Democracy In Hungary

The Economist Intelligence Unit has published the latest edition of its Democracy Index. As Portfolio Hungary reports, Hungary finds itself in 38th place, tucked in amongst the flawed democracies. It should not escape our notice that another of the EUs problem economies, Italy, is also well down the list in 34th position. The fact that both these societies are struggling with their government deficit and find it difficult to create a social consensus around the measures which need to be taken (and that both lean very heavily on tax increases in their adjustment programmes)seems somehow to be deeply significant.

Indeed I was only recently commenting on the rather favourable comparison which can be made about Spain's progress vis-a-vis Italy in this regard (Spain is in 16th place in the EIU list), and here we could mention that the rather more economically successful Czech Republic is notably in 18th place and well above the flawed democracy ranking. Someone somewhere should be thinking very hard about all this.