix project. That research measures the quality of democracy in over 175 countries, and its most recent analysis was from 2019.

The Democracy Matrix considers fifteen fields, with countries grouped in five categories, according to their democratic characteristics: “Working Democracy” (such as all of the Europe and North America; 37 countries in all), “Deficient Democracy” (most of South America; 46 countries), “Hybrid Regimes” (such as Mexico, India, and Nigeria; 41 countries), “Moderate Autocracies” (Russia, Egypt, and Cuba; 34 countries), and “Hard Autocracies” (China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran; 21 countries). They find that, when measuring population rather than simply the number of states, that almost half of the states worldwide have democratic regimes, but only a little more than one fourth of the world’s population lives in democracies.”

Based on these fifteen measurements, the United States remains a working democracy, but is outpaced by 36 other countries. The year before, the Democracy Matrix rankings had the United States at 38th place in the world and labelled as a “Deficient Democracy.” All this is before the 2020 presidential election, the Big Lie, the “Stop the Steal” efforts, the blatant attempts of Donald Trump and his allies to discredit the election results, and the unprecedented storming of the Capitol attempting to deny Biden his rightful victory.

Then came the 2024 victory of Donald Trump. Critics feared the worst: without any guardrails, with compliant majorities in both the House and the Senate, and with an agenda suffused with revenge and retribution, how could democracy survive? Would Trump follow through on his most blatant campaign promises: jailing opponents, purging the federal bureaucracy of critics, pardoning convicted January 6th instigators, ridding the military of so-called “woke” leaders, bypassing the legislative branch, flaunting the courts, and replacing democratic decision making with autocratic fiat and his billionaire friends. Trump supporters, on the other hand, dismiss the most egregious insults and claims, as mere campaign hyperbole, and welcoming what they consider much-needed changes in how the federal government operates. The next time international rankings are published, will the United States still be classified as a “flawed democracy,” or will it be labelled more as an authoritarian state.

Sources: Democracy Matrix, University of Würzburg, https://www.democracymatrix.com/fileadmin/Mediapool/PDFs/Report/DeMaX_Report_2019_Growing_Hybridity.pdf.

Gender Equity and Political Empowerment: We’re Number 37

In terms of political power and gender equity, the World Economic Forum (WEF) noted that the United States had jumped from 53rd place during the latter years of the first Trump administration to 37th place, thanks in part to the Biden administration’s executive appointments. The WEF calculations for gender equity and political empowerment considered three criteria: the percent of women in the national legislature; percent of women in ministerial positions; and years with a female head of state.

Gender equity also means a different focus on lawmaking and public policy. As Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Democrat-New York) lamented a decade ago, “Basic rights that our mothers and grandmothers successfully fought for are still on the table. I can guarantee you that if Congress was 51 percent women, we wouldn’t be wasting a day on whether women should have affordable contraception. We would be talking about the economy.

Sources: “Global Gender Gap Report, 2021,” World Economic Forum, March 2021, https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2021.pdf; Richard V. Reeves, “Congress Needs Gender Parity Quotas,” Brookings Institution, April 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/congress-needs-gender-parity-quotas/. Gillibrand quoted in Charlotte Alter, “Kirsten Gillibrand on Why She Hates the Phrase ‘Having It All,’” Time, October 1, 2014, https://time.com/3453839/kirsten-gillibrand-have-it-all/.

Participation of Women in National Legislatures: We’re Number 77

In the US Senate and the House of Representatives, there has been a slow, but steady increase in the number of women serving. In the 119th Congress (2025-2027), there are 125 women (29 percent) in the House of Representatives and 26 women (26 percent) in the Senate. (In addition, there are 4 non-voting women delegates in the House). In 2022, there are 562 women serving in state senates (28.5 percent) and 1,738 women in state lower chambers (32.1 percent). About two-thirds of all women serving are Democrats.

Throughout the world at the beginning of 2025, the Inter-Parliamentary Union found that 26.1 percent of legislators were women. Thus, the American representation could only be characterized as “near average,” ranking 77th in the world. In 2022, the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Norway) had the highest average of women lawmakers, at 41.4 percent. The Americas (North and South) were next with 21.8 percent, followed by Europe (minus the Nordic countries) at 19.1 percent; Asian countries were next with 17.4 percent, Sub-Saharan Africa with 17.2 percent, Pacific Islands with 13.4 percent, and Arab states with 9.6 percent.

Sources: Inter-Parliamentary Union, “Monthly Ranking of Women in National Parliaments,” (February 2025, https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking/?date_month=1&date_year=2025); “More Women in Parliament and More Countries with Gender Parity,” Inter-Parliamentary Union, March 3, 2022, https://www.ipu.org/news/press-releases/2022-03/new-ipu-report-more-women-in-parliament-and-more-countries-with-gender-parity

A Woman President? 30 Women Now Head Governments, But Not in the United States

With the June 2024 elections of Claudia Sheinbaum as president of Mexico and Halla Tómasdóttir as prime minister of Iceland, there are now thirty women who are heads of state or heads of government. In the United States, just two women have been the nominees for a major political party. Former First Lady and New York senator Hillary R. Clinton ran in 2016 and Vice President Kamala Harris ran in 2024; both were defeated by Donald Trump. Only two women, Alaska governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and California senator Kamala Harris in 2020 had been nominated by one of the two major parties in the United States to be vice-president. Harris was the only woman to serve as vice-president of the United States.

In the 2024 US presidential campaign, Donald Trump made it a point to demean, insult, and ridicule Harris, making crude sexist remarks, accusing her of sleeping her way to power and lacking the stamina and intelligence to lead the country. He routinely called her a “bad person,” someone who is “evil, sick, crazy.” Trump boasted that he would protect women, “whether the women like it or not.” Trump loyalists and rally-goers lapped it up. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, and the newly elected vice-president, disparaged liberal women as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives.”

Source: Michael Gold, “Trump, Vance and Allies Hurl Insults at Women as Race Ends,” New York Times, November 5, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/us/politics/trump-nancy-pelosi-liz-cheney-women.html

Wide Open Campaign Spending: We’re Number 1

The 2020 presidential campaign between incumbent Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden, along with the races for the House and Senate, proved to be, by far, the costliest in American history up to that point. A total of $14.4 billion was spent in 2020, more than double the previous high of $6.5 billion spent in the presidential year of 2016. Then came the 2024 presidential election, which easily topped the 2020 campaign. The Harris campaign raised over $1 billion, while the Trump campaign raised about $600 million. But the striking feature was the amount of money raised by billionaire sources, mostly Republicans, who gave to Super PACs in support of their favored candidates. Most prominent was Elon Musk who gave at least $260 million and played an outsized role in underwriting a get-out-the-vote effort on Trump’s behalf, offering daily $1 million sweepstakes for voters in battleground states.

Sources: Karl Evers-Hillstrom, “Most Expensive Ever: 2020 Election Cost $14.4 Billion,” Opensecrets.org, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/02/2020-cycle-cost-14p4-billion-doubling-16/; Fredreka Schouten, David Wright, and Alex Leeds Matthews, “Musk Spent More Than a Quarter-Billion Dollars to Elect Trump, Including Funding a Mysterious Super PAC, New Filings Show,” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/politics/elon-musk-trump-campaign-finance-filings/index.html.

It may be surprising to learn that only 1.8 percent of the American adult population gave more than $200 to a federal campaign in 2020. And including the many thousands of state and local campaigns going on during the same election cycle, probably no more than 4 percent of the adult population contributes money to political candidates and causes.

The Electoral College and Electing a President: We’re the Only Ones

The Electoral College system of voting for the American presidential election is an antiquated system and often confusing, winner-take-all system, putting the spotlight on individual states where race-thin victories could decide the election for the entire country. About 150 million citizens voted in the 2024 presidential election, but they didn’t vote directly for the president. Rather they voted for electors who are pledged to a candidate.

Five times in American history, the most recent being in 2000 and 2016, the losing candidate had more popular votes than the winner. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by 500,000, but lost in the Electoral College; in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 3 million more votes than Donald Trump but lost in the Electoral College tally.

There have been over 700 measures proposed in Congress to get rid of the Electoral College method of choosing a president. But none have succeeded. The antiquated electoral system gives Republicans a better chance of winning the White House than reliance on solely on the popular vote.

When it comes to electing a country’s most important public official, the president, the system employed in the United States is a definite outlier. No other country uses such a mechanism.

Voting as a National Holiday in OECD Countries: We’re Number 28

The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is Election Day in the United States. Most votes are cast that day, but thirty-eight states provide for a form of early voting; some of that voting can start as early as late September, some six weeks before the Election Day.

But Election Day falls on a workday for most Americans. Why not make Election Day a national holiday or move it to a Saturday or Sunday? Thirteen states (as of 2018) give workers the day off on Election Day; and more than twenty states require employers to give their workers time off (usually one or two hours) to cast their votes. Business leaders have stepped in. For example, in advance of the 2020 presidential election, some 600 companies—such as, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, Gap, J. Crew, and JPMorgan Chase—gave employees paid time off to vote on Election Day.

Nearly all the OECD countries have adapted weekend voting; the United States is just one of nine countries (out of the 38 in the OECD) that have national voting day during the week, and two of those countries—Israel and South Korea—have made that day a national holiday.

Sources: MakeTimetoVote.org, https://www.maketimetovote.org; Drew DeSilver, “Weekday Elections Set the US Apart from Many Other Advanced Democracies,” Pew Research Center, November 6, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/06/weekday-elections-set-the-u-s-apart-from-many-other-advanced-democracies/

Voter Turnout: We’re Number 31

Voter turnout in US presidential elections has generally hovered a little above 50 percent of eligible adults. The relatively high turnout in the 2020 presidential election was an outlier. In response to COVID, many states adopted mail-in balloting for the first time. Further, the partisan and ideological turmoil of the Trump versus Biden election along with the concerted efforts of the political parties to get out the vote meant a record high percentage of eligible adults cast their votes. In 2020, 81 million citizens voted for Biden; 74 million voted for Trump; 3 million voted for third party candidates. Yet 80 million people did not vote at all. In the 2020 presidential election, despite record numbers of voters, there was a significant racial disparity in voter turnout. The Brennan Center reported that 70.9 percent of white voters cast their ballots, while only 58.4 of non-white voters did so (62.6 percent for Black voters; 53.7 for Latino voters; and 59.7 percent for Asian voters).

In 2024, voter turnout decreased, especially for Democrats. The biggest decrease came in urban areas, with approximately 1.9 million fewer votes for Harris than voted for Biden four years earlier. By contrast, approximately 1.7 million more votes were added to Trump’s campaign than voted for him in 2020. Analysis by the New York Times noted that “the drop-off spanned demographics and economics. It was clear in counties with the highest job growth rates, counties with the most job losses and counties with the highest percentage of college-educated voters. Turnout was down, too, across groups that are traditionally strong for Democrats—including areas with large numbers of Black Christians and Jewish voters.”

During off-year elections for members of Congress, the percentage of those voting usually drops substantially. Again, the 2018 and 2022 mid-term elections were exceptions, drawing higher than usual percentage of voters. At the local level, voter turnout in the United States drops significantly, often below 20 percent of eligible voters.

In recent national elections, the United States ranked 31st in voter participation.

How Did They Do It? The Affirmative Right to Vote. Several countries, including Canada and Germany have a guaranteed affirmative right to vote or require voting.

Source: Drew DeSilver, “Turnout in US Has Soared in Recent Elections but by

Source: Some Measures Still Trails That of Many Other Countries,” Pew Research Center, November 1, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/